Whither Center-Right

What We Can Learn from the Collapse of Conservative Governments

After the global ascension of national populist candidates from 2016 to 2018, liberals have regained confidence through recent election results in France, Germany, the U.K., and Canada. Their victories assured them it was a flash in the pan that Globalists like Macron, Trudeau, Biden, and Scholz would keep the ship running as intended.

Rather than having a complete course correction to the global order envisioned by Fukuyama, we’re seeing a new phenomenon which is the collapse of center-right parties and governments that failed to meet the demands of the national populist right.

During last week’s French election, the center-right Les Republicans garnered just 4.78 percent of the vote. Les Republicans, which formally had the name Union for a Popular Movement and Rally for the Republic, held the Presidency for 17 consecutive years from 1995 to 2012. In the 2002 election against Jean-Marie Le Pen, the center-right Presidential candidate garnered 82 percent of the vote. Now, they will be denied entering the second round of the presidential contest for the second time in a row.

Where did their supporters go? Split between abstaining from voting, moving to Macron’s centrist and globalist En Marche, and Marine Le Pen, the daughter of the man they defeated just two decades prior.