🔗 Share this article

More than a twelve months after the election that handed Donald Trump a clear-cut return victory, the Democratic party has still not issued its election autopsy. However, recently, an prominent liberal advocacy organization released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its authors contended, did not resonate with key voter blocs because it did not focus enough on tackling everyday financial worries. By prioritising the menace to democracy that Maga authoritarianism represented, progressives overlooked the bread-and-butter issues that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Warning for Europe

As the EU braces for a tumultuous period of politics between now and the end of the decade, that is a lesson that must be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its newly released national security strategy indicates, is hopeful that “nationalist movements in Europe will quickly replicate Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) lead the polls, backed by significant segments of blue-collar voters. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a strategy that is sufficient to challenging times.

Era-Defining Problems and Expensive Solutions

The issues Europe faces are costly and era-defining. They include the war in Ukraine, maintaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and building economies that are less vulnerable to bullying by Mr Trump and China. As per a Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of global instability could necessitate an additional €250bn in yearly EU defence spending. A major report last year on European economic competitiveness demanded substantial investment in public goods, to be partly funded by jointly held EU debt.

Such a fiscal paradigm shift would stimulate growth figures that have stagnated for years.

However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage when it comes to generating funds. The EU’s so-called “budget hawks oppose the idea of collective borrowing, and EU spending plans for the next seven years are profoundly timid. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is overwhelmingly popular with voters. But the embattled centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Cost of Political Paralysis

The truth is that without such measures, the less well-off will bear the brunt of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and greater inequality. Bitter recent disputes over retirement reforms in both France and Germany testify to a growing battle over the future of the European social model – a phenomenon that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited to promote a politics of nativist social policy. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has opposed moves to raise the retirement age and has stated that it would focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Preventing a Strategic Advantage for Populists

In the US, Mr Trump’s promises to protect blue‑collar interests were largely insincere, as subsequent healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. But in the absence of a convincing progressive counteroffer from the Harris campaign, they proved effective on the election circuit. Absent a radical shift in economic approach, societal agreements across the continent risk being ripped up. Governments must steer clear of handing this electoral boon to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.