Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party Is Forecast to Win Big. But EU Populists May Still Fall Flat

Populists like Nigel Farage and Matteo Salvini are on track for historic gains in this month’s European elections. A Bloomberg breakdown of the final pre-election projection shows populist parties like Farage’s new Brexit Party and Salvini’s League winning 218 seats in the European Parliament, or 29 percent of the total, a double-digit increase from five years ago and more than either of the largest mainstream political groups.

That’s a rounding error away from former White House strategist Steve Bannon’s aim of creating a nationalist-populist bulwark against further integration that can take control of the European agenda. By comparison, the center-right European People’s Party (EPP) would take 24 percent of seats and the center-left Progressive Alliance of Socialists & Democrats 20 percent, leaving the two biggest party blocs short of a combined majority for the first time ever.

But this analysis of approximately 50 populist parties across the EU suggests that even a strong overall showing is no guarantee of power over legislation or the bloc’s 140 billion-euro ($158 billion) annual budget. Indeed, the May 23-26 elections might instead prove to be the high-water mark for the insurgents.

The toughest challenge for those political leaders talking up an anti-establishment revolution will be to coordinate the political ambitions of the myriad populist groups contesting the vote. The loudest such voice has been Italy’s Salvini, whose League party is forecast to grow from six to 26 seats. Yet, despite his well-publicized campaign for the creation of a new populist coalition, only three relatively small parties showed up to a recent signing event.

While Europe’s populist parties almost universally share nationalist, EU-skeptic and anti-immigration characteristics, many hail from opposing sides of the traditional left-right political spectrum, making collaboration questionable. Even if the likes of Poland’s Law & Justice (23 seats) could be expected to work with France’s National Rally (20 seats), a pact with Italy’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement (18 seats) cannot be taken for granted, while Hungary’s Fidesz (13 seats) technically remains in the EPP, albeit with its membership suspended.

Another wild card are the U.K.’s two populist anti-EU parties—Farage’s former vehicle, the U.K. Independence Party, and his new Brexit Party. The final projection used in this analysis assumes that the U.K. will participate in the elections and that these parties collectively win 27 percent of the U.K. vote, translating to 19 seats. (More recent polls put their combined vote share even higher, at between 30 percent and 38 percent.)

Then there’s the reality that to succeed, populists will need to avoid the internal power struggles and ideological disagreements that have undercut their influence in the past. That pitfall is exemplified by the current legislative term: nearly one-third of all populist MEPs elected in 2014 have since defected to mainstream parties or founded splinter groups. To succeed, populists will need to avoid the internalpower struggles and ideological disagreements that have diminished their influence in the past.

In the run-up to this year’s elections, Salvini has met with Le Pen and Orban, as well as made overtures to the Sweden Democrats and several other parties. But even if he succeeds in coalescing these populist forces, there’s a limit to how far he, and they, can push their mutual distrust of the EU and its institutions without alienating their respective electorates. For although many European are disaffected with establishment politics, a record number of them are actually pro-EU.

According to the latest Eurobarometer survey conducted by the European Commission in November, 68 percent of people across the union said their countries had on balance benefited from EU membership. In a separate question, a majority of respondents in 21 countries said membership was a good thing—up from 13 countries in 2014.

Part of this may be attributable to a Brexit bump, with the messy, drawn-out negotiations and warnings of the impact on the U.K. economy serving as a recruitment ad for the EU. Since the Brexit referendum in 2016, there’s been an average 8.5-point increase in the share of people saying EU membership is a good thing, with only four countries registering declines.

That’s not to say that populists can’t surprise at the ballot box. Elections to the EU Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg are seen as occasions ripe for voters to register anger at national governments without any perceived downside. Yet the focus on this year’s European voting may paradoxically serve to show what is at stake, with a far-right bloc potentially upsetting the process for choosing the European Commission, the EU’s executive body responsible for trade, antitrust and economic matters; and stalling agreement on the bloc’s trillion-euro long-term budget.

Indeed, Bloomberg’s analysis found that populists made gains in a majority of EU member states in the 2014 vote and over-performed compared with their most recent prior national election in 20 countries—an impressive track record, but undermined by subsequent erosion in 10 countries.

Populists now control or support governments in 11 EU members. Whether they can hold on to the MEPs they get elected this time around is what ultimately will decide if they’re able to change the direction of the European Parliament—and by consequence the EU—or if they’re destined to remain on the fringes of power.