2016 in review: is it left to Germany to save Europe?

As populism continues its rise across the continent alongside parties on the Right, and with national elections anticipated to bring further political shake-ups next year, Angela Merkel may cut an increasingly lonely figure.

Banners read ‘The working class always on the front line’ and ‘Jobs, not racism’ at a protest against Front National leader Marine Le Pen’s visit to Brussels in September 2015. Laurie Dieffembacq / AFPIEQ.Show less

Have you heard about World War Three? It’s the war in which Germany saves Europe from fascism. This bitter joke encapsulates everything that is going wrong in politics in Europe. In the course of the past year a fierce anti-establishment mood has gripped the continent, with centre parties eclipsed and socialists in many countries also in total disarray, opening the way to power for parties of the far right.

The kernel of truth in the joke is that Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has taken a brave – even quixotic – stand against the populism of Donald Trump. She told the United States president-elect that Germany would only work with him if he respects the “values of democracy, freedom and respect for the law and the dignity of man, independent of origin, skin colour, religion, gender, sexual orientation or political views”. Unfortunately these same values are becoming increasingly hard for leaders in Europe to uphold.

David Cameron, the former British prime minister, famously described members of the far-right UK Independence Party as “fruitcakes, nut jobs and swivel-eyed loons”, just as Hillary Clinton called half of Trump’s supporters a “a basket of deplorables”. Clinton lost the presidential race. Cameron resigned after the “loons” triumphed in the UK’s Brexit referendum in June on membership of the European Union.

What unites politicians in western Europe is a mounting sense of panic that they are about to follow Cameron and Clinton into the political wilderness. The idea of a speeding Brexit-Trump train is lovingly promoted by the populists. Jimmie Akesson, leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats, currently in joint-second place in the opinion polls, says: “There is a movement in both Europe and the United States where the establishment is being challenged. It is clearly happening here as well.”

It is also worth looking at the Netherlands, where there is a general election in March. If the polls are to be believed, the Party for Freedom of the provocative bleach-blond anti-Islam campaigner Geert Wilders could win.

Four times in the past decade a ban on the wearing of Islamic face-covering garments has been proposed to the Dutch parliament, but it never gained traction. On November 22, however, 132 members of the 150-seat lower house of parliament voted to ban the niqab and the burqa in schools, hospitals, government offices and on public transport. During the debate, a group of niqab-wearing women watched from the public gallery, only to be met with abuse from MPs, and there was even a discussion of whether it was safe to continue with them in the chamber.

There are estimated to be only a couple of hundred women in the Netherlands who wear this clothing, so the law is out of all proportion to the scale of the perceived problem. But Wilders’s discourse – his manifesto calls for the closing of all mosques and Islamic schools – has infected the mainstream. Until now, all Dutch parties have refused to go into a coalition with him, but they may have to change their tune.

The stakes are even higher at the French presidential election, to be held in two rounds in April and May. Marine Le Pen, the National Front leader, is all but certain to get into the second round. With socialists in meltdown, only a centre-right politician has any hope of beating her. That man is Francois Fillon, an establishment figure who lives in a castle and is an admirer of a former UK prime minister, the late Margaret Thatcher. He proposes a cold shower of austerity and the sacking 500,000 civil servants. An unlikely dragon-slayer, he has buttressed his right-wing support by publishing a book, Conquering Islamic Totalitarianism, the title of which leaves no doubts about the content.

For Merkel, who is standing for a fourth term in September, the prospect of Le Pen in the Élysée Palace is a nightmare. The German chancellor would be boxed in by anti-liberal Eurosceptic neighbours in Paris and London, a belligerent president in Washington DC and authoritarian strongmen in Moscow and Ankara. This grim environment may boost her chances of re-election, as Germans cling to the apron strings of “Mutti” (mother) as she is affectionately known. The anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD) seems certain to enter the German federal parliament.

Catherine Fieschi, a cultural commentator and founder of the consultancy Counterpoint, in London, notes that voters in every European country have a variety of reasons for abandoning traditional parties. In the Nordic countries there is a backlash against progressive egalitarianism. In France and Germany there is a strong element of revolt against taboos dating from the Second World War, and in Britain it is an anguished bid to reclaim island status against the cosmopolitan tide. Almost everywhere, there is current of Islamophobia whipped up by migration and ISIL-linked terror attacks.

The Bertelsmann Foundation in Germany has investigated whether populism is driven by fears about job prospects – largely attributed to globalisation – or the decline of traditional values, embodied by the liberal elite talking more about the rights of migrants, ethnic minorities and gay people and not enough about jobs and secure borders. It has concluded that fears about globalisation are strongly linked to right-wing voters, much more so than concerns about values.

The link is less clear for populist parties of the left, such as Italy’s Five Star Movement or Podemos in Spain. These parties are splinters from the once-dominant European socialist movement which rested on the principle of collective action through organised labour and jobs for life, both of which are in sharp decline.

Far-right parties are now claiming the mantle of being the defenders of working people. “There is now no basis for collective action on the Left,” says Mark Goodwin, a political scientist at the University of Birmingham. “On the Right, no collective action is required, except to blame a cultural elite and some outside group, immigrant or otherwise.”

The big question is how the 28-member European Union can survive the shocks of 2016 and the predicted upheavals of next year.

John Gray, a British philosopher and political commentator, draws a sharp distinction between the US and the EU. The American system of government can respond to voter discontent and it will not be overturned by any passing administration, he says. European elites, wedded to the principle of open borders at a time when voters feel insecure, are incapable of responding. He predicts the whole liberal edifice could come crashing down next year.

Not everyone takes such an apocalyptic view. But his prediction only underlines how much Europe will depend on Merkel to guide it through the coming dangers.

Alan Philps is a commentator on global affairs.