Far-right parties could become the largest force on the right in Europe within a decade, experts have said, as mainstream conservative parties look to copy their hardline agendas, especially on immigration, in a vain effort to win back votes.
[...] For decades, mainstream European parties on the right and left united behind a barrier – the Brandmauer (firewall) in Germany, the cordon sanitaire in France – against accommodating far-right ideas or cooperating with far-right parties. More recently, however, centre-right parties in particular have increasingly adopted far-right policies and, in several countries, formed coalitions with far-right parties. Despite evidence showing this only boosts the radical right, the process is accelerating.
“We’re in a vicious cycle,” said Tarik Abou-Chadi, an associate professor of European politics at the University of Oxford. “It starts with the radical right being more successful, winning more seats, entering government in more countries.”
When that happens, “mainstream parties move right on immigration. It’s strategic, to win back votes. So you have this accommodation. Except it doesn’t work – it doesn’t bring the votes back. But two things do happen that reinforce the trend.”
So first, Abou-Chadi said, norms change. Accommodation normalises and legitimises far-right parties: voting for them is no longer a transgression. Second, opinion shifts: if mainstream parties say something is really important, people tend to believe it. “And then mainstream parties see that shift in public opinion and think: ‘We have to keep moving further to the right.’ And you end up broadening the coalition of people saying ‘we have to do something’ about immigration.”
[...] Political scientists say electoral and polling evidence from many countries strongly suggests that, for mainstream centre-right parties, the process of accommodation merely results in their being “cannibalised” by the far right.
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