A threat of a new right wing takeover across Europe

IN fairness to British politicians generally, no matter on which side of the political spectrum or even if they appear to be totally incompetent, there has been very little possibility of a far right or indeed far left government coming to power in 150 years or more.

The same cannot be said for the rest of Europe and it appears that Austria has escaped from having the first extreme right wing President, thanks in part to postal votes which were received from 12 per cent of that country’s tiny voting population of just 6.4 million.

The early 20th century saw the rise of communism which was matched by fascism by the time of the Second World War and despite the result of the war, which saw large areas of Eastern Europe turn ‘red,’ Spain stayed defiantly rightist, Greece vacillated from Civil War to the right wing military junta and Portugal went left.

As the end of the 20th century approached so we saw a breakdown of communist rule and a general move towards what is generally described as Democracy. Now however the terrible events in the Middle East and Northern Africa have seen an influx of ‘foreign’ Muslims who have no concept of the European way of life and things have started to turn nasty.

Many countries within the EU are agreeable to taking in these migrants/refugees but their electorate is understandably not so happy and we have seen some of the problems that can arise when two completely alien cultures clash, with Germany perhaps being one of the best examples of how good intentions can have dreadful consequences.

Without doubt there will be a growth in negative response to the ever-increasing number of new ‘citizens’ entering the Union as well as the somewhat ill-timed possibility of allowing Turkish passport holders into Europe without visas.

If the voters in each country are sufficiently motivated by this ever-increasing number of mainly Muslim arrivals, then they will vote for parties that promise to bring an end to the tide and this could see a number of potentially right wing and possibly isolationist governments which could in turn lead to a break-up of the European Union.

Time will tell whether this is a good or bad thing.