Rightwing populists thrive by stoking chaos and promising order, so stable governance is the best defence against them
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/profile/rafaelbehr. "From strife-torn France to the UK, rightwing populists win when they stir chaos while promising order | Rafael Behr | The Guardian." October 21, 2026. www.theguardian.com
The Gist
Behr argues that far-right populists win when people are tired of chaos and believe the populists can restore order, and that they often help create that chaos themselves. France and the US show the pattern, but Britain is currently stable, which makes it harder for Farage's Reform UK to succeed. So the government's job is to keep things that way.
Conclusion
Rightwing populists like Le Pen, Trump and Farage win power by stirring or exploiting chaos while presenting themselves as the guarantors of order, so Britain's stable Labour government under Andy Burnham should keep conditions stable to prevent Reform UK from succeeding.
Premises
- Elections in which one side represents chaos are nearly always won by the party promising order (e.g. Labour's 2024 landslide after turbulent Tory rule).
- In France, riots and instability, together with a discredited centre and a divisive populist left under Mélenchon, are boosting Le Pen, and the 'republican front' that previously blocked her would likely collapse in a Mélenchon-Le Pen run-off.
- Incumbent populists such as Trump cannot deliver on their simple solutions, so they blame ever-wider enemies, generate dissent, and respond with repression, producing more chaos while demanding the nation rally around them as the only source of order.
- Rightwing populists actively welcome or provoke disorder and use it as a pretext to expand their own power (Le Pen's potential emergency declarations, Trump's possible election-fraud claims, Rupert Lowe's openly welcomed 'civil unrest').
- In Britain, anti-migrant nationalism has a ceiling, voters motivated to block Farage outnumber his supporters, and a stable Labour government denies the right the chaos it needs to pose as a firefighter.
Assumptions
- Voters' desire for order and stability is a dominant driver of electoral choice, outweighing policy or ideology.
- Populist right parties benefit from instability in a similar way across France, the US and the UK despite different political systems.
- Current British stability will persist and is attributable to the government rather than to incidental factors.
- Populist actors deliberately provoke chaos rather than merely benefiting from it.
- Anti-Farage tactical voting will hold in a UK election as it has historically in France.
- The author's characterisation of Burnham's Britain as stable and of Trump and Le Pen as authoritarian is accurate.