How damaging far-right populism can be has become clear ten years after Brexit. Keir Starmer is stepping down, potentially making way for the more progressive Andy Burnham, the successful mayor of Manchester, who has secured a seat in Parliament. Burnham would thereby become the seventh prime minister in ten years. The low point was Liz Truss, who lasted just 50 days.
Brexit has made the United Kingdom largely ungovernable. Politicians are barely able to solve the country’s economic problems, and the electorate keeps searching for a new savior who will most likely prove equally incapable.
Ten years after Brexit, it has become clear how irresponsibly then-prime minister David Cameron gambled with his country’s future—and how foolishly the British voted.
Numerous reports conclude that British exports to the EU, its most important trading partner, have shrunk by roughly 16 percent. By the end of last year, income per capita was estimated to be 6 to 8 percent lower than it would have been without Brexit.
Did populists such as Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson not appeal to a nostalgic sentiment that everything used to be better? Outside the EU, the British would supposedly become masters of their own destiny, enjoy an economic golden age, and be freed from illegal immigration. Instead, it has turned into the predicted disaster. And now two-thirds of Britons once again long for the past—namely, the time when their country was still a member of the EU.
The remaining one-third largely supports Farage. He mobilized the population in favor of Brexit and now leads the country’s largest party, which according to opinion polls commands nearly 28 percent of the vote. I remain astonished by the far-right electorate. First, they vote for the economic dismantling of their own country; then they regard the man responsible as their savior. The reasoning is the same as that of PVV voters in the Netherlands: they were obstructed and denied the opportunity to govern by the political elite.
Yet I see the far right driving itself into a corner. In the Netherlands, the PVV proved incapable of governing. In Hungary, Viktor Orbán met an inglorious end. Even more significant is the fact that the far right is distancing itself from Trump, who little more than a year ago, during a populist conference in Madrid, was described by Geert Wilders as a “brother in arms” who “brings hope after years of misery and corruption”. Now they see him as a threat to their own position.
His tariffs, his claims on Greenland, and the utter incompetence with which he surrendered following his failed war against Iran have caused his ideological allies to flee. By now he has also lost Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, his last ally in Europe. It was reported that he had supposedly begged Meloni to appear in a photograph with him. Meloni replied that neither she nor Italy begs.
According to recent YouGov polls, no more than 10 to 15 percent of Europeans still have confidence in the American president. In the United States itself, his war with Iran is now producing angry motorists at the petrol pump, and his popularity is declining.
Brexit, Trump, and the PVV in the Netherlands all demonstrate that far-right populists leave behind a trail of destruction.
What strikes me is that moderate parties have failed to capitalize on this.
Source: Trouw, Rob de Wijk, 26 juni 2026
Experts
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