If there were a single image that summed up the quick rise of Europe’s
anti-establishment parties, is was the one of Alexis Tsipras and Pablo
Iglesias together, on stage, at an anti-austerity rally in Athens just
before the Jan. 25 Greek election. Wearing their trademark open-neck
blue shirts – no neckties ever for them – their arms were outstretched,
as if in celebration, as the crowd cheered them on.
Read more: Europe’s populist parties aren’t done by a long shot - The Globe and Mail
Mr. Tsipras, the leader of the radical
left Syriza party, would win that election; Mr. Iglesias, leader of
Podemos (We Can), the Spanish equivalent to Syriza, would top the polls
in Spain, much to the distress of the mainstream parties.
The
image implied that the populist revolution had arrived in Europe, where
the centre-right and centre-left parties that had ruled for decades
were in full retreat as voters grew angry at the stalled recovery, the
harsh austerity measures and the obscene unemployment levels.
But could January have been the peak of
the populist movement? Shortly thereafter, Syriza was riven by
infighting as its efforts to make a breakthrough with its bailout
masters in Brussels and Berlin went nowhere. Podemos’s rise stalled as
spring approached. In Britain, the UK Independence Party, whose goal is
to yank Britain out of the European Union, won only one seat in the May 7
election; even UKIP’s leader, Nigel Farage, got shut out. Beppe
Grillo’s anti-establishment Five Star Movement, Italy’s biggest
opposition party, lost momentum. While the Euroskeptic Finns Party
placed second in Finland’s election, their vote tally fell by two
points.
Investors have applauded the
apparently flattening popularity curve of the protest parties. Bond
yields, with a little help from the European Central Bank’s ultra-easy
monetary policy, have sunk throughout the euro zone. The rage against
the middle-party machine seemed less shrill as the economy improved. The
falling euro and oil prices, and the ECBs €1.1-trillion ($1.3-trillion)
quantitative easing program, helped.
Not so fast. Rumors that the populist surge is over might be exaggerated, greatly so.
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