Earlier this week Austrian President, Alexander Van der Bellen, asked the leader of the conservative People’s Party (OVP) and incumbent Chancellor Karl Nehammer to form the next government. This, despite the fact the nationalist Freedom Party (FPO) won last month’s election on nearly one-third of the vote against just over 25 per cent for the OVP.
FPO leader, Herbert Kickl, believes he should be the next Chancellor but all other parties ruled out working with him, believing him and his outfit to be not only anti-migrant but far too sympathetic to Russia.
For FPO supporters however, this feels like a classic establishment stitch-up, with the OVP already holding coalition talks with the Left-leaning Social Democrats, having been offered this opportunity by a Green-aligned President.
Yet the tide is turning decisively in favour of nationalism and strong borders across Europe, with Giorgia Meloni in power in Italy, Geert Wilders’ party in the Dutch coalition, Poland’s Donald Tusk disavowing the right to asylum, and even French PM Michel Barnier calling for a moratorium on immigration. Marine Le Pen also polls first place in a future French presidential race.
Whether or not Kickl is considered controversial, the decision to ostracise him could radicalise his base and further augment FPO support. As with Wilders it may have been smarter to find a way to accommodate the nationalists rather than lock them out entirely.
Of course, given Austria’s history as the birthplace of Adolf Hitler, the sensitivities are perhaps unsurprising. Still, FPO is not a new party, but well-established, and this feels like a decision likely to set up problems further down the road.
If there is one thing which unites the nationalist Right it is a sense that democracy has been undermined by establishment stitch-ups on issues like immigration and political correctness.
Excluding the winner of last month’s election may feel like a win for the mainstream parties in Austria but could inadvertently fam the very flames which catalysed the FPO’s success in the first place.
Ours is a world in which Donald Trump – who has been the Republican US presidential candidate three times over nearly a decade – is in a dead heat with the Democrat Vice President with just days until the election.
Ours is a time when the EU is implementing new radical policies to guard against illegal migration, with Italy offshoring its asylum seekers to nearby Albania, just as Sir Keir Starmer ended Britain’s somewhat gimmicky Rwanda scheme.
Long gone are the days when German Chancellor Angela Merkel egged on illegal crossings. But Austria’s establishment perhaps didn’t get that memo.
No doubt there will be high-fives in Brussels at this locking out of the FPO. But the forces which propelled FPO to the top have gone nowhere.