🔗 Share this article

The Reform UK leader depicts his Reform UK party as a unique phenomenon that has burst on to the global stage, its rapid ascent an exceptional epochal event. However this week, in every one of Europe’s leading countries and from India and Southeast Asia to the United States and South America, hard-right, anti-immigration, anti-globalisation parties similar to his are also ahead in the opinion polls.

In last Saturday’s Czech elections, the conservative, pro-Putin populist Andrej Babiš overthrew prime minister Petr Fiala. National Rally, which has just brought down yet another French prime minister, is ahead the polls for both the French presidency and the legislature. In the German nation, the right-wing AfD party is currently the most popular party. A Hungarian political force, Robert Fico’s pro-Russian Slovakian coalition and the Italian political group are already in power, while the Austrian FPÖ, the Dutch PVV and Belgian Vlaams Belang – all hardline nationalists – are part of an global alliance of opponents of global cooperation, inspired by far-right propagandists such as a well-known figure, seeking to overthrow the global legal order, diminish fundamental freedoms and undermine international collaboration.

Rise of Populist Nationalism

This nationalist wave reveals a new and unavoidable truth that democrats ignore at our peril: an authoritarian ethnic nationalism – once thought defeated with the historic barrier – has replaced neoliberalism as the leading belief system of our age, giving us a world of priorities: “America first”, “Indian focus”, “Chinese emphasis”, “Russia first”, “my tribe first” and often “my tribe first and only” regimes. It is this nationalist sentiment that helps explain why the world is now composed of many autocratic states and fewer democratic ones, and this ideology is the force behind the breaches of global human rights standards not just by Russia in Ukraine but in almost every one of the world’s 59 cross-border conflicts and civil wars.

Understanding the Underlying Forces

Crucial to understand the underlying forces, common to almost every country, that have fuelled this recent nationalist era. It starts with a broadly shared perception that a globalisation that was accessible yet exclusionary has been a unregulated system that has been unjust to all.

Over the past ten years, political figures have not only been delayed in addressing to the millions who feel left out and marginalized, but also to the changing balance of global economic power, moving us from a unipolar world once dominated by the United States to a multipolar world of competing superpowers, and from a rules-based order to a power-based one. The ethnic nationalism that this has incited means free trade is giving way to protectionism. Where market forces used to drive politics, the politics of nationalism is now driving economic decisions, and already more than 100 countries are running mercantilist policies marked out by bringing production home and ally-focused trade and by bans on international commerce, investment and knowledge sharing, lowering global collaboration to its weakest point since the post-war period.

Hope in Global Public Sentiment

But all is not lost. The cement is still wet, and even as it hardens we can find hope in the common sense of the world's population. In a poll conducted for a major foundation, of thousands of individuals in 34 countries we find a clear majority are more resistant to an divisive nationalist agenda and more willing to embrace global teamwork than many of the leaders who rule over them.

Globally there is, perhaps surprisingly, only a limited number of hardened anti-internationalists representing 16.5% of the global population (even if 25% in today’s US) who either feel peaceful living between diverse communities is unattainable or have a win-lose perspective that if they or their country do well, it has to be at the cost of others doing badly.

But there are another 21% at the opposite extreme, whom we might call committed internationalists, who either still see international collaboration through open trade as a positive sum win-win, or are what an influential thinker calls “rooted cosmopolitans”.

The Global Majority's Stance

Most people of the global public are moderate in views: not isolated patriots, as “US priority” ideology would suggest, or fully global citizens. They are patriotic but don’t see the world as in a never-ending struggle between the “us” and the “them”, adversaries always divided from each other in an irreconcilable gap.

Do the majority in the middle favor a obligation-light or a responsible global community? Are they prepared to accept obligations beyond their garden gate or community boundaries? Affirmative, under certain conditions. A first group, about a fifth, will back humanitarian action to relieve suffering and are ready to act out of selflessness, backing disaster relief for affected areas. Those we might call “good cause” cooperation advocates empathize of others and believe in something bigger than themselves.

Another segment comprising 22% are practical cooperators who want to know that any taxes paid for international development are used effectively. And there is a third group, roughly a fifth, personally motivated collaborators, who will endorse teamwork if they can see that it advantages them and their communities, whether it be through guaranteeing them basic necessities or safety and stability.

Forging a Collaborative Consensus

So a clear majority can be built not just for humanitarian aid if funds are used wisely but also for global action to deal with worldwide issues, like climate crisis and disease control, as long as this case is presented on grounds of wise personal benefit, and if we emphasize the mutual advantages that benefit them and their own country. And thus for those who have long questioned whether we cooperate out of need or if we have a need to cooperate, the response is each.

This willingness to work internationally shows how we can reverse the xenophobic tide: we can defeat today’s negative, isolated and often aggressive and authoritarian patriotic extremism that vilifies immigrants, outsiders and “others” as long as we champion a positive, outward-looking and inclusive national pride that responds to people’s desire to belong and connects to their everyday worries.

Tackling Key Issues

Although in-depth polls tell us that across the Western nations, illegal immigration is currently the biggest national issue – and it's clear that it must promptly be managed effectively – the public sentiment data also tell us that the public are even more concerned about what is happening in their own lives and within their own local communities. Last month, a prominent leader spoke movingly about how what’s positive in the nation can overcome what’s bad, doing so precisely because in most western countries, “dysfunctional” and “in decline” are the words people have for years most commonly cited when asked about both our economy and community.

But as the leader also reminded us, the far right is more interested in exploiting grievances than ending them. Nigel Farage praised a disastrous mini-budget as “an excellent fiscal policy” since 1986. But he would also implement a comparable strategy – what was planned – the largest reductions in public services. The party's proposal to cut government expenditure by a huge sum would not repair downtrodden communities but ravage them, create social division and wreck any sense of unity. Under a hard-right regime, you will not be able to afford to be ill, disabled, poor or at-risk. Every day from now on, and in every constituency, the party should be asked which hospital, which school and which government service will be the first to be reduced or closed.

The Stakes and the Alternative

“This ideology” is economic theory at its most inhumane, more destructive even than monetary policy, and vindictive far beyond fiscal restraint. What the public are telling us all over the west is that they want their leaders to restore our economies and our communities. “The party” and its international partners should be exposed day after day for plans that would harm both. And for those of us who believe our greatest achievements could be ahead of us, we can go beyond pointing out the party's contradictions by presenting a argument for a improved nation that appeals not just to idealists, but to pragmatists, to personal benefit, and to the daily kindness of the British people.