Geopolitics

While many countries are on a slope to the right of the right, it seems British are hopeful contrarians. A landslide it is.

Consequences of Brexit seem a big determinant. Yet Europe is changing, so what’s different in the UK ?

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The difference is UK had a conservative government over the last years while most of Europe was ruled by leftists. So people are just switching.

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But then why not “switching” to the far right, as many countries across the world see happen, including the neighbour France.

“Just switching” sounds like there are only two choices, which looks the norm in the UK. In Europe, there is usually more pluralism.

UK has only two parties that are serious contenders, so it wasn’t surpirising.

For other EU countries: there are simply not many centric parties left, many of them have moved to the left spectrum while many conservative parties have been labeled „far right“.

More and more right and centre borrow far-right rhetoric, blurring and confusing. On top of that officially far-right parties try to hide themselves under populist rhetoric, blurring and confusing some more.

These two trends is what makes labeling difficult—the slope to the right.

If you look at what constitutes “far right” these days there clearly has been a one sided relabeling. 

Positions former centric and conservative politicians have been supporting 20 years ago are now called far right or authoritarian while truly authoritarian policies such as chat controls etc which are envisioned by “liberal” or progressive parties are not labeled as such.

Looking at France, Italy and Spain, perhaps Sweden too, the conservative parties seem to be labelled authoritarian (which differs from totalitarian, but slide to the right), while far right stays far right.