Embracing the Radical Right Is Killing Conservatism as We Knew It
Mainstream center-right parties in the US and Europe have chased populist voters — only to lose economic credibility and fracture their winning coalitions.
Illustration: Raven Jiang for Bloomberg
The most important global political trend of the past decade has been the collapse of the center-right.
America’s Republican establishment feebly folded in the face of the MAGA insurgency. Britain’s Conservative Party, often described as “the natural party of government,” is struggling to survive as Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK sucks up the political oxygen. Even in Germany, where the taboo against ethnonationalism is stronger, Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s conservative CDU is neck-and-neck with the AfD in opinion polls.