Right-Wing Parties Are Surging In Popularity Across Europe’s Biggest Players

Right-wing parties are simultaneously leading polls across Europe’s biggest economies in a first for the continent’s nationalist and populist movements.

In France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, known together as Europe’s “Big Three,” right-wing parties have surged in popularity on angst over lax immigration policies and high inflation, according to The Wall Street Journal.

The National Rally has led polls in France consistently for the past year, and National Rally’s presidential candidate would likely win the first round of voting. National Rally is led by Jordan Bardella, who took over the party after Marine Le Pen.

National Rally is already the largest single party in France’s National Assembly.

Reform UK, the newly founded British party led by Nigel Farage, has overtaken the ruling Labour Party in polls within the last six months. Farage founded the party partly out of frustration with the Conservative Party, which has dueled the Labour Party for control of government over the past century. Farage launched Reform after accusing Conservatives of abandoning their voters.

In Germany, Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has edged ahead of the ruling centrist Christian Democratic Union.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have, like the rest of Europe, gone through a period of high inflation after pandemic-era spending binges led to aggressively rising prices that have left many goods much at much higher price points than they were five years ago. Europe has also lagged behind the United States in economic growth that could offset the impact of those higher prices.

The governments of the Big Three have also faced increasing grassroots pressure over permissive immigration policies.

In France, citizens have reacted against the country’s growing Muslim population which many see as a threat to French values. The slogan “Let’s block everything” has grown popular on social media in France in reaction to unsustainable spending, in part on immigration that has little direct benefit for French citizens, that has led to austerity measures.

In Germany and the United Kingdom, both countries have experienced record waves of immigration in recent years. Germany’s foreign-born population has surged from 15% of its total population in 2017 to 22% last year.

The United Kingdom has seen raw immigration numbers comparable to the surge that swamped the United States immigration system under Biden within the same time frame. Unlike the United States, however, the United Kingdom’s population is about a fifth the size of the United States’.

Europe’s immigration policies have received attention and criticism from the United States, from high-profile figures such as Elon Musk to top officials in the White House.

“[G]overnment that puts foreigners above their own people is, by definition, TREASONOUS and ILLEGITIMATE!” Musk posted on X on Sunday. “The people of Britain deserve a government that represents their interests, not those of shadowy foreign organizations!”

Musk has also voiced support for AfD in Germany, while the Trump administration has criticized European officials for restricting free speech across the continent, often to avoid upsetting foreign populations that have swelled within its borders such as in Germany and the U.K.