France has become the latest European country to propel a far-right politician to within reach of leadership after the weekend victory of anti-European and anti-Immigration Marine Le Pen in the first round of the French presidential election. Le Pen, who will face independent centrist Emmanuel Macron in the run-off vote in May, is unlikely to win, according to polls, but her success underscores the seriousness of Europe's current trend toward right-wing nationalism.
Le Pen has pledged to reinstate border checks and take France out of the European Union, following the path that Hungary's illiberal Prime Minister Victor Orban has taken for some years to champion Hungarian sovereignty by challenging the EU's democratic rules. In the Netherlands, the anti-immigration and anti-Islam party of Geert Wilders came in second in a parliamentary election in March and last December, Austria came within a hair's breadth of electing a far right president.
With Prime Minister Theresa May's unexpected announcement of a general election on June 8, Britain becomes the fourth EU country to go to the polls this year. The ruling Conservative Party is expected to increase substantively its now slim majority amid accusations of authoritarianism and attempting to override the democratic process.
And, unless May or the EU make a policy U-turn, Britain will leave both the union and its single market two years from now, in a move being described as a "hard Brexit." The other 27 members of the world's biggest trading bloc are closely watching how things unfold to determine whether some of them could also leave the EU.
There are many worrying contradictions. The EU is primarily a trading bloc, but the intricate workings of commerce, currency and markets cannot be explained in one-line campaign soundbites. This is what politicians in the U.K. and elsewhere are trying -- but mostly failing -- to do, with the result that too many policies have little resemblance to complex realities.
Why, for example, does anti-EU rhetoric advocate reaching out for special trade deals with China, Japan and India when these nations represent the very globalization blamed for so much of Europe's discontent? And what impact would a more right-wing Europe have on the EU and on the world economy?
In the 1930s, a similar rise of ethnically-based nationalism followed the Wall Street crash of 1929, ultimately leading to war. That is unlikely to be the case now. But the 2007-08 financial crisis exposed gaps in wealth distribution and growing inequality. A growing resentment over such disparities has helped create the nationalist movements that are making their presence felt throughout the continent.
Britain's narrow Brexit decision in 2016 hinged not on living standards, but on issues of sovereignty, dignity and immigration, with veteran millionaire film star Sir Michael Caine summing up the popular view that he would rather be a "poor master than a rich servant."
Immigrant backlash
The growth of nationalist sentiment has come in response to the influx of refugees from the Middle East, which reached more than a million last year, as well as protracted sluggish economic performances in most EU countries. Almost 9% of European adults are unemployed, with that figure reaching more than 20% among the young. Greece, Spain and Italy are among the worst affected. A 2015 Oxfam study found that between 2009 and 2013, the number of Europeans living with "severe material deprivation" rose by 7.5% to 50 million, which it blamed on increasing inequality.
Another study this year by researchers at Italy's Bocconi University found a direct link between levels of Asian trade and support for European nationalism. It studied 76 legislative elections in 15 European countries between the tail end of the Cold War in 1988 and the crash of 2007. It found that areas with the highest exposure to imports from China were more inclined toward radical right-wing politics.
"The unequal sharing of the welfare gains brought about by globalization has resulted in widespread concerns and a general opposition to free trade," said the report's authors, Italo Colantone and Piero Stanig. They described political movements that combined "support for domestic free market policies with strong protectionist stances" as representing "economic nationalism."
Britain is becoming a pioneer in bringing "economic nationalism" into mainstream politics. May has been burnishing her credentials by accusing anti-Brexit supporters of being the "citizens of nowhere" who were "trying to subvert democracy." Her conservative supporters in the media have called on her to "crush the saboteurs," and accused the independent judiciary of being "enemies of the people" by ruling that the Brexit process should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny.
Once re-elected, May's government will begin turning rhetoric into legislation by seeking trade agreements that it believes are more in line with the national interest. The irony is that Britain would be cutting deals with the exact same countries blamed for causing Europe's economic woes.
May recently visited the non-democratic monarchies of Jordan and Saudi Arabia in the Middle East, while the new international trade minister toured Southeast Asia and three cabinet ministers along with the Bank of England governor journeyed to India.
"They were well received," said John Elliott, an India-based commentator. "But the U.K. no longer rates as one of India's leading foreign relationships and they made little impression outside their formal meetings."
A doubtful strategy
May's decision to go for a "hard Brexit" will leave Britain under World Trade Organization rules that allow tariffs on its goods. She will need to show early success by pulling off some new trade deals. But in the latest setback, U.S. President Donald Trump said recently that he might prioritize the EU over the U.K. in reaching a trade agreement.
The European parliament's Brexit coordinator, Guy Verhofstadt, described British ministers as being engulfed in a "fog of surrealism." He warned that based on London's current negotiating position, "U.K. citizens will have no more of a right to holiday, travel and study in EU countries than tourists from Moscow or students from Mumbai.'
"Getting the E.U. to the level it's at now -- from a directly elected European Parliament to effective free movement and a powerful global trade policy -- took decades," said Louise Rowntree, a EU business consultant and Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate in the U.K. "A far-right European swing might want to unravel all this work, but that would necessitate years of painful negotiations."
This encroaching ambiguity has yet to be reflected in London's FTSE stock index which is up 15% since the June 2016 Brexit vote. The market's preference would be for Britain to stay in Europe, but the Liberal Democrats are the only party advocating this and they have no hope of winning the election.
The market's second preference is certainty. A Conservative government in office until 2022 could see through the 2019 EU exit with a big enough majority to ride through the bumps.
In many respects, May is setting herself up as leader of a new style of European government, one that wants to govern under conditions of solidarity usually reserved for wartime.
"At this moment of enormous national significance there should be unity here in Westminster, but instead there is division," she said in her announcement of the snap election. "It will be a choice between strong and stable leadership in the national interest, with me as your prime minister, or weak and unstable coalition government."
Dictatorial tendencies
May's critics point to her language and arguments as indications that she wants to override the democratic process itself, arguing that the job of the House of Commons is not to show unity but to stage heated debate and division.
"We are fighting to maintain a functioning democracy in which all the levers of power do not rest in the hands of those commanding wealth and privilege," said former Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett.
European nationalism is driven by two factors. One is anti-immigration sentiment fanned by refugees from the Middle East and fellow Europeans crossing borders to offer cheap labor. The other is a resentment of globalization caused by a flood of imports from Asia and the developing world.
France made a good start at the weekend. Germany's election in September will show the full extent of the nationalist swing. If it gains ground there, then Brexit may only be the first step in a long and unsteady process of unravelling the world's most successful experiment in free trade. Or it may serve as a warning that the unravelling must stop.
Humphrey Hawksley is a former BBC Beijing Bureau Chief. His next book, Asian Waters, about the South China Sea, will be published later this year.
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Humphrey Hawksley UK election could accelerate unravelling of European Union - Nikkei Asian Review