🔗 Share this article Addressing the Continent's Populist Movements: Shielding the Less Well-Off from the Forces of Transformation More than a twelve months following the vote that delivered Donald Trump a clear-cut comeback victory, the Democratic party has yet to released its election autopsy. However, recently, an prominent progressive lobby group released its own. The Harris campaign, its writers argued, failed to connect with key voter blocs because it failed to concentrate enough on tackling basic economic anxieties. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds. A Lesson for Europe While Europe prepares for a turbulent era of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that needs to be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will quickly replicate Mr Trump’s success. Within Europe's core nations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, supported by significant segments of working-class voters. Yet among mainstream leaders and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to troubling times. Era-Defining Problems and Costly Solutions The challenges Europe faces are expensive and era-defining. They include the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, dealing with demographic change and building economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of global instability could require an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A major study last year on European economic competitiveness called for substantial investment in shared infrastructure, to be partly funded by collective EU debt. Such a fiscal paradigm shift would boost growth figures that have stagnated for years. However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there continues to be a lack of boldness when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks resist the idea of shared debt, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are deeply timid. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. Yet the embattled centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – refuses to contemplate such a move. The Price of Inaction The truth is that in the absence of such measures, the less affluent will pay the price of fiscal tightening through austerity budgets and greater inequality. Acrimonious recent conflicts over retirement reforms in both France and Germany highlight a developing struggle over the future of the European social model – a trend that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited to promote a politics of welfare chauvinism. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has opposed moves to raise the retirement age and has said that it would target any benefit cuts at non-French nationals. Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Populists Across the Atlantic, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. Yet in the absence of a compelling progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they worked on the election circuit. Absent a fundamental change in fiscal policy, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Policymakers must steer clear of giving this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.