European Politics

Dutch voters are to elect a new parliament for the third time in just five years on October 29. Prime Minister Dick Schoof called a snap election following the collapse of his cabinet in June, just 11 months after it was sworn in.

The immediate trigger was the withdrawal of Geert Wilders’s far-right Party for Freedom (PVV) from the governing coalition. The PVV quit after coalition partners rejected its controversial ten-point plan on migration, which included using the army to secure borders and turning back all asylum seekers.

The Schoof government continued in a caretaker capacity, made up of the remaining three coalition parties: the liberal-conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD), the newcomer Christian-democratic New Social Contract (NSC), and the agrarian populist Farmer–Citizen Movement (BBB).

However, on August 22, the caretaker government unravelled when NSC foreign affairs minister Caspar Veldkamp resigned over internal disagreements about policy toward Israel. His departure prompted the entire NSC delegation to step down, triggering the second cabinet collapse in as many months.

To understand the current political turmoil, we have to go back to the formation of the Schoof cabinet following the election of November 2023. That resulted in a landslide victory for Wilders’ PVV, paving the way for the most rightwing government in Dutch post-war history.

After months of tense and protracted negotiations, all four coalition party leaders, including Wilders, opted against taking the prime minister role themselves. Instead, they appointed Dick Schoof, a civil servant and former intelligence chief, as prime minister. This unusual “one-foot-in, one-foot-out” arrangement allowed Wilders to exert significant influence over policy without assuming executive responsibility – an unprecedented level of access to power for the far right.

Parliamentary debates soon reflected this shift, with previously fringe ideas like “remigration” and “omvolking” (akin to the great replacement conspiracy) being openly discussed.

The four-party structure was inherently fragile. Deep ideological divisions meant the coalition stumbled from one crisis to another. The inexperience of the cabinet members and the unpredictability of the PVV only made this situation more volatile.

Legislatively, the cabinet achieved little during its 11 months in office, leaving key structural problems such as housing shortages unresolved. Meanwhile, the coalition attempted to bypass parliamentary checks to push through its immigration proposals.

The overall result of a year of chaos: the erosion of democratic norms and principles, and the rapid normalisation of far right ideas.

A gravitational shift to the right

For the past 50 years, rightwing parties such as the VVD, the Christian-democratic CDA and the far-right PVV have consistently outnumbered their leftwing counterparts in Dutch politics – a trend that runs counter to the popular image of the Netherlands as a progressive beacon.

On average, rightwing parties have held around half of the 150 parliamentary seats. This gives them an advantage once votes are counted since they can often form coalitions among themselves. Leftwing parties generally have to seek coalition partners beyond their own bloc.

This pattern is largely driven by voter behaviour. Most voters stay within their ideological lane, switching only between parties on the same side of the spectrum. The only party that regularly attracts support from both sides is the centrist-progressive D66.

Dutch elections generally involve dozens of parties.
EPA

Since 2021, a third bloc has emerged: the far right, led by Wilders’ PVV and including the extreme-right Forum for Democracy (FvD) and the FvD-splinter party JA21. This bloc appears to have permanently shifted the political centre of gravity to the right.

As in 2023, the far right is set to play a major role in the 2025 election. Despite a turbulent year in government, the PVV continues to lead the polls. Voters appear undeterred by the party’s failure to govern effectively. This time, Wilders has explicitly said he wants to be the prime minister.

But Wilders isn’t the far right’s only contender. JA21 presents itself as a more “reasonable” alternative on the right, while FvD has undergone a key leadership change: controversial founder Thierry Baudet has handed over the reins to Lidewij de Vos. This move that reflects a broader far-right trend of using female leadership to soften the party’s image.

The centre-right camp, meanwhile, is in flux. The VVD has been slipping in the polls. At the same time, party leader Dilan Yeşilgöz has ruled out further partnerships with Wilders and signalled scepticism towards cooperation with the GreenLeft–Labour alliance. These positions have narrowed the VVD’s coalition prospects and raised questions about the party’s strategy.

The NSC is in free fall. After winning 20 seats from scratch in its 2023 debut, the party now appears likely to secure at most one seat – or potentially none at all. In contrast, the long-struggling CDA is staging a surprising comeback.

Following a historic low of just five seats in 2023, the party is now polling at 22 to 26 seats. This surge has been attributed to the so-called “Bontenbal effect,” named after the party’s popular leader, Henri Bontenbal.

The main contender on the left is the GreenLeft–Labour alliance, led by former European Commissioner Frans Timmermans, which is currently polling in third place behind the PVV and CDA. But the broader picture remains unchanged: the left is a structural minority, facing long odds of governing without support from the centre-right.

Finally, after significant losses in 2023, D66 appears to be recovering. Now polling between 11 and 14 seats, the party may once again play a pivotal role in coalition talks, potentially bridging the centre-left and centre-right blocs.

An uncertain outcome

No fewer than 27 parties are running in this election, and in a political landscape that has become notoriously fragmented and volatile, many voters make their final decisions only at the last minute.

With many medium-sized and smaller parties in the mix, and the PVV effectively barred from government participation, it is difficult to envision what a viable coalition might look like – so protracted coalition talks after election day are likely.

But beyond this uncertainty, the stakes for Dutch democracy are unusually high. The Netherlands has seen an alarmingly rapid normalisation of far-right rhetoric. This election may prove more than just another chapter in political instability, but a defining moment for the country’s democratic future. More

An expert in public policy asks if it will ever be possible for political parties in Europe to be honest about the limits of growth – and still get elected. More

Across much of Europe, the engines of economic growth are sputtering. In its latest global outlook, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) sharply downgraded its forecasts for the UK and Europe, warning that the continent faces persistent economic bumps in the road.

Globally, the World Bank recently said this decade is likely to be the weakest for growth since the 1960s. “Outside of Asia, the developing world is becoming a development-free zone,” the bank’s chief economist warned.

The UK economy went into reverse in April 2025, shrinking by 0.3%. The announcement came a day after the UK chancellor, Rachel Reeves, delivered her spending review to the House of Commons with a speech that mentioned the word “growth” nine times – including promising “a Growth Mission Fund to expedite local projects that are important for growth”:

I said that we wanted growth in all parts of Britain – and, Mr Speaker, I meant it.

Across Europe, a long-term economic forecast to 2040 predicted annual growth of just 0.9% over the next 15 years – down from 1.3% in the decade before COVID. And this forecast was in December 2024, before Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff policies had reignited trade tensions between the US and Europe (and pretty much everywhere else in the world).

Even before Trump’s tariffs, the reality was clear to many economic experts. “Europe’s tragedy”, as one columnist put it, is that it is “deeply uncompetitive, with poor productivity, lagging in technology and AI, and suffering from regulatory overload”. In his 2024 report on European (un)competitiveness, Mario Draghi – former president of the European Central Bank (and then, briefly, Italy’s prime minister) – warned that without radical policy overhauls and investment, Europe faces “a slow agony” of relative decline.

To date, the typical response of electorates has been to blame the policymakers and replace their governments at the first opportunity. Meanwhile, politicians of all shades whisper sweet nothings about how they alone know how to find new sources of growth – most commonly, from the magic AI tree. Because growth, with its widely accepted power to deliver greater productivity and prosperity, remains a key pillar in European politics, upheld by all parties as the benchmark of credibility, progress and control.

But what if the sobering truth is that growth is no longer reliably attainable – across Europe at least? Not just this year or this decade but, in any meaningful sense, ever?

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For a continent like Europe – with limited land and no more empires to exploit, ageing populations, major climate concerns and electorates demanding ever-stricter barriers to immigration – the conditions that once underpinned steady economic expansion may no longer exist. And in the UK more than most European countries, these issues are compounded by high levels of long-term sickness, early retirement and economic inactivity among working-age adults.

As the European Parliament suggested back in 2023, the time may be coming when we are forced to look “beyond growth” – not because we want to, but because there is no other realistic option for many European nations.

But will the public ever accept this new reality? As an expert in how public policy can be used to transform economies and societies, my question is not whether a world without growth is morally superior or more sustainable (though it may be both). Rather, I’m exploring if it’s ever possible for political parties to be honest about a “post-growth world” and still get elected – or will voters simply turn to the next leader who promises they know the secret of perpetual growth, however sketchy the evidence?

Which way is the right way?
Pixelvario/Shutterstock

What drives growth?

To understand why Europe in particular is having such a hard time generating economic growth, first we need to understand what drives it – and why some countries are better placed than others in terms of productivity (the ability to keep their economy growing).

Economists have a relatively straightforward answer. At its core, growth comes from two factors: labour and capital (machinery, technology and the like). So, for your economy to grow, you either need more people working (to make more stuff), or the same amount of workers need to become more productive – by using better machines, tools and technologies.

The first issue is labour. Europe’s working-age population is, for the most part, shrinking fast. Thanks to decades of declining birth rates (linked with rising life expectancy and higher incomes), along with increasing resistance to immigration, many European countries face declines in their working population. “”). Rural and urban regions of Europe alike are experiencing structural ageing and depopulation trends that make traditional economic growth ever harder to achieve.

Historically, population growth has gone hand-in-hand with economic expansion. In the postwar years, countries such as France, Germany and the UK experienced booming birth rates and major waves of immigration. That expanding labour force fuelled industrial production, consumer demand and economic growth.

Why does economic growth matter? Video: Bank of England.

Ageing populations not only reduce the size of the active labour force, they place more pressure on health and other public services, as well as pension systems. Some regions have attempted to compensate with more liberal migration policies, but public resistance to immigration is strong – reflected in increased support for rightwing and populist parties that advocate for stricter immigration controls.

While the UK’s median age is now over 40, it has a birthrate advantage over countries such as Germany and Italy, thanks largely to the influx of immigrants from its former colonies in the second half of the 20th century. But whether this translates into meaningful and sustainable growth depends heavily on labour market participation and the quality of investment – particularly in productivity-enhancing sectors like green technology, infrastructure and education – all of which remain uncertain.

If Europe can’t rely on more workers, then to achieve growth, its existing workers must become more productive. And here, we arrive at the second half of the equation: capital. The usual hope is that investments in new technologies – particularly AI as it drives a new wave of automation – will make up the difference.

In January, the UK’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, called AI “the defining opportunity of our generation” while announcing he had agreed to take forward all 50 recommendations set out in an independent AI action plan. Not to be outdone, the European Commission unveiled its AI continent action plan in April.

But Europe is also falling behind in the global race to harness the economic potential of AI, trailing both the US and China. The US, in particular, has surged ahead in developing and deploying AI tools across sectors such as healthcare, finance, manufacturing and logistics, while China has leveraged its huge state-supported, open-source industrial policy to scale its digital economy.

Keir Starmer announces the UK’s AI action plan. Video: BBC.

Despite the EU’s concerted efforts to enhance its digital competitiveness, a 2024 McKinsey report found that US corporations invested around €700 billion more in capital expenditure and R&D, in 2022 alone than their European counterparts, underscoring the continent’s investment gap. And where AI is adopted, it tends to concentrate gains in a few superstar companies or cities.

In fact, this disconnect between firm-level innovation and national growth is one of the defining features of the current era. Tech clusters in cities like Paris, Amsterdam and Stockholm may generate unicorn startups and record-breaking valuations, but they’re not enough to move the needle on GDP growth across Europe as a whole. The gains are often too narrow, the spillovers too weak and the social returns too uneven.

Yet admitting this publicly remains politically taboo. Can any European leader look their citizens in the eye and say: “We’re living in a post-growth world”? Or rather, can they say it and still hope to win another election?

The human need for growth

To be human is to grow – physically, psychologically, financially; in the richness of our relationships, imagination and ambitions. Few people would be happy with the prospect of being consigned to do the same job for the same money for the rest of their lives – as the collapse of the Soviet Union demonstrated. Which makes the prospect of selling a post-growth future to people sound almost inhuman.

Even those who care little about money and success usually strive to create better futures for themselves, their families and communities. When that sense of opportunity and forward motion is absent or frustrated, it can lead to malaise, disillusionment and in extreme cases, despair.

The health consequences of long-term economic decline are increasingly described as “diseases of despair” – rising rates of suicide, substance abuse and alcohol-related deaths concentrated in struggling communities. Recessions reliably fuel psychological distress and demand for mental healthcare, as seen during the eurozone crisis when Greece experienced surging levels of depression and declining self-rated health, particularly among the unemployed – with job loss, insecurity and austerity all contributing to emotional suffering and social fragmentation.

These trends don’t just affect the vulnerable; even those who appear relatively secure often experience “anticipatory anxiety” – a persistent fear of losing their foothold and slipping into instability. In communities, both rural and urban, that are wrestling with long-term decline, “left-behind” residents often describe a deep sense of abandonment by governments and society more generally – prompting calls for recovery strategies that address despair not merely as a mental health issue, but as a wider economic and social condition.

The belief in opportunity and upward mobility – long embodied in US culture by “the American dream” – has historically served as a powerful psychological buffer, fostering resilience and purpose even amid systemic barriers. However, as inequality widens and while career opportunities for many appear to narrow, research shows the gap between aspiration and reality can lead to disillusionment, chronic stress and increased psychological distress – particularly among marginalised groups. These feelings are only intensified in the age of social media, where constant exposure to curated success stories fuels social comparison and deepens the sense of falling behind.

For younger people in the UK and many parts of Europe, the fact that so much capital is tied up in housing means opportunity depends less on effort or merit and more on whether their parents own property – meaning they could pass some of its value down to their children.

‘Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism’, a discussion hosted by LSE Online.

Stagnation also manifests in more subtle but no less damaging ways. Take infrastructure. In many countries, the true cost of flatlining growth has been absorbed not through dramatic collapse but quiet decay.

Across the UK, more than 1.5 million children are learning in crumbling school buildings, with some forced into makeshift classrooms for years after being evacuated due to safety concerns. In healthcare, the total NHS repair backlog has reached £13.8 billion, leading to hundreds of critical incidents – from leaking roofs to collapsing ceilings – and the loss of vital clinical time.

Meanwhile, neglected government buildings across the country are affecting everything from prison safety to courtroom access, with thousands of cases disrupted due to structural failures and fire safety risks. These are not headlines but lived realities – the hidden toll of underinvestment, quietly hollowing out the state behind a veneer of functionality.

Without economic growth, governments face a stark dilemma: to raise revenues through higher taxes, or make further rounds of spending cuts. Either path has deep social and political implications – especially for inequality. The question becomes not just how to balance the books but how to do so fairly – and whether the public might support a post-growth agenda framed explicitly around reducing inequality, even if it also means paying more taxes.

In fact, public attitudes suggest there is already widespread support for reducing inequality. According to the Equality Trust, 76% of UK adults agree that large wealth gaps give some people too much political power.

Research by the Sutton Trust finds younger people especially attuned to these disparities: only 21% of 18 to 24-year-olds believe everyone has the same chance to succeed and 57% say it’s harder for their generation to get ahead. Most believe that coming from a wealthy family (75%) and knowing the right people (84%) are key to getting on in life.

In a post-growth world, higher taxes would not only mean wealthier individuals and corporations contributing a relatively greater share, but the wider public shifting consumption patterns, spending less on private goods and more collectively through the state. But the recent example of France shows how challenging this tightope is to walk.

In September 2024, its former prime minister, Michel Barnier, signalled plans for targeted tax increases on the wealthy, arguing these were essential to stabilise the country’s strained public finances. While politically sensitive, his proposals for tax increases on wealthy individuals and large firms initially passed without widespread public unrest or protests.

However, his broader austerity package – encompassing €40 billion (£34.5 billion) in spending cuts alongside €20 billion in tax hikes – drew vocal opposition from both left‑wing lawmakers and the far right, and contributed to parliament toppling his minority government in December 2024.

In the UK, the pressure on government finances (heightened both by Brexit and COVID) has seen a combination of “stealth” tax rises – notably, the ongoing freeze on income tax thresholds, which quietly drags more earners into higher tax bands – and more visible increases, such as the rise in employer National Insurance contributions. At the same time, the UK government moved to cut benefits in its spring statement, increasing financial pressure on lower-income households.

Such measures surely mark the early signs of a deeper financial reckoning that post-growth realities will force into the open: how to sustain public services when traditional assumptions about economic expansion can no longer be relied upon.

For the traditional parties, the political heat is on. Regions most left behind by structural economic shifts are increasingly drawn to populist and anti-establishment movements. Electoral outcomes have shown a significant shift, with far-right parties such as France’s National Rally and Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) making substantial gains in the 2024 European parliament elections, reflecting a broader trend of rising support for populist and anti-establishment parties across the continent.

A demonstration in Berlin calls for a ban on Germany’s AfD party, May 2025.
Filip Singer/EPA-EFE

Voters are expressing growing dissatisfaction not only with the economy, but democracy itself. This sentiment has manifested through declining trust in political institutions, as evidenced by a Forsa survey in Germany where only 16% of respondents expressed confidence in their government and 54% indicated they didn’t trust any party to solve the country’s problems.

This brings us to the central dilemma: can any European politician successfully lead a national conversation which admits the economic assumptions of the past no longer hold? Or is attempting such honesty in politics inevitably a path to self-destruction, no matter how urgently the conversation is needed?

Facing up to a new economic reality

For much of the postwar era, economic life in advanced democracies has rested on a set of familiar expectations: that hard work would translate into rising incomes, that home ownership would be broadly attainable and that each generation would surpass the prosperity of the one before it.

However, a growing body of evidence suggests these pillars of economic life are eroding. Younger generations are already struggling to match their parents’ earnings, with lower rates of home ownership and greater financial precarity becoming the norm in many parts of Europe.

Incomes for millennials and generation Z have largely stagnated relative to previous cohorts, even as their living costs – particularly for housing, education and healthcare – have risen sharply. Rates of intergenerational income mobility have slowed significantly across much of Europe and North America since the 1970s. Many young people now face the prospect not just of static living standards, but of downward mobility.

Effectively communicating the realities of a post-growth economy – including the need to account for future generations’ growing sense of alienation and declining faith in democracy – requires more than just sound policy. It demands a serious political effort to reframe expectations and rebuild trust.

History shows this is sometimes possible. When the National Health Service was founded in 1948, the UK government faced fierce resistance from parts of the medical profession and concerns among the public about cost and state control. Yet Clement Attlee’s Labour government persisted, linking the creation of the NHS to the shared sacrifices of the war and a compelling moral vision of universal care.

While taxes did rise to fund the service, the promise of a fairer, healthier society helped secure enduring public support – but admittedly, in the wake of the massive shock to the system that was the second world war.

In 1946, Prime Minister Clement Attlee asked the UK public to help ‘renew Britain’. Video: British Pathé.

Psychological research offers further insight into how such messages can be received. People are more receptive to change when it is framed not as loss but as contribution – to fairness, to community, to shared resilience. This underlines why the immediate postwar period was such a politically fruitful time to launch the NHS. The COVID pandemic briefly offered a sense of unifying purpose and the chance to rethink the status quo – but that window quickly closed, leaving most of the old structures intact and largely unquestioned.

A society’s ability to flourish without meaningful national growth – and its citizens’ capacity to remain content or even hopeful in the absence of economic expansion – ultimately depends on whether any political party can credibly redefine success without relying on promises of ever-increasing wealth and prosperity. And instead, offer a plausible narrative about ways to satisfy our very human needs for personal development and social enrichment in this new economic reality.

The challenge will be not only to find new economic models, but to build new sources of collective meaning. This moment demands not just economic adaptation but a political and cultural reckoning.

If the idea of building this new consensus seems overly optimistic, studies of the “spiral of silence” suggest that people often underestimate how widely their views are shared. A recent report on climate action found that while most people supported stronger green policies, they wrongly assumed they were in the minority. Making shared values visible – and naming them – can be key to unlocking political momentum.

So far, no mainstream European party has dared articulate a vision of prosperity that doesn’t rely on reviving growth. But with democratic trust eroding, authoritarian populism on the rise and the climate crisis accelerating, now may be the moment to begin that long-overdue conversation – if anyone is willing to listen.

Welcome to Europe’s first ‘post-growth’ nation

I’m imagining a European country in a decade’s time. One that no longer positions itself as a global tech powerhouse or financial centre, but the first major country to declare itself a “post-growth nation”.

This shift didn’t come from idealism or ecological fervour, but from the hard reality that after years of economic stagnation, demographic change and mounting environmental stress, the pursuit of economic growth no longer offered a credible path forward.

What followed wasn’t a revolution, but a reckoning – a response to political chaos, collapsing public services and widening inequality that sparked a broad coalition of younger voters, climate activists, disillusioned centrists and exhausted frontline workers to rally around a new, pragmatic vision for the future.

At the heart of this movement was a shift in language and priorities, as the government moved away from promises of endless economic expansion and instead committed to wellbeing, resilience and equality – aligning itself with a growing international conversation about moving beyond GDP, already gaining traction in European policy circles and initiatives such as the EU-funded “post-growth deal”.

But this transformation was also the result of years of political drift and public disillusionment, ultimately catalysed by electoral reform that broke the two-party hold and enabled a new alliance, shaped by grassroots organisers, policy innovators and a generation ready to reimagine what national success could mean.

Taxes were higher, particularly on land, wealth and carbon. But in return, public services were transformed. Healthcare, education, transport, broadband and energy were guaranteed as universal rights, not privatised commodities. Work changed: the standard week was shortened to 30 hours and the state incentivised jobs in care, education, maintenance and ecological restoration. People had less disposable income – but fewer costs, too.

Consumption patterns shifted. Hyper-consumption declined. Repair shops and sharing platforms flourished. The housing market was restructured around long-term security rather than speculative returns. A large-scale public housing programme replaced buy-to-let investment as the dominant model. Wealth inequality narrowed and cities began to densify as car use fell and public space was reclaimed.

For the younger generation, post-growth life was less about climbing the income ladder and more about stability, time and relationships. For older generations, there were guarantees: pensions remained, care systems were rebuilt and housing protections were strengthened. A new sense of intergenerational reciprocity emerged – not perfectly, but more visibly than before.

Politically, the transition had its risks. There was backlash – some of the wealthy left. But many stayed. And over time, the narrative shifted. This European country began to be seen not as a laggard but as a laboratory for 21st-century governance – a place where ecological realism and social solidarity shaped policy, not just quarterly targets.

The transition was uneven and not without pain. Jobs were lost in sectors no longer considered sustainable. Supply chains were restructured. International competitiveness suffered in some areas. But the political narrative – carefully crafted and widely debated – made the case that resilience and equity were more important than temporary growth.

While some countries mocked it, others quietly began to study it. Some cities – especially in the Nordics, Iberia and Benelux – followed suit, drawing from the growing body of research on post-growth urban planning and non-GDP-based prosperity metrics.

Read more:
Beyond GDP: changing how we measure progress is key to tackling a world in crisis – three leading experts

This was not a retreat from ambition but a redefinition of it. The shift was rooted in a growing body of academic and policy work arguing that a planned, democratic transition away from growth-centric models is not only compatible with social progress but essential to preventing environmental and societal collapse.

The country’s post-growth transition helped it sidestep deeper political fragmentation by replacing austerity with heavy investment in community resilience, care infrastructure and participatory democracy – from local budgeting to citizen-led planning. A new civic culture took root: slower and more deliberative but less polarised, as politics shifted from abstract promises of growth to open debates about real-world trade-offs.

Internationally, the country traded some geopolitical power for moral authority, focusing less on economic competition and more on global cooperation around climate, tax justice and digital governance – earning new relevance among smaller nations pursuing their own post-growth paths.

So is this all just a social and economic fantasy? Arguably, the real fantasy is believing that countries in Europe – and the parties that compete to run them – can continue with their current insistence on “growth at all costs” (whether or not they actually believe it).

The alternative – embracing a post-growth reality – would offer the world something we haven’t seen in a long time: honesty in politics, a commitment to reducing inequality and a belief that a fairer, more sustainable future is still possible. Not because it was easy, but because it was the only option left.

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As the EU crafts responses to Washington’s agendas on defence and trade, it might look to Warsaw for inspiration. More

The European Union will have to strike a deal with US President Donald Trump on tariffs, NATO, and the stationing of US troops in EU countries. A trade war with the US will further weaken the already modest growth prospects in EU countries. Europe also still lacks a clear plan for how to defend itself if the US were to withdraw from its security system. Turning NATO into a more “Europeanized” alliance will require the development of a homegrown European military-industrial complex, and these things take time.

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More broadly, Trump openly challenges the postwar international order – an order shaped jointly by the US and Europe. He disregards international trade rules, sees no purpose in most international organizations, and his calls to take over or annex the Panama Canal, Greenland and Canada violate the principles of self-determination and respect for international agreements. The EU can’t stop him, but it must choose: focus energy on resisting the erosion of international law and diplomacy or implement a pragmatic strategy of damage control. The latter demands leverage – bargaining chips – and sustained dialogue with Washington, however strained the politics.

This kind of strategic exercise is something Poland has been quietly mastering for years. It recently signed an agreement with a US firm to build its first nuclear power plant, and the Pentagon has approved the sale of state-of-the-art AIM-120D3 air-to-air missiles to Warsaw.

Just 35 years ago, Poland was a struggling, post-communist state plagued by corruption, lacking democratic traditions and having no experience in a market economy. Today, it is projected to have the fastest-growing European economy in the Organisation for Economic and Co-operative Development (OECD) in 2025. Its political institutions are far from flawless, but they have proven resilient. The key to Poland’s progress has been its ability to skilfully navigate the transatlantic space – strengthening military resilience through its ties with the United States, while also bolstering its economy with support from European Union cohesion funds.

Vito Corleone is wounded and furious

Poland has long been seen in Europe as the eager Atlanticist – sometimes as naive, sometimes as reckless. In 2003, when the continent was deeply divided over the Iraq War, Poland defied European opinion and sent troops to contribute to the US-led invasion. European leaders accused Warsaw of acting as Washington’s Trojan horse in European public debate. French president Jacques Chirac even described Poland’s stance as “infantile” and “dangerous”, famously declaring that Central and Eastern European countries had “missed a good opportunity to shut up”.

However, at the start of the 21st century, Warsaw was focused on strengthening its security and international standing. It got what it wanted, even at the cost of lost lives, a tarnished image, and bitter disappointments, as the expected lucrative contracts for Polish companies to participate in the reconstruction of Iraq never materialized. For the first time since World War II, a Polish contingent gained real combat experience. It became obvious that the army was in urgent need of modernization, and that modernization later occurred. It gives me no pleasure that Poland participated in an illegal war. But as an analyst, I can’t ignore the political and military benefits that followed.

In The Godfather Doctrine: A Foreign Policy Parable, published in 2009, political analysts John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell likened Poland to Enzo the baker, a character who is loyal and steady, standing guard for the Corleone family in the seminal 1972 film. In their allegory, the US is the wounded Don Vito Corleone, struggling to retain influence, while his sons scramble to save the family’s power.

While pop culture analogies have their limits, they often offer sharp insights. Western European countries now face a defining question: what kind of game do they want to play as their long-standing ally appears to spiral inward? Should they seize this moment to engage in confrontation – like rival mafia families in The Godfather trilogy – or secure what resources they can from a fading superpower to shore up their own vulnerabilities?

Two loyalties, one strategy

The reality is that Polish society is as pro-European as it is pro-American. It is also the case that the dual allegiance lost credibility when the populist Law and Justice party, in power from 2015 to 2023, adopted a combative stance toward Brussels and Berlin, isolating Poland diplomatically and weakening its position as a trustworthy European partner.

The European Commission accused the Law and Justice government of breaching EU treaty law on multiple fronts. Poland faced infringement procedures over its violations of environmental standards, its refusal to accept refugees under the bloc’s relocation mechanism, and its reforms of the common courts. What sparked outrage across Europe, and within Poland itself, was the dismantling of an already conservative abortion law, coupled with a brutal hate campaign targeting the LGBTQ+ community.

Yet even after years in power, Law and Justice failed to shift public opinion about being part of the EU: in 2022, a survey by the Public Opinion Research Centre (CBOS) showed that 92% of Poles expressed support for membership – the highest level recorded since 1994. Since joining the bloc in 2004, EU-funded investments have become permanent features of Poland’s landscape. They include new highways, restored historical landmarks, the Warsaw metro, the port of Szczecin, and widespread access to high-speed Internet. In late 2023, a democratic coalition won the national election, and former European Council president Donald Tusk returned to power for a third term as prime minister after previously serving in the role from 2007 to 2014.

Today, there are few illusions in Warsaw about Donald Trump’s negative impact on transatlantic relations: after his announcement of new tariffs on April 2, Tusk called them “a severe and unpleasant blow” coming “from our closest ally”. Nonetheless, Tusk has put forward a vision that appears to align with the US president’s expectations of Europe taking more responsibility for its own security. The potential missile deal with Washington is part of his strategy.

‘Secure Europe’

“Secure Europe” is the official theme of Poland’s current presidency of the Council of the European Union – unsurprising for a country whose historical memory teaches that without security, nothing else is possible. Situated between Germany and Russia, Poland has a long history of struggling against more powerful conquerors, often finding itself too weak to survive. As a result, it was absent from the map of Europe for over 100 years, divided between Prussia, Russia and the Austro-Hungarian empire. When it regained its statehood after the first world war, it began the difficult task of building a multiethnic, democratic society, but the second world war soon followed. Lacking powerful allies after the war, Poland saw German occupation replaced by Soviet domination, lasting almost half a century.

That’s why Polish troops fought in the NATO-led ISAF mission in Afghanistan and in the US-led invasion of Iraq, earning operational credibility and proving their reliability within the transatlantic alliance. Even before Trump’s first term, Poland was one of the few NATO countries meeting its 2% defence spending target. Today, it spends more than 4% – a higher share of GDP than even the United States. In 2014, when Russia illegally annexed Crimea, Poland had the ninth-largest armed forces in NATO. Today, it ranks third, behind only the US and Turkey, with over 200,000 personnel.

What Poles have long understood – and what much of Europe was slow to acknowledge – is that when Russia operates in imperial mode, it responds only to force. For years, Poland sought to act as Europe’s interpreter of the Russian psyche, but few were willing to listen. Preoccupied with lucrative energy deals and diplomatic overtures, German and French leaders dismissed Polish warnings as paranoia or Russophobia, brushing aside clear red flags.

Could Poland’s long-honed strategy of balancing loyalties across the Atlantic offer a new model for European foreign policy? In a world where old alliances are being tested and new rules are being written, its rationale might point to the pragmatic path forward. For Poles, the EU is more than just a political project – it was the fulfilment of a long-held dream of breaking free from the historical burden of constant threat and dependence. If Poland has been right about Russia all along, then perhaps it’s time to consider whether it might have something to tell us about the US, too. More

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The evidence suggests traditional parties that ape the populist radical right’s policies risk boosting their rivals instead of reclaiming voters. More

In Germany’s snap parliamentary elections, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) doubled its vote share to 21%, leaping from the fifth-largest party in Germany’s lower house to the second. In the UK, Reform UK is rising in the polls.

The populist radical right is on the rise across Europe, and mainstream parties are grappling with how to respond.

The German “firewall” approach involves treating them as a pariah. This means refusing to enter coalition with them, as well as excluding them from parliamentary posts and refusing to debate or engage with their parliamentary motions. After Germany’s election, the first-place party, the Christian democrats (CDU/CSU), has no majority and will need at least one coalition partner to form a government. But it will not ask the AfD – and nor will any other party due to the firewall.

There are clear threats to this approach. Often the appeal of the populist right is that they are plucky outsiders, challenging a self-interested political cartel that ignores the views of the people. What better way to prove this case than by ignoring the democratically elected populists too?

Furthermore, the firewall has clearly not worked in dampening support for the populists in Germany, as well as in France. This is especially the case when the populists have allies in the media, have privileges given them by the constitution or parliamentary rules (for example, membership on committees), or strong regional bases.

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Mainstream parties must also decide whether to maintain their own policy positions or ape those of the populist radical right, especially on key topics like immigration and welfare.

For social democratic centre-left parties, academic research is clear: do not move towards the populist radical right on policy.

Typically, the voter base of social democratic parties is made up of two coalitions: the educated, urban and liberal middle classes, and the old core of industrial workers who tend to hold more authoritarian attitudes. In attempting to win over voters lost to the populist right by copying their policies, these parties tend to lose more voters on their liberal-left wing than they win on their populist-right wing.

A seat at the table: AfD co-chair Alice Weidel joins mainstream party leaders after the German election.
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For the centre-right, the decision is harder. They face a similar challenge to the centre-left in that their support coalition is often made up of social authoritarians (who are more likely to be populist radical right-curious) and more centrist free-market liberals. Moving towards the populist right will alienate the latter camp, so it is not a silver bullet for bringing voters back into the fold.

By not talking about policy areas which are clearly salient to the public, centre-right parties risk seeming out of touch. In contrast, talking about these issues increases their salience and highlights their rivals’ positions – but the centre-right may not be rewarded for this if they are seen to have been forced into changing policy by the populist radical right.

Academics have explored this question in various ways. A 2021 study looked at voters’ ideological positions and subsequent propensity for voting for the centre-right or populist radical right. Another, published in 2022, examined changing party positions through manifestos and subsequent voter flows between the populist radical right and the centre-right across 13 western European countries. The evidence suggests that when parties adopt populist radical right positions, voters are more likely to defect to the radical right instead.

The final strategy is the complete opposite to the German firewall: bring the populist radical right into government. The Austrian case is instructive here. In 1999, the centre-right Austrian People’s Party (OVP) entered a coalition with the populist radical right Freedom Party (FPO), which lasted until 2005. The pressures of government resulted in the FPO imploding and losing roughly two-thirds of its seat share in the next general election.

But the FPO has increased its seat share in every subsequent election, reentering government in 2017 and emerging as the largest party in the 2024 general election. The centrist parties have now taken a firewall approach, forming a coalition without the FPO – and the FPO have soared in the polls. By bringing them into government in the first place, the OVP legitimised the FPO in the eyes of many voters.

What should mainstream parties do?

For the centre-left, the choice is obvious: resist the urge to ape the populist radical right and instead (following the lead of the Danish Social Democrats) adapt to a party system where the populist right cannot be gotten rid of, but is a problem to be managed.

Centre-left parties need a robust message on immigration but they should not forget economics. They should primarily focus on traditional concerns around social protection and defending workers against the effects of globalisation.

This has clear implications for the debate around Blue Labour ideology – that the Labour party should combine leftwing economics with more socially authoritarian stances on crime and immigration, plus a greater emphasis on community over the state and market – and how closely Keir Starmer should be paying attention to it.

For centre-right parties like the UK’s Conservatives, there are no easy options.

The UK does not have the historical baggage of Germany which sustains the firewall against the AfD. But Reform UK is also less extreme than its German counterparts, so its electoral ceiling is likely to be higher than the AfD’s. And the first-past-the-post system makes the consequences of a three-party system much harder to predict.

Reform – like Ukip in the early 2010s – cannot be treated as a pariah, especially since it already has parliamentary representation which will probably be extended to Holyrood and the Senedd. The party also has a largely friendly rightwing media landscape. And perhaps most importantly, the Conservative party is split about whether to do a deal with Reform – if, of course, it actually wants said deal.

Openly ignoring the issues Reform campaigns on will not work. Immigration is too much of a salient concern among voters (especially on the right) to ignore. While banging on about immigration will only add fuel to Reform’s fire, the Conservatives do need to say something – and that should start with “sorry for the last 14 years”.

The Tories cannot openly move to the right without losing some of their centre flank. Of the seats won in 2024, Reform came second in nine, while Labour and the Liberal Democrats came second in 87 and 20 respectively. In 2024, for every vote the Conservatives lost to Reform, they also lost a vote to the Liberal Democrats or Labour.

There is no “magic formula” for the centre-right to vanquish the populist radical right. Instead, they need to nail a tricky combination: a clear vision of what they believe, a consistent policy platform that flows from these beliefs, and a charismatic leader who can communicate this to the public. More