Time to stand up to the Far-Right, but how? Read on...
Donald Trump’s victory in the recent US election was a major setback for mainstream politics. Further losses for the mainstream can expected as Far-Right politicians look set to rack up wins in upcoming elections in France and Germany.
It has never been more urgent to stop the fascist tide and inject fresh ideas into the political Centre and Left.
Sadly, mainstream politicians appears to be lost in the weeds as far as big new ideas are concerned. In fact, over the past few decades they have betrayed their core values chasing Far-Right ideas on asylum, taxation, and the provision of public services.
By now, it is clear the mainstream's adoption of Far-Right policies was a mistake. Ordinary voters, especially in the working class, who are traditional supporters of the Centre and the Left, feel abandoned by the mainstream. Many have shifted their allegiances to the Far-Right.
The loss of credibility with lower- and lower-middle income voters is very bad news for mainstream politicians. After all, in a type of politics where success boils down to who can be most right-wing the Far-Right will always win, because it is more ruthless in delivering right-wing policies than the mainstream will ever be.
Mainstream politics must break decisively with the policies of the Far-Right in order to have any chance of returning to power. It must define brand new and bold policies based on its own values, while at the same time maintaining relevance with voters.
The good news, in my opinion, is that mainstream politics can achieve these aims. By now, the problems in Western societies are so many and so dire that simply by recognising the issues and putting forward bold, but credible solutions the mainstream should be able to regain the initiative.
In this blog, I identify twelve issues where mainstream politics has been particularly weak, lacking ideas, vision, and leadership. All twelve issues - which I describe in detail below - are long-neglected issues of great importance voters. They. have been left unresolved for far too long due to rear-guard action from interest groups and political manipulation.
Dealing with these issues requires reform of how the mainstream conducts politics. It has to break decisively with the deceptive and corrupt style of politics to which we have become accustomed. Reform starts with the recognition that politicians are the most powerful people in the world, wherefore they must also be held to the highest standards of accountability and probity. To achieve this, we need explicit rewards and punishments for politicians commensurate with their power.
Specifically, I favour giving politicians big bonuses – think CEO bonus size – when they deliver on election promises. At the same time, I want to see severe penalties – fines or even prison terms – metered out to politicians, who make false promises and hoodwink voters.
Politicians must obviously be free to choose what they promise to voters, but once the promises are chosen they should be recorded on election ballots, which then become legally binding contracts according to which the politician's performance while in office is then assessed. An Ombudsman should be established with specific powers to do the overseeing and grant rewards/punishments according to the politician's performance vis-à-vis election promises (for much more detail on this proposal see here).
The big advantage of introducing sharper incentives for politicians to deliver on their election promises is that it will strongly encourage evidence-based policy-making, which will soon expose Far-Right populists for who they really are, namely self-serving, ineffective, and scapegoat-peddling charlatans.
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Here is my list of twelve intractable and unresolved policy issues and my proposals for how to resolve them:
1. Form a European Defence Alliance. It is always insightful to speak to people from developing countries, because they rarely share the blind deference Europeans have for the United States. Unlike Europeans, many people from developing countries have painful personal experiences of US-sponsored wars, invasions, and coups, especially in the Cold War period, but also more recently in the Middle East.
Europeans are now, for the first time since World War II, having to come to terms with a less-than-benign United States. Even before he assumed office, Donald Trump threatened to use military force to gain control of Canada, Panama, and Greenland, which, to many Canadians and Danes was genuinely shocking. After all, both countries are founding members of NATO, a US-led defence alliance established specifically to prevent naked aggression by stronger states against weaker ones. Canada, Denmark, and other NATO member states have suddenly been exposed as woefully unprepared for risks emanating from the United States.
Take the case of Denmark, co-governor of Greenland. All Denmark’s systems of defence, banking, finance, commerce, energy, and foreign policy rely on the United States as a friendly partner. Most of these systems would collapse instantly without explicit US coalescence. Strategists in the Danish government never even considered the possibility that such extreme dependence on the United States could pose a risk.
Of course, this problem is not just confined to Denmark. Canada and most EU member states, and indeed many other countries around the world, have made the similar mistakes in basing their security and prosperity on the assumption of a benign USA.
So far, there has only been deafening silence on the matter from European nations, who are probably in still in denial or desperately trying to come up with ways to not look like complete morons in the public eye.
My view is that this shambles actually presents an opportunity for mainstream politicians, who should now push strongly for a European defence alliance to replace NATO. The European defence alliance should coordinate Europe’s substantial military assets and defence strategies to enable Europe to defend itself not only against further Russian aggression, but also against whatever moronic schemes Trump concocts, such as annexing Greenland.
To ensure the defence alliance’s effectiveness, it should initially be established outside the framework of the European Union (EU) until such a time the EU has reformed its stifling unanimity rules, which currently render timely decision-making impossible. Further down the road, once EU has replaced its unanimity rules with majority voting the responsibility for foreign and defence policy should migrate from individual EU nation states to the EU at which point the defence alliance can be subsumed within the broader EU governance framework.
2. Break Ties With The Israeli Terror State. For many people, even those who have been highly critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in the past, Israel was the revelation of 2024. Due to its atrocities in Gaza, Israel has now placed itself firmly among the world’s most evil and depraved regimes. Genocidal and immoral, Netanyahu’s Israel has displayed a complete lack of even the most basic civility and human compassion in Gaza, Lebanon, and other parts of the Middle East.
My view of Israel – which is no doubt shared by countless others – has been forever and radically altered. While Israel’s treatment of Palestinians over many decades has been considerably worse than anything Apartheid ever inflicted on non-whites in South Africa, the deliberate, systematic, and extreme savagery perpetrated the Israeli Defence Forces against Palestinian civilians – including women and children – in relentless and repeated attacks on civilian targets in Gaza over the past year has truly redefined the term ‘atrocity’.
The Lancet, a credible medical journal, puts the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza at more than 64,000 of which 60% are women, children, and men over the age of 65 (see here). This means that Israel has murdered more than 35 Palestinians for every Israeli killed in the initial Hamas attack, undermining any claims of proportionality. Additionally, the number of injured must be running into the hundreds of thousands. More than 300,000 Palestinians are homeless. Some 80% of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed.
The most obvious comparison of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians in Gaza is the Warsaw Ghetto. Public demands by Zionists within the Israeli government for annexation of parts of Gaza, Syria, and Lebanon have direct parallels with Hitler’s demand for German ‘Lebensraum’ in Eastern Europe. Not since Serbia’s massacre of Muslims in Bosnia and Franco’s mass-killing of democrats in Spain in the 1930s has Europe experienced such bestiality on its borders.
And yet, Western politicians across the political spectrum have spectacularly failed to act. Many, in fact, have overtly supported Israel. This must now change. The gruesome facts from Gaza cannot be ignored. Polls show voters recognise Israel’s barbarism and are prepared to shift their support to parties that apply humanitarian principles equally to all perpetrators of human rights abuses. A re-energised political mainstream should pledge support for - and work with - the International Criminal Court to bring Israel's war criminals (and war criminals from other terror states) to justice.
3. Adopt A Harder Stance Against Fascism. Fascists have assumed power in the United States and in several European nations. The Far-Right is likely to make further gains in Germany and France in the coming months, as noted in the introduction. Yet, the mainstream political opposition to the Far-Right has been surprisingly muted, including an odd reluctance to use the term ‘fascism’ to describe Trump's policies even as Elon Musk openly makes Nazi salutes at the President's inauguration.
In my view, it is wrong and extremely dangerous to placate fascists. Fascists thrive on timidity. They do not respect human rights, democracy, or the rule of law. They stop at nothing in their desire to accumulate power. They target the most vulnerable to gain easy victories, then move on to the next-most vulnerable targets, gaining strength with each victory until eventually they crush all opposition.
Unless they are stopped, that is.
Yet, so far democrats in most Western countries have displayed a complete lack of conviction, vision, persuasive leadership, and strategies to counter the Far-Right. This timidity may owe something to the fact that many voters in the West are too young to have personal experience of fascism, but now is the time to take the gloves off.
Mainstream politics must state urgently, clearly, and loudly that Far-Right movements today pose far greater threats to peace, stability, and prosperity in Western democracies than terrorism, 'wokeness', Islam, China, immigration, or any of the other 'threats' emphasised by the Far-Right.
At stake is not just who regains the political initiative. Fighting fascism is a question of survival. Unless the Far-Right is stopped, it is only a question of time before the fascists attack the very fabric of democracy itself. Their ultimately aim is to shift as much power to the Executive from the Legislature and the Judiciary as possible. Once this shift has been accomplished, they will employ the full force of the State to crush the remaining democratic opposition. If things are allowed to get that far, the only way back to democracy will be through violent and bloody resistance.
To avoid this, we must act now.
4. Get Real About China. To understand China's role in the world today, it is useful to start with a bit of economic history.
Western economies and the United States benefitted hugely from engaging constructively with China in the decades following Chairman Deng Xiaoping’s market-based reforms in the 1980s. The West obtained low-cost and increasingly sophisticated consumer and intermediate goods from China, which helped to usher in an extraordinary period of low inflation and rising real wages in the West. The West was able to maintain full employment during this period as the productivity of Western workers rose in line with lower-productivity jobs moving to Asia.
In exchange for these benefits, China was able to grow rapidly and accumulate trade surpluses, which were recycled in Western financial markets, pushing up demand for stocks and bonds and driving down the cost of borrowing. This supported investment, consumption, and growth.
During its spectacular rise, which, among other things, led to the largest decline in global poverty in world history, China’s influence in the world was overwhelmingly economic and mostly benign. China took the lead in environmental matters and engaged constructively with the West to solve sensitive political issues, such as the handover of Hong Kong.
Sadly, this mutually beneficial state of affairs ended abruptly in Donald Trump's first term, when Trump decided to use China as an external scapegoat for rising domestic US political discontent. Soon, in their usual sycophantic manner, Western governments jumped on Trump's anti-China bandwagon, so as not to be caught on the wrong side of their main ally.
Today, every Western government, including the European Union, maintains an overly anti-China stance. The accompanying anti-China rhetoric has been so strong and pervasive that most voters in the West have swallowed Sinophobia hook, line, and sinker.
In turn, this hostility has forced China into a somewhat more defensive stance towards the West, which, unless reversed, will eventually have serious negative consequences for our growth, inflation rates, and financial conditions. The hostility has also pushed China into the arms of Russia, which is clearly diametrically opposite to European interests.
We need to recognise that anti-China policies today mostly serve the interests of Right-wing politicians. They are contrary to the interest of the majority of voters in the West for whom China simply does not pose a serious threat. Unlike Russia or the West, China has never harboured serious global imperialistic or military ambitions against the West. China's economic reach has been overwhelmingly positive, especially for the poorest economies, who are still to this day largely excluded from Western financial markets. A new political mainstream should place a far more mature, pragmatic, and constructive approach to China at the very centre of its foreign policy agenda.
5. Get Real About Russia. To many people who grew up during the Cold War, it is still a bit surreal to observe the formation of political alliances between Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin and Far-Right politicians in Europe and the United States, such as Donald Trump, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Slovakia’s Peter Pellegrini, and Georgia’s Mikheil Kavelashvili.
Yet, while such alliances would have made no sense during the Cold War, they make perfect sense today. There is no longer a big ideological divide between Russia and the West in terms of economic systems. Russia is no longer a communist country; it is as capitalist as any Western power. What aligns Russia so closely with the United States, Hungary, Slovakia, and Georgia is that Russia is led by a fascist.
Yet, the vast majority of voters in the West rightly do not trust Putin and side strongly with Ukraine in its existential war against Russia. A new revitalised political mainstream should listen to these sentiments and act accordingly. It should be unequivocal in its opposition to Russia and it should back Ukraine to a far greater extent than we have seen so far. Europe needs to stand up for Europe.
In fact, I am not aware of a clearer case in modern times when mainstream politicians can demonstrate both moral leadership and combat-willingness, while at the same time remain on the right side of popular opinion.
A new strategy by the political mainstream to firmly counter Russia should not only take Russia on on the battle field, but also target Russian energy exports, including banning insurance cover for the Russian shadow fleet of tankers and cutting out imports of Russian gas and oil arriving via third countries. Needless to say, the campaign against Russia should go hand in hand with a much more decisive Europe-wide effort to invest in renewable energy.
6. Act On Public Inquiries. This proposal is particularly relevant in the British context. Britain is obsessed with public inquiries, which are statutory or non-statutory investigations established by government ministers to investigate specific issues, controversial events, or policy proposals. British politicians 'sell' public inquiries to the public in order to give the appearance of taking action, but in reality the public inquiries do exactly the opposite. They have become vehicles for politicians to kick sensitive issues into the long grass in the hope they will get lost and never give rise to real change.
To understand this twisted dynamic, remember that almost all British politicians hail from the same class. Britain is effectively run by two political parties, which take turns at running the country. Due to the clever workings of the first-past-the-post electoral system, new parties never manage to shatter the political duopoly, ensuring zero political renewal. No British politician from either of the two big political parties will ever change this system unless forced to do so.
If only life would stop throwing up nasty surprises. Britain regularly gets rocked by major political crises as its inept and corrupt politicians engage in one outrage after another, be it gross neglect, abuse of power, or outright criminal activity. Each time a political outrage takes place voters understandably get very angry in response to which politicians feel compelled to appear to act.
Enter public inquiries.
Whether the outrage is mad cow disease, deceptive dossiers to justify illegal wars abroad, mishandling of the covid-19 response, abuse at the post office, illegal killings by British forces in Afghanistan, gross breaches of press standards, child sexual abuse in churches and in public institutions like the BBC, infected NHS blood, or catastrophic failures in building standards (the Grenfell fire), politicians can be relied upon to immediately put forward calls for a public inquiry. The idea is to convey the impression that someone will finally get to the truth, that the culprits will be identified and punished, that remedies will be put in place, and that justice will be served.
In reality, none of that ever happens. Public inquiries take years to complete and by the time the conclusions are ready the issue has usually been forgotten or lost its urgency, enabling sitting governments to ignore the findings and simply do nothing.
In a particularly ludicrous example, a major brouhaha recently erupted over so-called grooming gangs (groups of men who sexually abuse young or under-age girls). Elon Musk, yes, the racist Far-Right billionaire, decided to stir the hornet’s nest of British politics by bringing up abuses carried out by Pakistani gangs in particular (there are plenty of white abusers too, but they did not suit Musk’s purposes). It just so happens that a full national inquiry has just been completed on the subject of grooming gangs, complete with policy recommendations, so one could be forgiven for thinking action was imminent. No, Sir! What did the British government do? Rather than implementing any of the recommendations from the newly-minted national inquiry, it opted instead to kick the ball further into the long grass by announcing, yes, you guessed it, a new set of public inquiries!
In Britain, public inquiries are a joke. British voters are sick of abuses that are never addressed. An obvious low-hanging fruit for a new British mainstream is surely to tie its hands to ensure it commits to implementing recommendations from public inquiries.
7. End The Outsized and Damaging Influence of European Agriculture. Agriculture is the single largest source of environmental damage in Europe. In Denmark, for example, agricultural practices have destroyed all marine life in most fjords due to run-off chemicals from farms. In fact, the problem has become so pronounced that the word “fedtemøg’ – colloquial for the mass of dead algae rotting on Danish beaches – was chosen as Word Of The Year in 2024.
As if the destruction of waterways is not bad enough, Danish farming is also responsible for some of the cruellest animal husbandry practices anywhere in the world. There are thirteen million pigs in Denmark, twice the number of people, yet you never see a pig, because these intelligent animals are kept inside massive breeding factories in concentration camp-like conditions. The same is true for chickens and other animals in industrial farming.
Mink farming, which was abolished during the Covid-19 pandemic, is now staging a comeback too. Mink are kept in cages so tiny the animals go mad. All day long they run up and down the walls of their tiny prisons until they are finally put out of their misery to supply pelts for fancy coats.
Problems of this kind are by no means confined to Denmark; they are common right across Europe and the United States.
In my opinion, it is now time for the political mainstream to grasp the agriculture nettle. Most people care about animal welfare. Most people strongly object to how farming destroys the environment. The main objection to reforming farming is that it pushes up food prices, but this is actually incorrect, because Europeans pay far more for farm products than the cash they hand at the till in the supermarket. They also pay through their taxes, you see. Farming subsidies account for a whopping 38% of the total European Union budget. These subsides are money taken directly out of the pockets of European consumers to provide life support for an industry that ought to be subject to conventional market forces, just like any other industry.
The rejuvenated political mainstream should be open and honest about the state of European farming and stand up to the farming lobby. We owe it not only to ourselves as consumers, but also to the welfare of the animals, to the health of the environment, and to future generations.
8. Maintain A Healthy Scepticism About Artificial Intelligence (AI). Politicians across the political spectrum are falling over themselves trying to appear as favourable towards AI as possible. 'AI has limitless potential', they say, and 'governments must invest accordingly'.
Yet, contrary to popular perceptions the prospect of AI technology is heavily constrained by data availability, which limits AI's usefulness in many areas. AI’s greatest potential is in the relatively narrow realm of consumer retail and online entertainment, where a lot of data is generated every day.
In more specialised sectors, AI faces major hurdles due to lack of data availability. Many of these specialised areas are precisely those in which the government is particularly important, such as fundamental research.
My view is that the hype surrounding AI has already pushed the valuation of AI firms into a bubble-territory (see here), which is bound to result in grave losses for investors in the not-so-distant future. So be it, but it is important to make sure that the government does not fall into the same trap.
A new political mainstream should take a big-picture view of the public sector’s role in society and make sure the government's core functions are properly funded and services delivered with the greatest possible cost-efficiency. AI can help in the latter by increasing inclusively and efficiency, but AI can not replace basic provisions themselves, such as primary healthcare, basic education, road-building, sewage systems, the Judiciary, and basic policing.
9. Be Honest About Immigration – And Why We Need It. Donald Trump’s recent executive order to suspend asylum applications to the United States along with his pledge to throw out millions of unregistered immigrants will, in time, prove a to be a major economic own goal. Europe’s current anti-immigration stance will also backfire. The problem is that the United States and the European Union are both rapidly ageing societies.
The truth is that we need immigrants. Badly. Projections for the ratio of retirees to people of working age – known as the dependency ratio – is moving up sharply in all Western economies and beyond. A recent study – see a discussion here – shows that the European Union alone will need…wait for it…45 million additional workers by 2040 just to maintain current living standards!
Politicians are not honest about this fact. Instead, they push the demographic time bomb under the carpet and peddle anti-immigration policies in order to curry favour with the most ignoble, racist, and xenophobic voters.
The good news is that immigrants can easily be acquired. Supply is clearly not the problem, because Latin America and Africa are replete with potential migrants, who would love to offer their services in the United States and Europe. Nor is the price of foreign labour a problem, because poor people will work for far lower wages than locals. Even unemployment is not a problem, because both Europe and US operate at or near full employment.
In short, there is no reason for not getting on with increasing the number of immigrants, other than incurring the wrath of racists.
A new political mainstream must rise above pathetic cohorts of xenophobic voters. It must level with people about the need for foreign labour, explain the benefits of immigration, and put in place mechanisms to overcome whatever tensions inevitably arise in the context of bringing populations from different cultural backgrounds together (for more on the dark side of culture see here).
10. Counter Excessive Individualism. Gen Z, the people born between 1997 and 2014, are now approaching or already in their twenties. They grew up with unprecedented prosperity and highly personalised social media. This combination of influences has given them two somewhat paradoxical characteristics. One is far greater tolerance than any previous generation. The other is far greater selfishness and individualism than any generation before them.
In fact, I would argue that the individualisation of Gen Zers has become so extreme that the generation has lost its ability to act as a group. Critical issues, such as species depletion, climate change, inequality, and the rise of fascism, which clearly have or will have a major impacts on the lives of the Gen Zers have so far completely failed to elecit a collective response. Greta Thunberg is the only member of the Gen Z cohort to have come close to mobilising a mass-movement, but even she now seems to have lost appeal.
There are consequences when generations fail to defend their interests. Brexit is a great example. Britain basically ended up leaving the EU because young Brits could not be bothered to vote! Yet, young Brits are by far the biggest losers from Brexit.
The young have similarly failed to manifest their interests in the two elections that put Donald Trump into the presidency in the United States. As a result, young Americans will now be lorded-over by a reactionary, degenerate Donald Trump, whose values are diametrically opposed to their own.
In my opinion, the political mainstream must light a fire under the young to mobilise their cohort. The reward for doing so will not only be a return to power, but also broader positive changes in society as the progressive values of so many of the young find expression in actual policy. In turn, this may actually induce greater political engagement from Gen Z too. For further discussion of prospects for collective action by the young, see here.
11. End the Faustian Bargain And Confront Monopolies. I have covered these topics at some length elsewhere, so let me be brief. Income inequality has increased sharply across Western economies in recent decades, with the gulf between the very wealthiest and the very poorest widening the most. Income inequality is likely to get even worse under Trump and his billionaire backers.
Addressing income inequality should be front and centre in any new political strategy by the mainstream. The cause of rising income inequality is not immigration. Instead, it has two other very different and distinct causes. One is the failure on the part of regulators to address monopoly power in the tech sector (see here). The other is the so-called Faustian Bargain in Western societies, which involved cutting public services to pay for tax cuts to the rich, corporates, and parts of the middle class (see here).
A new mainstream political agenda must address both these problems. It must directly counter the lie that the plight of the poor is due to China, asylum seekers, and ‘the woke’. It must reverse tax cuts for the rich and spend more on social safety nets. It must apply already existing legislation to break up tech monopolies and apply available new technologies to foster competition in online services (see here).
There will be huge societal benefits from reducing inequality. A society with more equal opportunities not only ushers in more harmony, it also has better economic performance as everyone in society can realise their true potential. Indeed, this was the lesson of the 1960s, whose economic success was directly attributable to progressive spending policies implemented after World War 2.
12. Legalise Drugs and Sex Work. There are still major blind spots in most Western societies and many developing countries as far as very vulnerable groups are concerned. Two of them are drug addicts and sex workers. With some notable exceptions, the markets for sexual services and drugs are still characterised by high levels of criminality and great asymmetry. By 'asymmetry', I refer to the fact that these industries typically have extremely vulnerable people in the downstream sections (addicts and sex workers), while the upstream parts are controlled by extremely powerful, violent, and ruthless organisations (typically large multinational mafia-style drug cartels and organised people-traffickers).
Western societies have made advances in how we treat women and homosexuals, but our treatment of drug addicts and sex workers remains woeful. Drug taking and sex work are still proscribed activities in many countries and we still do not face up to the fact that many drug addicts and sex workers are extremely vulnerable people. Addiction is an illness. Sex work often involves trafficked men and women.
A new mainstream politics must raise awareness of these problems. It must stand up for these people. It must oppose the classification of drug taking and prostitution as illegal activities, not least because we know prohibition simply does not work.
Sex work will happen regardless of any laws, so prohibition only drives activity underground, which criminalises some very vulnerable people and increases the business potential of human trafficking syndicates. Criminalisation of drug addiction is hugely costly for society, because drug addicts are forced to steal and rob multiple times a day in order to feed their habits.
The best policy is for the state to provide drugs to addicts as well as treatment and support, while sex workers must be given all the same rights and protections as workers in any other industry. By legalising and regulating drugs and sex work, we can not only protect the vulnerable participants in these industries, but also tax them to make sure they contribute to society instead of criminal gangs.
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In addition to these specific proposals, I would like to see a downgrading of ideological baggage and a greater focus on actual problems. Ultimately, the top priority of government is always to maintain stability, which is best done by looking after the weakest and the most vulnerable members of society. The well-to-do and businesses do not need government hand-outs. They can largely take care of themselves, so stop subsidising them directly or via tax cuts. Where there are those who seek to gain advantage at the expense of others, such as monopolies at home and dictators abroad, governments should use their formidable powers to clamp down.
Needless to say, governments need to be efficient and effective, which can only be achieved by altering the entire culture in politics in a more technocratic direction, along the lines I mentioned at the start.
Finally, a rejuvenated mainstream politics pushes for far greater international cooperation. The four biggest problems in the world today – cross-border migration, climate change, terrorism, or economic contagion – are global problems (see here). Since they cannot be solved by individual nation states, Europe needs to kick-start its further integration, bringing down barriers to the flow of capital and labour flowing across borders. Stop the trend towards nationalism (see here).
We work together – or we perish.
The End
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