Donald Trump’s re-election has been greeted with joy by Europe’s populists. Even before the US presidential vote, right-wingers were on the march in the continent. The Freedom Party won Austria’s general election in September, a few weeks after Alternative for Germany (AFD) became the first far-right party to control a German state parliament election since the Second World War.
This adds to the list of European populists already in power in the Netherlands, Italy, and Hungary, while right-wingers in the UK, France, Spain, and Portugal have all performed well in recent elections. Trump's return seemingly continues that trend, and many populists were quick to connect events in the US to boost their own cause.
Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party (PVV) in the Netherlands who is often labelled the ‘Dutch Trump’, quickly declared that “Patriots are winning elections all over the world,” while Nigel Farage, leader of Britain’s Reform Party, spent the US election night celebrating in Trump’s Mar-a-Lago.
Perhaps, inevitably, many expect Trump’s election will boost the populist cause in Europe, whether hopeful right-wingers or fearful leftists and centrists. Yet, the reality will likely be more nuanced. While they all share hostility to immigration, opposition to ‘wokeness’ and domestic nationalism, populists, whether in the US or Europe, have many differences. Though the European right-wingers may welcome Trump’s election, his return to the White House brings with it potential challenges as well as opportunities.
A boost for Farage?
Farage is among those most expected to benefit from Trump’s return to power. Even before Trump’s first election in 2016, Farage courted the president-elect. After playing a prominent role in Britain’s Brexit referendum, Farage headed to the US and was invited by Trump to brief him. Farage then spoke at Trump rallies and was there in person to congratulate him after the 2016 victory. Since then, Farage has made multiple trips to the US to link up with the Trump camp, crucially showing his loyalty even after the defeat to Joe Biden in 2020. During the 2024 election, Farage made several more trips to the US, including to show solidarity immediately after the assassination attempt in Pennsylvania, and was pictured several times at rallies wearing a MAGA hat.
Commentators have noted that, while Farage insists he is ‘very close’ to Trump, the president-elect has been more distant towards the Reform Party leader. There are only a handful of, mostly staged, photographs of the two together, questioning how genuinely close they are. Though immediately after the election, Farage offered, perhaps mischievously, to act as a broker between the president-elect and the UK’s Labour government, British ministers immediately declined the invitation.
Here lies the challenge for Farage: how to translate his apparent closeness to Trump into something tangible. In the UK, he is simply the leader of a relatively marginal party that has five seats in parliament and won 14% of the vote in 2024. With another election not expected until 2028-9, Labour has little incentive to deal with Farage, whose politics Keir Starmer strongly opposes. To work with Farage would cost Labour a lot more domestically than it might gain abroad, especially given the questions about how close Farage and Trump really are.
A further dilemma for Farage is that, even if he were able to somehow perform an electoral miracle in Britain’s next parliamentary election, Trump would likely have left office by then, given the constitution prevents him from running in 2028. Farage’s best hope is for Trump's popularity in Britain to boost the number of reformers, and his party saw a slight bump in membership after the presidential election. However, Trump is not particularly well regarded in the UK, so this is unlikely to have a dramatic effect. More useful might be for Reform to study closely how Trump campaigned in 2024 to learn lessons and techniques for their own future elections rather than expecting an immediate electoral lift.
