As Europe turns right, why has a center-left party won by a landslide in the UK?

The United Kingdom’s decision to hand the center-left Labour Party a parliamentary majority comes at the same time Europe is broadly in the grip of what some call a right-wing populist surge.

Last month’s European elections saw a historic number of lawmakers from hard-right and far-right parties elected to the European Parliament. The results caused such chaos that French President Emmanuel Macron called a snap parliamentary election in his own country, the first round of which the far-right National Rally won last week.

A government composed of far-right figures was formed in the Netherlands this week. Italy is led by the most right-wing leader since the rule of fascist wartime leader Benito Mussolini. These electoral victories and the prospect of populist right-wingers in power is no longer a surprise in European countries.

An odd quirk of British politics is that the percentage of votes a party gets doesn’t necessarily translate to seats.／Flickr

An odd quirk of British politics is that the percentage of votes a party gets doesn’t necessarily translate to seats. Every seat is decided individually, the winner being the candidate with the most votes, which is often less than 50%.

And with Reform performing well in many of the seats that Labour won, the hard-right will not only be impossible to ignore in this parliament, but it could easily see its influence grow further.

Britain suffers from many of the same problems as other European countries. If Starmer falters as prime minister, there is every chance that the popular right could continue to capture the public’s imagination, as it has elsewhere in Europe.