The Francophone right-liberal MR is the lone party of a 7-party coalition sabotaging the negotiations over a tax reform that would ease the burden on low wage earners.
They're really going full populist-accelerationist, even refusing to hand a win to their fellow right-wing moderates from Flanders. Open VLD and CD&V are under heavy pressure from the Flemish nationalists and if they collapse in the elections next year this country will be hard to govern indeed.
I'm not the only one to notice that a lot of mainstream right parties are going full populist. Fidesz was the trailblazer, but then there was also the Tories, LR starting from Laurent Wauquiez, the CDU under Merz. In Sweden and Finland the centre-right prefered governing with the far-right to a grand coalition with the left. Rutte blew up his own government over an absurdly cruel asylum policy.
@TheKorot@DiegoBeghin Yes, and also Reinfeldt, who cut a deal with the Sweden Democrats to pass austerity budgets and a separate deal with the Greens to keep Swedish immigration levels high.
@DiegoBeghin Yes: the locus of hate has transitioned from single-issue focus on immigrants, which the early-21st century mainline right hasn't always hated (cf. Reinfeldt in Sweden, Merkel and Laschet here, etc.), to anti-left and anti-green animus, which the mainline right is much more comfortable with (cf. death threats from non-extreme-right drivers against mayors who replace parking with bike lanes). NL looks like it's more about immigration but that could be convergent evolution.
@Alon@DiegoBeghin I think NL has always been immigration, at least openly. Rutte III negotiations with GroenLinks failed over immigration policy, though the Rutte-GL for Rutte IV was more an anti-left thing.
@Alon True, I have to think of Le Figaro headlining this week that the French have had enough of climate activists. You know, in the hottest week ever since records began.
@DiegoBeghin Or the Gilets Jaunes - yeah, they're racist (because all white populist protests are racist, regardless of original topic), but the motivations were the fuel tax and the speed limit.
@Alon Yeah the Gilets Jaunes would already have been bad even without the racism. For example I really hated the Bonnets Rouges, but at the time I wasn't tuned in enough to know if there were any racist incidents.
Add comment