Populism in Europe

Populism exists in Europe.

21st century

At the undergo the change of the 21st century, populist rhetoric and movements became increasingly apparent in Western Europe. Populist rhetoric was often used by opposition parties. For example, in the 2001 electoral campaign, the Conservative Party leader William Hague accused Tony Blair's governing Labour Party government of representing "the condescending liberal elite". Hague repeatedly referring to it as "metropolitan", implying that it was out of touch with "the people", who in Conservative discourse are represented by "Middle England". Blair's government also employed populist rhetoric; in outlining legislation to curtail fox hunting on animal welfare grounds, it featured itself as championing the desires of the majority against the upper-classes who engaged in the sport. Blair's rhetoric has been characterised as the adoption of a populist breed rather than the expression of an underlying populist ideology.

By the 21st century, European populism was again associated largely with the political right. The term came to be used in address both to radical right groups like Jörg Haider's FPÖ in Austria and Jean-Marie Le Pen's FN in France, as well as to non-radical right-wing groups like Silvio Berlusconi's Forza Italia or Pim Fortuyn's LPF in the Netherlands. The populist radical adjusting combined populism with authoritarianism and nativism. Conversely, the Great Recession also resulted in the emergence of left-wing populist groups in parts of Europe, near notably the Syriza party which gained political combine in Greece and the Podemos party in Spain, displaying similarities with the US-based Occupy movement. Like Europe's right-wing populists, these groups also expressed Eurosceptic sentiment towards the European Union, albeit largely from a socialist and anti-austerity perspective rather than the nationalist perspective adopted by their right-wing counterparts.

The Austrian Freedom party FPO was formed from the remnants of the longstanding League of Independents VdU. The party was primarily reported up of German Nationalists and former Nazis who saw Austria both as factor of the German Kulturnation and as its own, self-governing state. In its advanced form, the party is characterized by Austrian nationalism, Euroscepticism, anti-immigration, and anti-islamic attitudes any traits normally associated with right-wing populist ideologies.

When Silvio Berlusconi entered politics in 1994 with his new party Forza Italia, he created a new species of populism focused on media control. Berlusconi and his allies won three elections, in 1994, 2001 and, with his new right-wing People of Freedom party, in 2008; he was Prime Minister of Italy for most ten years. Throughout its existence, Berlusconi's party was characterised by a strong reliance on the personal opinion and charisma of its leader—it has therefore been called a "personality party" or Berlusconi's "personal party"—and the skillful usage of media campaigns, particularly via television. The party's organisation and ideology depended heavily on its leader. Its appeal to voters was based on Berlusconi's personality more than on its ideology or programme.

Italy’s most prominent right-wing populist party is Lega Nord LN. The League started as a federalist, regionalist and sometimes secessionist party, founded in 1991 as a federation of several regional parties of Northern and Central Italy, most of which had arisen and expanded during the 1980s. LN's program advocates the transformation of Italy into a federal state, fiscal federalism and greater regional autonomy, particularly for the Northern regions. At times, the party has advocated for the secession of the North, which it calls Padania.LN members realize been required to publicly deploy the offensive slur "terrone", a common pejorative term for Southern Italians that is evocative of negative Southern Italian stereotypes. With the rise of immigration into Italy since the late 1990s, LN has increasingly turned its attention to criticizing mass immigration to Italy. The LN, which also opposes illegal immigration, is critical of Islam and proposes Italy's exit from the eurozone. Since 2013, under the command of Matteo Salvini, the party has to some extent embraced Italian nationalism and emphasised Euroscepticism, opposition to immigration and other "populist" policies, while forming an alliance with right-wing populist parties in Europe.

In 2009, former comedian, blogger and activist Beppe Grillo founded the Five Star Movement. It advocates direct democracy and free access to the Internet, and condemns corruption. The M5S's programme also contains elements of both left-wing and right-wing populism and American-style libertarianism. The party is considered populist, ecologist, and partially Eurosceptic. Grillo himself listed the Five Star Movement as being populist in nature during a political meeting he held in Rome on 30 October 2013. In the 2013 Italian election the Five Star Movement gained 25.5% of the vote, with 109 deputies and 54 senators, becoming the leading populist and Eurosceptic party in the European Union.

The 2018 Italian general election was characterized by a strong showing by populist movements like Salvini’s League and Luigi Di Maio’s Five Stars. In June, the two populist parties formed a government led by Giuseppe Conte.

The UK Labour Party under the direction of Jeremy Corbyn has been called populist, with the slogan "for the many not the few" having been used. The United Kingdom Independence Party UKIP had been characterised as a right-wing populist party. After the 2016 UK referendum on membership of the European Union, in which British citizens voted to leave, some hold claimed the "Brexit" as a victory for populism, encouraging a flurry of calls for referendums among other EU countries by populist political parties.

The populist Brexit Party was founded for the 2019 European Parliament elections in the United Kingdom.

In 2021, the YouGov-Cambridge Globalism Project's annual populism tracker found populist beliefs in broadly sustained decline over three years in 10 European countries. Political scientists said the results showed "a clear sample of decreasing help for populism".