Conservative populists must recognise the source of their power

2024 was the year that conservative populism went from being an irritant to a force. 2025 can be even better for them – if they recognise the source of and the limits to their power.

Conservative populism may be broadly described as a political movement that combines traditional centre-right voters with people from the working-class who used to support the centre-left. 

The specific appeals each populist leader or party makes will vary depending on the nation and the specific challenges it faces. Nevertheless, all leaders or parties recognised as being on the populist Right share this same demographic characteristic among their supporters.

This fact implies that they also share a common appeal, drawn from a common world view and a shared experience with the early 21st century. 

This shared experience and world view is the source of the populists’ power.

The 21st century has been defined by the repeated failures of the elites – centre-left through centre-right – that came to power in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The globalist, neoliberal economic order they imposed has been called “the Washington consensus”. Their consensus, however, extends well beyond economics.

This new philosophy – call it the “transatlantic consensus” – places its faith in the belief that the elimination of national borders will bring peace, prosperity, and harmony to the planet.

The economic element of this consensus rested on the idea that ever-expanding trade with non-Western, undeveloped nations would enrich all.

The geopolitical element rested on the idea that no new power would have the motive to oppose transatlantic hegemony. Trade’s riches would give them no cause to rebel, while contact with the hegemons would cause them to adopt Western ideals as their own.

The social element of this consensus held that this materialistic globalism would displace all prior faiths and belief systems, or at least minimise their salience and motivational power. All – whether former Communists, Hindus, Muslims, Christians, or Jews – would put their old gods aside to worship the new god that brought such bounty.

The drive to impose a global Green Deal encapsulates the consensus’s hubris. 

Every leader of a developing nation knows their path to wealth runs through cheap, plentiful energy. Yet that can only be obtained by burning fossil fuels, especially the inexpensive and massive deposits of coal that the earth provides.

Yet it is exactly that path that the high priests of the consensus seek to deny.

Conservative populists gain their power because each strand of this consensus has demonstrably failed.

Global trade has enriched the old undeveloped world, but at the expense of jobs and rising living standards for the developed world’s working-class.

Global economic interdependence has not brought world peace any more than the last burst in global trade at the end of the 19th Century prevented the national rivalries that gave rise to the First World War.

World peace is instead more threatened than at any time since 1989 precisely because trade has given formerly poor, and therefore pliant, nations the capacity to resist Western imposition.

This is most obviously the case with China, which is quickly becoming a global superpower to rival even the United States. 

But trade also empowers India, the Gulf States, Latin America, and Russia to push back.

Each uses the dependency that trade created to gain more global power for itself rather than kowtow to the West. Knowing that the West cannot and will not recolonize the world by force, it refuses to commit economic suicide by adopting the green standards the consensus pushes.

Each draws closer to another, through BRICS and other multi-lateral and bilateral arrangements.

Each also uses its new, albeit still limited, power to reproclaim their fidelity to some form of the very old ways of living that the consensus was meant to supersede.

Modi’s Hindu nationalism; Xi’s pursuit of Han Chinese supremacy; Putin’s attempt to recreate the Russian imperial realm – all are different expression of the same defiance. 

Radical Islam is perhaps only the violent tip of this very long spear. Russia’s nakedly nationalistic invasion of Ukraine is perhaps the most poignant.

The consensus’s thrust for economic and philosophic hegemony has enraged many in the West, too. 

Traditional Christians and Jews are outraged at the rapid displacement of their beliefs from the honoured places in society, and they are fearful as that displacement too often turns into tacit (“cancelling”) or active suppression.

Green policies don’t just prevent poor nations from climbing the economic ladder; they prevent many citizens such as farmers and autoworkers from thriving too.

The extreme adoption of “woke” policies that actively seek to make society conform to the consensus makers’ morality and philosophy enrages even some supporters – think J.K Rowling and Elon Musk – who still treasure free speech and expression.

Conservative populism rejects the atomistic materialism that underlies the consensus. It draws its sustenance from its revolt against this expansionist force.

Conservative populism always stands for the traditional in some form against the new. 

It always believes that peace is secured through respecting, not trying to supplant, national identities.

Conservative populism respects and honours those who revere their families more than their careers, believe society is more than a contract among consumers, and want the same chance to live dignified lives in earned comfort that their supposed betters have.

That is why it always resonates with the working-class and traditional conservatives. 

Giorgia Meloni spoke for all conservative populists when she said “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am a Christian! And you can’t take that away from me!”

Conservative populism speaks on behalf of the whole human being, body and soul. It rejects the notion that humanity is nothing more than a rational calculator of pleasure and advantage.

This fact is why its message resonates and grows with the consensus’ failure.

It nonetheless is still limited in its power to enact its vision.

Conservative populism is growing, but its adherents remain less than a majority almost everywhere.

This means that conservative populists must always make common cause with people who agree with them on some, but not all, matters.

Conservative populists are most empowered to do this when they reside in nations with majoritarian political systems. They can become the largest faction within a broad, right-leaning coalition and then use the stark choice majoritarian systems pose to push others to prefer them to their more consensus-supporting opponents.

That’s what Donald Trump has done in the United States and Meloni has done in Italy.

MAGA may dominate Republican Party primaries, but Trump needed conventional centre-right Republicans and working-class voters not yet converted to MAGAism to defeat Kamala Harris. America’s majoritarian political system forced them to choose – and they chose Trump.

Meloni’s Brothers of Italy regularly tops Italian polls, garnering close to 30 per cent support. But she rules because she is in coalition with other right-leaning forces including the less populist Forza Italia and We Moderates.

Trump and Meloni know that wielding power in a democracy requires compromise even as they seek to expand their populist support by continuing wherever possible their assault on the transatlantic consensus.

Conservative populists in most of Europe compete in political systems that are purely or primarily reliant on proportional representation. They cannot wield power with 30-40 percent of the voters behind them, as can Trump and Meloni.

This is what Geert Wilders’ PVV and Herbert Kickl’s FPO discovered when they finished first in their nations’ respective votes.

Winning 24 (PVV) and 29 (FPO) per cent does not give your party the right to rule. It merely forces other political entities to recognise that you must be dealt with.

Wilders’ decision to forego becoming Prime Minister in order to enter into a coalition government, and thereby prove to the Dutch that his party could be trusted, put the long-term interests of his movement above his ego.

Kickl’s decision to insist on his personal participation in a new government means the FPO is effectively shut out of power.

The fact that the FPO’s support has since risen to 35 per cent in polls does not change this. In a proportional system, a party will always need allies.

This is the problem facing France’s Marine Le Pen and her National Rally (RN) even though France does not have a proportional system. It and similar smaller parties clearly can win 35-40 per cent in a national election.

But that’s not enough because France employs a two-round majoritarian system. As long as the dwindling number of centre-right voters are more afraid of her than they are of a government dominated by Emmanuel Macron’s centrists, they will make common cause even with the far-left in the election’s second round to prevent her and RN from wielding power.

Thus, even Le Pen, who has painstakingly built her party by expelling many of its odious personalities (including her own father), must find a way to convince another ten per cent of the French to change their minds.

Rome was not built in a day, and neither are enduring political movements. Social Democratic parties took twenty to thirty years to go from their creation to their first tastes of power. It took another twenty – and the Great Depression and Second World War – to make them the 20th Century’s dominant political force.

Conservative populism really began to gain a foothold in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crash. Its rapid rise, then, is only slightly faster than that of the social democrats.

Patience and pride, not haste and despair, should guide populist souls this year.

The Eurocrats and Washington bureaucrats who vainly hold on to the consensus remind us of Talleyrand’s Bourbons, forgetting nothing and remembering nothing.

Their inability and unwillingness to adapt means they will continue to stumble and fail.

Their false human anthropology means they will continue to ignore the spiritual and communal elements of the human soul.

They cannot continue to rule if they continue to impoverish both the body and soul.

We can hope and pray that it will not take another global economic collapse or world war to hasten their end. But end it will, for they have been weighed in the balance by their fellow citizens and been found wanting.

And when that end happens, it will be conservative populists – the true heirs of Western democratic civilization – who will take their place.