- The UK has voted to put the Labour Party back in power, smashing the Tories’ 14-year majority.
- The stunning fall of the right-wing in the country has defied a larger trend in Europe.
- Germany and France are on the brink of seeing the far-right gain critical mass. It’s already won in countries like Italy.
As the dust settles from the UK’s general election, it’s clear the Tories have lost big.
The results from July 4 were a dramatic rebuke of an incumbent Conservative Party leadership that has governed for 14 years, with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s faction losing more than 240 seats as the count wraps up.
Sunak, who conceded defeat on Friday morning UK time, will likely be replaced by Labour Party leader Keir Starmer.
Starmer has spent over a decade trying to reshape his leftist party into a more centrist movement, ejecting its socialist elements, including stalwart Jeremy Corbyn.
Often seen as a straight-laced, methodical politician, he’s pledged to shore up vulnerabilities in the healthcare system and to re-negotiate the UK’s Brexit deal with the European Union — which he said had been “botched.”
Labour’s rise, largely telegraphed by pre-election polls, makes the UK a clear outlier in this year’s political shifts in Western Europe.
The European Parliamentary elections in June have seen far-right factions gain critical mass among the continent’s most prominent nations, and the results are cascading into an unraveling of power long-held by leftist governments there.
Germany’s Scholz denies a snap election
Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD), led by Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, overtook Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party in the EU polls despite losing key candidates and fighting a series of scandals.
Now in second place with 16% of the German vote, the far-right party has taken the result as a sign of national support shifting in its favor and called for a snap election at home. Scholz, however, has rejected the idea.
France’s Macron in peril
It’s a different story for France and President Emmanuel Macron, whose Renaissance party won only 14.6% of the vote in the European election.
With the National Rally — a far-right faction led by Marine Le Pen — taking first place with 31.3% of the French vote, Macron called for a snap election of his country’s national parliament.
As the first round of the French election closed on Sunday, results showed Le Pen’s faction pulling far ahead of its leftist and centrist opponents.
A second round is to come on July 7, and the lead-up has evolved into a chaotic effort to keep the far right from power.
Hundreds of candidates have withdrawn, trying to avoid splitting the vote between those in the center and left.
Meanwhile, Macron, whose approval ratings have plummeted to their lowest in his seven-year tenure as president, is keeping a low profile.
The Brothers of Italy win a show of support
In Italy, the far right has already cemented its power in the form of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s ultra-conservative Brothers of Italy, which became the ruling party in 2022.
In a sign of sustaining support for her party, it won nearly 29% of the national vote in June’s European Parliament elections, up from 6% in 2019.
The runner-up was the Democratic Party, with 24.1% of the Italian vote.
Elsewhere, much of Europe is leaning right. Spain’s People’s Party, a center-right faction, gained 34% of the country’s vote in the European Parliament, beating the incumbent Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s socialist government.
Still, the far-right faction there, Vox, struggled to gain a foothold, with only 9.6% of the vote, down from 12.4% in 2019.
The Netherlands has also just formed a right-wing government, with its largest component being the anti-immigration and populist Party for Freedom led by Geert Wilders.
To be sure, right-wing populism in the UK is seeing clearer beginnings. As of press time, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK had taken 4 seats after winning nothing in 2019.
Farage, who led the Brexit movement, is now finally elected a member of the country’s parliament with 46% of the vote in Clacton.
The dramatic changes in the polls come amid growing disdain toward the economic challenges faced in many parts of the continent, with a rising cost of living and inflation.
Some observers think the shifts are a sign of pure anti-establishment sentiment, with voters blaming whoever is in power regardless of whether they’re on the left or right.
“There’s a lot of dissatisfaction with the way democracy is working,” Richard Wike, the director of global attitudes research at the Pew Research Center, said on an episode of FiveThirtyEight’s politics podcast in June.