Centrists’ only weapon against the far right: Good government
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Ned Temko Columnist
| London
A “hinge moment of history.”
That is how Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney described the dramatic shift in world politics that helped him win his come-from-behind election victory last week.
Yet he could also have been describing three other democratic elections that have followed in quick succession in the past few days: in Britain, Australia, and Romania.
Why We Wrote This
Can centrist politicians stave off assaults from the far right? In some countries, voters take Donald Trump’s example as a cautionary tale, not an inspiration.
They are all part of a battle over the future shape of democracy worldwide, framed by two key questions.
Can center-ground politicians, who have long dominated democratic governments, find a way to quiet the siren song of angry, antiestablishment nationalism?
And will America’s maestro of the siren song, President Donald Trump, prove a powerful inspiration, or a cautionary tale, for voters in other democracies?
In two of Europe’s major powers, Britain and Germany, there were stark reminders this week of the steep task facing centrist leaders if they are to turn back the surge in support for far-right parties in the mold of Mr. Trump.
In English local elections, the Reform UK party, led by Trump ally Nigel Farage, won by a landslide. National polls now show Reform comfortably outpacing the mainstream Conservatives and neck and neck with, or slightly ahead of, Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
In Germany, right-of-center Chancellor Friedrich Merz needed an embarrassing second ballot in Parliament to confirm his new coalition with the center-left Social Democrats, even as polls have shown a continuing rise in support for the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD.
And on Europe’s eastern flank, right-wing nationalist George Simion won the first round of Romania’s presidential vote with more than 40% of the vote, well above poll projections.
Still, Europe’s centrists will take reassurance from Mr. Carney’s victory in Canada, and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s convincing reelection last weekend.
In both cases, right-wing opposition parties had been riding high in the polls, echoing Mr. Trump’s antiestablishment, “anti-woke,” and anti-immigrant messages.
But when President Trump targeted both countries with tariffs, the center-left incumbents rode a pitch for national unity, tolerance, and responsible government back into office.
That’s a strategy leaders in Britain and Germany will hope to emulate before their next national elections, due in several years.
But they know they cannot simply count on a “Trump boost” to turn their political fortunes around, despite his widespread unpopularity in both countries. They will have to govern their way out of their difficulties.
For while leaders of both Reform UK and AfD have shown a Trump-like ability to stoke grassroots anger, that anger is real, and mainstream parties will have to address its roots if they are to win back support.
On one hot-button issue in particular – immigration and migration – both Prime Minister Starmer and Chancellor Merz have signaled their determination to tighten border controls.
But the main source of anger is the economy – moribund in both countries, where standards of living are stagnating, or worse, for many citizens.
And social divides are widening, between town and country, between western and eastern Germany, and in Britain between London and the north. There is also a sense among many Reform and AfD voters that they are being governed by largely urban political elites out of touch with the day-to-day lives of ordinary citizens.
That helps explain the German and British leaders’ highest-profile policy priority: to invest in their countries’ future and refuel economic growth.
But the results won’t come instantly. Until the authorities can deliver palpable improvements in people’s lives, they need to find a way to lower the political temperature.
They must convince disaffected voters that they are listening, but that government is difficult and that major changes inevitably take time.
That shift in political tone is something the leaders of Canada and Australia seem to have achieved, at least for now.
In a preelection debate in Australia, when opposition leader Peter Dutton accused Mr. Albanese of being weak, he retorted: “Kindness isn’t weakness.”
Mr. Carney, in his victory remarks, said his country needed to meet its historical “hinge moment” by taking “the path of democracy and freedom and, because we are Canadian, to do so with compassion and generosity.”
Yet they, too, have acknowledged that they will be judged by whether and how they can deliver economic prosperity, a task made considerably harder by Mr. Trump’s threats of tariffs on long-standing trading partners.
The challenge they and other center-ground leaders face is perhaps best evoked by the words of the Irish poet William Butler Yeats at an earlier hinge moment, in 1919, when a devastating world war had just ended and the Irish were waging a war of independence against Britain.
“Things fall apart,” he wrote in “The Second Coming.”
“The center cannot hold … The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
For now, the political center seems to have held in Canada and Australia, and the leaders of Britain and Germany hope that they can follow that example.
But in the face of the passionate intensity of their hard-line rivals, they will have to do more than merely hold.
They will need to reconnect with voters, and perhaps even reinvent government, if they’re going to prevail.
