‘Project Fear’ didn’t work, so why do we keep demonising far-right and left voters?

EUobserver · 21-10-2026, 18:00:00

My beef with both far-right and far-left populists is that they're false prophets. In Europe, at least, the squeezes on public services, high taxes, debt burdens and crippling costs of living are legacies of the Covid pandemic, wars in Ukraine and Iran and a eurozone crisis that was never fully resolved. These can’t be wished away, and they won’t be cured with caps on immigration, higher taxes on the rich or the promise of earlier retirement.