In the lead-up to this week’s EU elections apocalyptic predictions of a right-populist ‘sweep’ have abounded in both the European and international press. The concerns are, to a degree, justified – right and farther-right parties will probably gain an important number of seats in this electoral contest across a number of EU states. What is not at all a given, however, is the extent or the ‘sweep’ of their gains, and whether such parties will be able to necessarily gain sufficient seats to form the most sizeable block in the European Parliament.
National polls have been quite ambiguous in their findings regarding any further gains for right-populist parties: in some cases confirming the existing electoral support for parties such as the Lega in Italy or the AfD in Germany, but not necessarily giving any indication of a momentous ‘surge’ to come. A comprehensive survey carried out by the European Council on Foreign Relations with YouGov of 14 key EU states also debunks the myth of an impending far-right ‘earthquake’, noting indeed that a very important proportion of the EU electorate is still undecided – up to 97 million European voters.[i]
As voting begins today in the Netherlands and the UK, we should be wary of writing off the electoral results to come as an ‘inevitable’ success of the right. One of the striking things about representations of the seeming ‘inevitability’ of the success of the right is a very particular sort of conspiratorial geopolitics, with an exaggerated focus on wider global forces that are driving not just European politics but also individual European citizens’ political choices. We need to be very aware of the workings of such conspiratorial imaginaries for they risk profoundly colouring our understandings not just of what might happen but also of what can happen: that is, they risk seriously undermining our appreciation of European citizens’ political agency, imagining them to be mere puppets of social media manipulation and sinister external forces.
