Jacobin Magazine: The Pandemic Is Making the European Union More Integrated — And More Unequal

 During the last ten years, this vision has suffered some major challenges. Instead of continuous uninterrupted progress, the modern European Union has had to follow the path of crisis management. The Great Recession led to the sovereign debt crisis, then the Portuguese crisis, the Spanish crisis, the Irish crisis, and, of course, most drastically, the Greek crisis. The talk of a “Grexit” — the possibility of the other countries booting Greece from the Union — smoothly transferred to talk on the crisis over Brexit, as the British right actually split their country from the union. This, at the same time as the mounting environmental crisis, the so-called refugee crisis, the crisis of democracy caused by right-wing populism in countries like Hungary and Poland. But from crisis to crisis, the Union lurches forward, and the solution is always the same — more integration. [...]

The knights don’t go into the lair alone, of course. Another thing the press likes to do is to divide Europe into convenient blocs. Populations of countries like Finland are, time and again, led to believe that the problem with the European Union is that there are too many Mediterranean countries in it, that everything would be okay if the EU could just somehow drop or at least ignore the Southern countries for their profligacy. The name of choice for the Northern nations for the negotiations was the “frugal four,” part of the former “New Hanseatic League.” This group set out to oppose the package, eventually getting some concessions, but in the end having little effect on the basic forms of the package itself. [...]

This isn’t really a matter of the so-called political families within the European sphere. In the “Northern” group, the Austrian conservative Sebastian Kurz joined the Dutch liberal Mark Rutte and the social democrats in Nordic countries, such as Finland’s Marin, to oppose the social democrat Pedro Sánchez in Spain, the conservative Angela Merkel in Germany, and — stretching the meaning of the word quite a bit — the “liberal” Macron in France. The one country in the EU that currently has the far right in government is Estonia, where the nationalist EKRE party has talked tough about the EU and federalism. But in the end, it presented no effective opposition to the package, after Estonia was promised a windfall of EU subsidies as a result. Other right-wing populists, like Matteo Salvini in Italy, muted their criticisms even longer ago. [...]

Even a federal Europe would not, as such, alter the underlying economic systems leading to more and more environmental destruction in search of personal and national profits. Indeed, once one looks under the hood of the European liberalism’s internationalist rhetoric, the practical work of European integration is often advanced by the same inward-looking arguments as nationalism always has been: the idea of a continent threatened by, say, China or Russia, or international terrorism. Indeed, when looking at Macron talking about the “cultural vitality” (though not the values) of Hungary and Russia as a model for his preferred European “civilization state,” or Belgian liberal Guy Verhofstadt — for decades almost the living personification of the EU — literally referring to an “EU empire,” one wonders whether the idea of a European federation guided by the values of the Polish or Hungarian governments is as far off as one might think, even now.

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Foreign Policy: It’s a New Europe—if You Can Keep It

 The lockdowns that stopped the virus in Europe have had a devastating economic impact. Again, the American habit of dramatizing data by means of annualizing rates of change disguises the fact that economic implosion in Europe has been every bit as bad, if not worse. The U.S. economy fell 9.5 percent in the second quarter of 2020. Germany’s contracted by 10 percent. In Spain, the collapse was twice as bad, at 18.5 percent. (If Spain reported its data in the American style, it would be down 65 percent on the year.) [...]

In the process, the more conservative voices of Northern Europe extracted serious concessions. Unfortunately, those came at the expense of some of the more progressive and innovative budget elements, including spending on joint efforts in the areas of health care and green investment. Thankfully, the package is up for debate in the European Parliament, which is, step by step, asserting leverage over Europe’s politics. Earlier in the crisis, the Parliament favored a far more expansive plan, and hopefully it will make adjustments to the July compromise. [...]

This summer, there was certainly nothing inevitable about the way the deal was done. It did not seem likely. Credit goes to the European Commission for raising the stakes, upping the original suggestion by Merkel and Macron to an ask of 750 billion euros, on top of the regular 1.1 trillion euro ($1.3 trillion) multiyear budget. (It was the Commission’s officials who dug up the legal precedent that would allow the EU to justify massive borrowing.) Among national governments, one has to admire the Spanish and Italians, who began the long march toward a constructive European response back in March and suffered through the demeaning objections of Northern Europeans without walking away. The best that can be said for the Dutch and the Austrians is that they gave way in the end. Perhaps the shameless defense of the narrowest conception of national interest by Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz will serve some useful purpose in dampening criticism from their domestic populists. [...]

It was not by accident that as the crisis deepened, the French government started its latest approach to Berlin not via the chancellery but by working its connections to the Social Democrats in the German Finance Ministry. In a desperate effort to revive the flagging political fortunes of the Social Democrats and his own chances of party leadership in 2019, Finance Minister Olaf Scholz had become the leading German proponent of European reform, pushing ideas both for unemployment insurance and banking. Both had been met by stony disapproval from the CDU and a nein from the chancellery.

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The New Yorker: The Magical Thinking Around Brexit

Instead, the next two weeks will test how deeply a nation can immerse itself in self-delusion. As a matter of European and U.K. law, Brexit is set to happen on March 29th. Members of the E.U. are frustrated because, even though they have spent two years negotiating a withdrawal agreement with Prime Minister Theresa May, Parliament has rejected it twice, most recently last Tuesday, which means that there is a risk of a chaotic, off-the-cliff No Deal Brexit, without determining new rules for trade, travel, or such basic matters as drivers’ licenses. On Wednesday, Parliament passed a motion saying that it didn’t want a No Deal Brexit, but—in an absurdity within an absurdity—didn’t legally change the deadline. On Thursday, May got Parliament’s approval to ask the E.U. for an extension. (Seven of her own Cabinet members voted against her.) But all of the other twenty-seven member states must approve it, and several have said that they will not do so unless the U.K. comes up with an actual plan for what it will do with the added time. And should the extension be short, or long enough to allow a real reconsideration of whether Brexit is even worth doing? The mood of many European leaders was captured by Mark Rutte, the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, who said that he didn’t see the point of just allowing the U.K. to keep “whining on for months.” [...]

There has been a failure, among Brexiteers, to see how Ireland has thrived as part of the E.U.; with the principle of free movement of people and goods fortifying the peace agreement and Dublin’s emergence as a business center, the E.U.’s ideals of shared peace and prosperity have been realized there in a distinct way. At this point, Varadkar, who is forty, gay, and the son of a doctor from Mumbai and a nurse from County Waterford, has more clout in Brussels than May does. [...]

Those words should resonate for Americans. The Brexit debate has been marked by particular British eccentricities, but the tendencies it appeals to—xenophobia, the belief in a lost, past greatness—cross many borders. The adherents of such movements may see the floundering of Brexit as a reason to rethink their assumptions—or, more dangerously, as proof that élites are conspiring against them. The populist dream subsists in an increasingly troubled sleep.

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The Guardian: Britons don’t grasp the EU’s essential motivation – a quest for the quiet life

Advertisement Europe’s quest for the quiet life goes much further. The EU and most of its states were born or reborn from the rubble of war and the traumas of totalitarianism. Britons forget how deeply that affects their instincts. History is dense, present, complicated and inescapable on the mainland in a way that it is not in Britain. The pavements of German cities are studded with brass plaques bearing the names and dates of those deported to the death camps, planted outside the addresses where they once lived. Memories of flight, destruction and oppression – the 3am rap at the door, the rumble of military trucks on cobbles, the squelch of carts laden with possessions on muddy tracks – live on in continental families in a way that they do in comparatively few British ones.[...]

The EU’s unofficial mission is to protect this comfortable, once-traumatised European garden from outside threats. When Helmut Kohl confronted sceptics in his Christian Democrat Union with the case for the euro, notes Alexander Clarkson of King’s College London, he did so primarily not with talk of peace but talk of preserving the European way of life. Today the EU is most effective when it shields its citizens from over-mighty technology firms, negotiates trade deals in a world where its population is proportionately smaller every year, and ventures tentative steps towards common defence forces independent from those of Donald Trump’s America. It lures its neighbours not with soaring rhetoric but with the promise of the quiet life for their citizens. Macedonia’s recent decision to change its name, ending a dispute with Greece and launching itself on the track to EU membership, was ultimately motivated by the desire to join the sheltered European garden.[...]

A tour of European capitals illustrates this truth. The Dutch may sympathise with the Brits but their prime minister also uses Britain as a cautionary tale of a country whose citizens have lost their appetite for “a good life for themselves and those around them”. Poles may want to bend the rules of the Irish backstop to preserve the quiet life for their immigrant compatriots in Britain but only so far, for Warsaw knows the pain of European fragmentation better than most. Athens and Brussels dislike each other but remain committed to Greek membership of the EU because both fear a destabilising rupture. Macron may rail against Brexit but his real target is Marine Le Pen. Germans may be torn between seeking to stop Brexit by backing a second referendum and managing a messy British exit to get it over with but, like their fellow Europeans, their utmost concern is stability.

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The New Yorker: How Trump Made War on Angela Merkel and Europe

European leaders now worry that Trump’s illiberal aims go well beyond his insistent demands on Merkel to pay more for nato and stop shipping so many cars to the U.S. “Many European leaders have told me that they are convinced that President Trump is determined to destroy the E.U.,” a former senior U.S. official told me. Trump has begun publicly calling the E.U. a “foe,” and promoting the resurgence of nationalism, which Macron and Merkel see as a direct threat. Trump’s Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, in a recent speech at the German Marshall Fund in Brussels, attacked the United Nations, the E.U., the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund, and derided what he called Europe’s flawed vision of multilateralism as “an end to itself.” [...]

The foreign-policy establishment, in both Washington and Berlin, told Merkel and her advisers that Trump was sometimes unpredictable and volatile, but not an existential threat. He was ignorant, but would be constrained by his staff. He didn’t really mean what he said. One veteran of Republican Administrations recommended “strategic patience,” telling a senior German diplomat to ignore the tweets and focus on policy. Other Europeans received similar advice and came to similar conclusions. Rob Malley, a senior Obama adviser on Europe, who now heads the International Crisis Group, said, of the French, “Their view was that you shouldn’t take irreversible steps as the result of a reversible Presidency.” [...]

Russia figured heavily in the dinner conversation at the Adlon: Trump was threatening to abandon the Ukraine policy and embrace Putin. Obama’s lobbying that night to get Merkel to run for a fourth term was, I’ve been told by German sources, critical in her considerations. “I think the Chancellor listened very carefully to what [Obama] said,” a senior German official told me. As Rhodes recounts in his memoir, “The World as It Is,” when Obama left the country, on November 18th, he thought he saw a tear rolling down Merkel’s face as she said goodbye. Obama turned to Rhodes and said, “Angela, she’s all alone.” Two days later, Merkel announced that, because of “insecure times,” she was running again. However, she cautioned those who hoped that she would be a foil for Trump and the Trump-friendly forces throughout Europe: “No person alone, not even the most experienced, can turn things to good in Germany, Europe, and the world, especially not a Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.” [...]

The irony is that, for all of Trump’s bluster and threats, the Trump Administration’s positions on these issues, aside from the Iran nuclear deal, are consistent with his predecessor’s. Obama also pushed for greater European defense spending, set in motion nato troop increases in Eastern Europe after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and objected to Nord Stream 2. Many German leaders oppose the pipeline project, too, and favor more defense spending. Where Trump is different is in how far he is willing to push his allies to accomplish long-standing American priorities, not to mention his public denunciations, abrupt policy shifts, and willingness to insult his allies. This behavior has thoroughly alienated Germans, who are sharply divided on many issues but united in their dislike of Trump and their resistance to just about anything he champions. The Pew Global Attitudes survey this year found that only ten per cent of Germans had a favorable view of Trump. When Trump “tells the German public on television that you owe me, the German public says, ‘We owe this guy? Don’t pay him a dime,’ ” Wolfgang Ischinger, the former Ambassador, told me. “It makes it harder to agree on anything. It is poisonous for the relationship.”

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Politico: Mark Rutte’s leaden touch

As insiders fret that Rutte’s third term will not last very long, speculation has begun as to whether the prime minister’s future ultimately lies in Brussels. This is not particularly good news for Rutte. History shows that early speculation about a Dutch leader’s move to Brussels is unlikely to translate into reality. What it does do, however, is underscore the idea that his best days in national politics are over.[...]

But working with Rutte has a downside: Any party that joins forces with him gets pummelled by voters. After the center-left Labor Party suffered a historic shellacking in the 2017 election, having worked with Rutte for five years, the conventional wisdom in Dutch politics was cemented: Joining a Rutte administration is close to political suicide.[...]

Things took a turn for the worse earlier this month when Unilever announced it had decided against moving its headquarters to Rotterdam. Rutte had suffered intense blowback for a proposed tax break for companies like Royal Dutch Shell and Unilever and had defended the measure by arguing it could lure the firms into establishing permanent headquarters in the country. Rutte was forced to withdraw the proposal, and two close allies in his previous administrations, the far right Party of Freedom (PVV) and social democrats (PvdA), both supported a vote of no confidence against Rutte last week.[...]

Rutte has changed his tone about Brussels — from a fierce critic of EU bureaucracy five years ago to an avid admirer of the European project. But his new foe on the far-right, rising star Thierry Baudet, routinely attacks him for angling for a top EU job. So Rutte has been forced to repeatedly deny any such ambition for more than a year.

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Politico: Macron and Rutte form liberal dream team

Rutte’s People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) is a core member of ALDE, which is the predominant liberal political family in Europe, and the Dutch prime minister has emerged as a centrist, liberal powerbroker on the European Council in the wake of Brexit. Macron upended the French political establishment by catapulting into the Elysée Palace as an independent in 2017. [...]

Operatives who described the plan said the parties in the coalition would campaign around a common platform, but that the partnership would formally take effect after next May’s European Parliament election. They hope they will do well enough to form the second-largest group in the Parliament — giving its leaders additional leverage in both the backroom negotiations over filling EU leadership posts and stronger numbers in the vote for Commission president, which will require a majority in the 705-seat Parliament. The center-right European People’s Party is expected to win the most seats in the next chamber. [...]

The partnership between ALDE and En Marche would overcome this by potentially forcing him out after the election. It would also be boosted by an alliance that Macron has forged with the Spanish liberal leader Albert Rivera and his party Ciudadanos. And it would present a bold, new challenge to the long-dominant, center-right European People’s Party (EPP), which currently holds the most seats in the Parliament and all three of the EU’s top jobs — the presidencies of the Commission, the Council and the Parliament. [...]

ALDE has struggled in part because its membership includes an extremely broad political spectrum, from ardent federalists like Verhofstadt, to Euroskeptic populists like Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš. ALDE’s eight Spanish MEPs alone represent four different national parties, as well as include three independents.

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Reuters: Three liberal prophets of doom

In the past several months, three leading liberal figures, each with international reputations, have given speeches in defense of liberal values and practice. Two of these – the billionaire financier and philanthropist George Soros and the French President Emmanuel Macron – have addressed the EU’s present travails and likely future. The third, former U.S. President Barack Obama, as befitted a former leader of the still-hegemonic world power, addressed more global issues. [...]

Europe’s existential danger is “no longer a figure of speech… it is the harsh reality,” said Soros. A passion for austerity had turned the rich countries (especially Germany) into creditors, and the struggling (notably Greece and Italy) into debtors – creating “a relationship that is neither voluntary nor equal.” The Hungarian-born Soros, reviled in his birth country by the government led by rightwing nationalist Viktor Orban (who, in his student days, benefited from Soros’ largesse) is rendered especially pessimistic by the drift towards authoritarian rule of the Central European states, particularly Hungary and Poland. It’s a drift which runs directly counter to Soros’ earlier optimism that, with some assistance, the peoples of the former communist states of Central Europe could become citizens with the same civic and democratic rights as in the Western European countries. [...]

The urgency of Macron’s conviction that the Union must integrate or disintegrate has found few enthusiastic takers in the EU. Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte has said d that the EU could fulfil its basic promise only if individual member states are strong and able to maintain their own identity. In Germany, where voters are concerned about issues like the cost of Macron’s euro zone reform plans, Chancellor Angela Merkel – much damaged by her party’s loss of support in this year’s elections and a quarrel with her main coalition partner, the Christian Social Union – has to be even more cautious than usual. [...]

Poverty, discrimination, violence all remain, sometimes growing – as does inequality. Elites are more closed off from the mass of the people; solidarity in nations wilts; the reckless behavior which precipitated the 2008 banking crisis prompted spikes of mistrust in every kind of leadership – political, financial, corporate. Then there’s politics. “Unfortunately, too much of politics today seems to reject the very concept of objective truth,” said Obama. “People just make stuff up.” The former president did not mention the name of America’s current president, but few doubt that he was referring to Donald Trump when he mentioned “the utter loss of shame among political leaders, where they’re caught in a lie and they just double down and they lie some more.”

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Political Critique: Surfing the wave. How conservative populists hijack politics

Not every group mentioned shares the same agenda, but similarities exist that outline a common ideology. These Conservative populists (Conpops) resemble classical conservatives in their belief that Society’s strength comes from its traditions which must be preserved. Conpops add to this a belief that establishment politicians have sold out to globalization and its actions the source of all the country’s ills. The solution is a return to traditionalism, accomplished by ethnic unity, restrictive immigration, strict gender and religious hierarchies, and a reclamation of national sovereignty. These ideas and Conpops’ aversion to liberal democratic norms places them somewhere between center-right parties and far-right Fascists. [...]

Conpopism is popular because it offers an authentic vision for the future. Voters have so little trust in politicians that someone who has firmly held beliefs simply stands out. But either you’re sincere or you’re not and surfers by definition aren’t.  They can’t simply jump on hoping to hijack a movement. Voters will either reject them outright or punish them once they’ve shown their true colors. Prior to Brexit, Boris Johnson was known as a slightly left-of-Conservatism politician who was a Conservative Party loyalist. He, however, saw an opportunity for self-promotion and took a prominent role in the pro-Brexit campaign. Since the Brexit Referendum, however, the public has turned and Johnson’s approval ratings have sunk like a lead weight thrown from Big Ben. The movement he hoped to appropriate has thrown him out as an establishment interloper and he has been left without a leg to stand on. [...]

They haven’t. Instead, mainstream parties have attempted to cling to power by either surfing or offering the same stale politics. In the Dutch 2017 General Election, Geert Wilders and his Party for Freedom (PVV) were only narrowly defeated by Prime Minister Mark Rutte. But Rutte pivoted hard during the election, even taking out enormous newspaper ads, calling for immigrants who “don’t respect Dutch customs” to leave the country. Some infractions? Homophobia, Sexism, and calling Dutch people racist. By winning using a strategy that blames immigrants for intangible ills in society, Rutte placed himself in a horrible bind. Either he follows through, forcing immigrants to leavE the Netherlands and the Dutch economy implodes (Immigrants are 11% of the population) or Rutte completely backtracks and loses all credibility. Meanwhile Wilders’s ideas have been completely normalized and his party has secured itself as the second largest in the country. Other European parties should take a long look at the Netherlands before adopting similar rhetoric.

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Politico: Dutch prime minister says more EU integration ‘not the answer’

The Dutch prime minister — who was speaking at the annual congress of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) — did not name Macron in the speech but at one point indicated his skepticism for the idea of “democratic conventions” that was “coming from France.”

Taken together, the speech is a strong rebuff to Macron’s ambitious and detailed reform agenda, which includes a wide range of policies from introducing a new class of transnational MEPs to the creation of a common budget for the Eurozone. [...]

Rutte, who is a liberal like Macron, added that pushing for more European integration cannot be a goal in itself. “Integration for integration’s sake will only harm public support for the European Union. So before we develop new policy, before we set up new agencies, before we think up new rules and regulations, we need to ask ourselves: what problem does this truly solve?” [...]

Rutte also took a sideswipe at the EU’s conservative European People’s Party. He said he didn’t understand why the party of Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán was still a member of the mainstream political grouping despite his populist policies. “Why is he still a member of the EPP?,” Rutte asked, adding that it was strange that Orban participated in pre-summit meetings with his EPP colleagues.

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Social Europe: Dutch Aggression

On September 26, Emmanuel Macron made a speech on new a vision for Europe. He spoke about the need to harmonize corporate taxes in the European Union, tackle tax avoidance and protect our welfare states. Just one day later President Trump gave a speech on exactly the same topic, albeit with an entirely different message. He vowed to lower corporate taxation for American companies by a whopping 15 percentage points.

Unintentionally, the two speeches give an excellent illustration of the dilemma that countries, and especially EU countries, face. This is a result of a new logic in corporate taxation, in which 20th century tax systems designed for brick-and-mortar industries are no match for the 21st century developments of digitalization and globalisation. The choice is clear. Either countries work together to tackle the ingenious tax avoidance schemes ran by multinationals, or they participate in the cynical race towards the lowest tax rate. [...]

In that sense, the Netherlands sets a bad example, taking a step back from earlier solutions, and thus genuflecting towards Trump’s bogus solution. The new four-party cabinet revealed its plan to reduce the corporate tax rate incrementally from 25 to 21 percent, and even from 20 to 16 percent for the first €200K of profit. Besides that, a 15 percent tax on shareholder dividends will be removed. Any reference to an EU-coordinated effort to modernise the corporate taxation system is missing. All that said, one good thing is that the incoming government wants to introduce a source tax on royalties and interest to counter the Netherlands’ reputation for facilitating letterbox companies.

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Politico: O Dutch government, where art thou?

The center-right People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) of incumbent Prime Minister Mark Rutte was the biggest party in the election, followed by the far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) of Geert Wilders. [...]

The average time taken to form a governing coalition in modern Dutch history is 87.6 days, with the shortest gap being just 31 days in 1948. Still, negotiators are nowhere near the record held by neighboring Belgium, where parties needed 541 days to agree on a federal government after the 2010 election — a world record.

Discussions are ongoing between the VVD, CDA, D66 and the conservative Christian Union, with Dutch media reporting that a deal could be close. Even if they reach an agreement next week, it’s likely to take another couple of weeks before they can be sworn in. Here’s a look at what’s happened during the past 208 days.

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Politico: Juncker’s one-president proposal draws few cheers

Given that Juncker’s proposal at a minimum would require the unanimous support of EU leaders, the initial reaction to his call to combine the two top jobs in Brussels suggested it would not fly anytime soon.

Speaking to German public broadcaster ARD after his address, Juncker acknowledged that he was “not expecting to clap their house in excitement” about the proposal. [...]

Tusk, a former Polish prime minister, and his sole predecessor, former Belgian premier Herman Van Rompuy, have fashioned the job into a neutral advocate for national leaders in Brussels, simultaneously a defender of European integration and national sovereignty and sensibilities.

The possibility that the Council would vote to eliminate that role seemed far-fetched, and several EU officials and diplomats suggested Juncker was playing to his audience in the European Parliament, where federalist sentiment is strong. Some said Juncker was savvy enough to realize it was an old and unrealistic idea, and he put it forward primarily to stir debate. [...]

Some European officials said they were more perplexed by Juncker’s decision to push the idea than they were opposed to it. One senior diplomat called it “a deliberate provocation to stir up debate” on an issue that has long been limited to “theoretical discussions.”

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Social Europe: How Populists Win When They Lose

Less obvious, but more pernicious, is the insinuation that citizens who do not share the populist’s conception of “the people,” and hence do not support the populist politically, are less than legitimate members of the polity. Think of Farage claiming that Brexit was a “victory for real people.” The 48% who voted to remain in the European Union, he implied, might not be part of the “real” British people at all. [...]

Populism is thus a form of anti-pluralism. To say that “the people” are rising up against “the establishment” is not a neutral description of political developments; it’s actually populist language. It accepts the populists’ claim that they authentically represent “the people.” [...]

The image of an irresistible populist “wave” was always misleading. Farage did not bring about Brexit all by himself. He needed the help of established Conservatives such as Boris Johnson and Michael Gove (both now serve in Prime Minister Theresa May’s post-election cabinet). Likewise Trump was not elected as the candidate of a grassroots protest movement of the white working class; he represented a very established party and received the blessing of Republican heavyweights such as Rudy Giuliani and Newt Gingrich.

In fact, if anything, Trump’s election was a confirmation of how partisan US politics has become: 90% of self-identified Republicans voted for Trump; they clearly could not fathom voting for a Democrat, even if many Republicans in surveys registered deep doubts about the party’s nominee. To this day, no right-wing populist has come to power in Western Europe or North America without the collaboration of established conservative elites. [...]

The idea that the Dutch and the French elections heralded the arrival of a “post-populist moment” fails to appreciate the distinction between populism as a claim to a moral monopoly on representation and the policies – think of restrictions on immigration – typically promoted by populists as part of their exclusionary identity politics. For example, Wilders, who really is a populist, did less well than expected in March. But his main competitor, center-right Prime Minister Mark Rutte, adopted Wilders-like rhetoric – telling immigrants that they should leave the country if they do not want to behave “normally.”

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