Excepting the socialists leading Spain, Ireland, and the Democratic Party in the United States, many progressives are now willing to concede that illegal immigration will be their undoing unless they craft a policy to reform it. If they fail, conditions could be right for a national populist wave to strike Europe just as it has the United States.
As living memory of World War II fades, the institutions crafted in the aftermath of that continental carnage find themselves in a perilous situation. The European Union’s stability is still based on the premise that centrist parties of both the Left and Right will advance the favored policies of the last few hundred subscribers to The Economist.
Under that premise, nations states like Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Spain were tasked with weeding out any would-be populist elements from each respected country and from smaller nations within the coalition.
But since Brexit, the premise has gotten shakier and shakier. Every time the centrists of Europe believe they have beaten back the populist uprising, it comes back, only stronger. The question now is whether national populists can finally break through the block.
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