“We do not have to agree with everything or anything people say,” JD Vance told the Munich security conference last week. “But when political leaders represent an important constituency it is incumbent on us to listen.”
With that, he stuck an American oar firmly into European political waters – and provided a huge boost to those parties on the far right that have long been shut out of power across Europe by “firewalls”, or “cordons sanitaires” – a rule against any political cooperation among mainstream parties even if it might be in their short-term interests. And while his observations will have seemed self-evidently true to his own domestic audience, they had a very different reception in capitals on this side of the Atlantic.
The reason that Vance’s remarks cause such alarm is not that they introduced a novel idea to European politics – but because they gave momentum to a shift that is already well under way. “The door has been ajar, but he’s blown it open,” John Kampfner said. “That reality is dawning on everyone.”
UK | Reform’s ideas now thoroughly mainstream
In the UK, the first-past-the-post electoral system has historically left smaller parties on the sidelines without any need for a mainstream strategy against them. But here, too, the recent rise of Reform UK and the Conservatives’ attempt to fend it off have meant that even the limited firewall on ideas that originate on the far right has been crumbling. At the ARC conference, Badenoch and Michael Gove appeared on the same bill as Peterson, Farage, and terminally online pundits like Konstantin Kisin, who this week told former Spectator editor Fraser Nelson that Rishi Sunak isn’t English because he’s “a brown Hindu”.
Conferences like this are one mechanism for the blurring of previously ironclad distinctions between the rival branches of the right; so are media outlets that treat them as equals, and the bald electoral arithmetic that leaves the Tories panicking about a Reform wipeout at the next election.
“There is a danger that the UK is complacent about the idea that their system doesn’t allow for extremes,” John said. As he also notes, it is much too simple to say that the impact of Reform is confined to the Conservative party – as the Labour government’s recent media blitz to demonstrate toughness on immigration makes clear.
Germany | Could Vance’s intervention backfire?
In the most recent polling ahead of Sunday’s election, the conservative bloc led by the Christian Democrats is on 27%, with the far-right AfD in second place on 20% and the incumbent centre-left Social Democrats in third on 17%. The mainstream candidates were outraged by Vance’s decision to meet with the AfD leader, Alice Weidel, in Munich but not with the chancellor, Olaf Scholz. The Christian Democrat leader and likely next chancellor, Freidrich Merz, accused the US of “interfering quite openly” in German politics.
“There is a sense that the dangers now facing Germany are so great that the differences between the mainstream parties look much smaller,” John said. “If Merz and the others besides the AfD have a chance to form a coalition, it will be incumbent on them to negotiate something quickly and to do some serious things on the economy and security to demonstrate their credibility.”
Merz has also campaigned on a platform that appears heavily influenced by the AfD’s success on immigration – and, as John points out in his contribution to this piece, recently leaned on AfD support in an attempt to push through a tough migration bill. “Not even the Greens in Germany, who are the most pro-migration party, are putting up much of a defence,” John said. “That’s partly because the principled issues around migration have become mingled with questions of competence. People feel that there has been a failure to enforce the law as it stands.” That may mean that a managerial failure opens the door for a much deeper ideological shift.
At the same time, it is not clear that interventions from Vance – and Elon Musk, who has endorsed the AfD and interviewed Alice Weidel on X – have necessarily helped their cause. (We might think of Barack Obama’s warning that the UK would have to go to “the back of the queue” for a US trade deal in the event of Brexit.) “The sale of Teslas has plummeted,” John pointed out. “It may be that the ostentatious American endorsement cuts both ways. But we haven’t got the answer to that question yet.”
Firewalls across Europe | A ‘vicious cycle’ across the continent
Austria’s Freedom party has been in negotiations to form the country’s first far-right-led government after it won national elections in September, although a recent breakdown in talks means that new elections now look likely. In Sweden, the Sweden Democrats are not formally a part of the government but prop up the governing conservative coalition and exert considerable influence over migration policy.
In the Netherlands, the anti-Islam candidate Geert Wilders was kept out of the cabinet despite his PVV party winning the most seats – but PVV holds five of 16 cabinet posts, including the asylum and migration role. Giorgia Meloni is Italy’s prime minister with the support of a coalition that includes her own far-right Brothers of Italy party but also the more conventional Forza Italia – and she is now accepted on the international stage. And in Finland, the Finns – who have compared immigrants to “parasites” and want to ban undocumented migrants from receiving healthcare – hold seven of 19 ministerial positions.
It is worth recognising that all of these parties have distinct national characters, and that Meloni’s politics, say, are different from Alice Weidel’s in important ways. “Meloni and Marine Le Pen in France regard the AfD as too rightwing for them, which is why they’re in a different grouping in the European parliament,” John said. “But the essence of the phenomenon is the same everywhere.”
This piece by Jon Henley from earlier this month provides a useful anatomisation of a “vicious cycle” getting repeated again and again. As a radical right party gains more seats, the mainstream shifts to close off the threat. But that just reinforces the salience of immigration as an issue and a sense that the fringe party is now influential. “When moderate parties rule out cooperation with the radical right citizens know … a vote for the far right is wasted,” Guardian Europe columnist Nathalie Tocci argues. “But when they wink at the far right, that disincentive evaporates. And voters tend to prefer the original to the copy.”
The future | Serious questions over whether firewalls can hold
There are some countries where firewalls are still intact. In Belgium, even as a firmly rightwing coalition formed, the nationalist Vlaams Belang party was excluded despite making significant electoral gains. In France, Le Pen’s National Rally is the largest party in parliament but has been excluded from government.
But few would bet against National Rally finally breaking through at the next presidential election – and prime minister Francois Bayrou’s comments that many French people feel “submerged” by immigration have been seen as indication of the influence they wield from opposition.
There is a bleak but reasonable question, too, about whether firewalls are really fit for purpose if far-right parties are consistently getting 15-20% in elections. “The firewall has become an article of faith in many places – do you believe in it, yes or no; are you a good person, yes or no,” John said. “And there’s no doubt that the American motivation for raising it is thoroughly malign. I certainly think that not forming coalitions with the likes of the AfD remains the least of all evils, and that rule certainly needs to remain. But whether we like it or not, the Vance argument that there is a democratic deficit has more resonance now than it did a few years ago.”
