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The Reform UK leader portrays his Reform UK party as a distinct phenomenon that has exploded on to the global stage, its meteoric rise an exceptional epochal event. However this week, in every one of Europe’s major countries and from India and Southeast Asia to the United States and Argentina, far-right, anti-immigration, anti-globalisation parties like his are also ahead in the public surveys.

During recent Czech voting, the rightwing, pro-Russian leader Andrej Babiš toppled the head of government Petr Fiala. National Rally, which has just brought down yet another French prime minister, is leading the polls for both the French presidency and the legislature. In Germany, the right-wing AfD party is currently the leading party. Hungary’s Fidesz party, Robert Fico’s pro-Russian Slovakian coalition and the Brothers of Italy are already in power, while the Austrian FPÖ, the Dutch PVV and Belgium’s Vlaams Belang – all hardline nationalists – are part of an global alliance of opponents of global cooperation, motivated by far-right propagandists like Steve Bannon, seeking to overthrow the global legal order, weaken human rights and destroy multilateral cooperation.

The Populist Nationalist Surge

The populist nationalist surge reveals a new and unavoidable truth that democrats ignore at our peril: an nationalist ideology – once thought defeated with the Berlin Wall – has replaced economic liberalism as the dominant ideology of our age, giving us a world of priorities: “US priority”, “Indian focus”, “China first”, “Russian primacy”, “group priority” and often “exclusive group focus” regimes. It is this ethnic nationalism that helps explain why the world is now composed of many autocratic states and fewer democratic ones, and this ideology is the force behind the violations of international human rights law not just by one nation in conflict but in almost every one of the world’s 59 cross-border conflicts and civil wars.

Understanding the Underlying Forces

It is important to understand the root causes, common to almost every country, that have driven this new age of nationalism. It begins with a broadly shared perception that a globalization that was accessible yet exclusionary has been a unregulated system that has been unjust to all.

For more than a decade, leaders have not only been slow to respond to the millions who feel excluded and marginalized, but also to the shifting dynamics of global economic power, transitioning from a US-dominated era once dominated by the United States to a multipolar world of competing superpowers, and from a rules-based order to a power-based one. The nationalist ideology that this has incited means open commerce is giving way to protectionism. Where economics used to drive politics, the nationalist agendas is now driving economic decisions, and already more than 100 countries are running protectionist strategies characterized by reshoring and ally-focused trade and by restrictions on international commerce, foreign funding and technology transfer, lowering global collaboration to its lowest ebb since 1945.

Hope in Global Public Sentiment

However, there is hope. The cement is still wet, and even as it solidifies we can find hope in the common sense of the global public. In a recent survey for a prominent organization, of 36,000 people in dozens of nations we find a significant portion are less receptive to an exclusionary nationalism and more inclined to support international cooperation than many of the officials who rule over them.

Globally there is, perhaps surprisingly, only a small group of hardened anti-internationalists representing a minority of the global population (even if a quarter in the United States currently) who either feel peaceful living between diverse communities is unattainable or have a zero-sum mindset that if they or their nation do well, it has to be at the cost of others doing badly.

However there are an additional group at the opposite extreme, whom we might call dedicated globalists, who either still see cooperation across borders through open trade as a mutually beneficial arrangement, or are what a prominent philosopher calls “locally engaged global citizens”.

Worldwide Public Position

Most people of the global public are somewhere in between: not narrow, inward-looking nationalists, as “America first” ideology would suggest, or all-in cosmopolitans. They are patriotic but don’t see the world as in a never-ending struggle between the “us” and the “others”, opponents permanently set apart from each other in an unbridgeable divide.

Do the majority in the middle favor a obligation-light or a dutiful world? Are they prepared to accept responsibilities beyond their local area or community boundaries? Affirmative, under certain conditions. A initial segment, about a fifth, will back humanitarian action to alleviate hardship and are ready to act out of selflessness, backing disaster relief for affected areas. Those we might call “charitable” multilateralists feel the pain of others and believe in something larger than their own interests.

A second group comprising a similar percentage are practical cooperators who want to know that any taxes paid for international development are spent well. And there is a third group, 21%, personally motivated collaborators, who will endorse teamwork if they can see that it advantages them and their local areas, whether it be through guaranteeing them food on the table or safety and stability.

Building a Cooperative Majority

So a clear majority can be constructed not just for emergency assistance if funds are used wisely but also for international measures to deal with worldwide issues, like environmental emergency and disease control, as long as this case is argued on grounds of enlightened self-interest, and if we emphasize the mutual advantages that benefit them and their own country. And thus for those who have long wondered whether we work together from necessity or if we have a need to cooperate, the answer is both.

This willingness to cooperate across borders shows how we can turn back the xenophobic tide: we can overcome today’s negative, isolated and often forceful and controlling nationalism that vilifies immigrants, foreigners and “others” as long as we advocate for a positive, outward-looking and welcoming national pride that addresses people’s need for community and resonates with their immediate concerns.

Tackling Key Issues

And while in-depth polls tell us that across the Western nations, illegal immigration is currently the biggest national issue – and it's clear that it must promptly be managed effectively – the snapshots of opinion also tell us that the people are even more concerned about what is happening in their personal circumstances and within their own local communities. Recently, a prominent leader spoke movingly about how what’s good about Britain can overcome what’s negative, doing so precisely because in most western countries, “broken” and “deteriorating” are the words people have for years most frequently used when asked about both our economy and community.

However, as the leader also pointed out, the far right is more interested in using complaints than ending them. A Reform leader praised a ill-fated economic plan as “an excellent fiscal policy” since the 1980s. But he would also enact a similar plan – what was planned – the biggest ever cuts in public services. The party's proposal to cut government expenditure by a huge sum would not fix struggling areas but damage them, turn citizen against citizen and destroy any sense of unity. Under a far-right government, you will not be able to afford to be ill, impaired, poor or at-risk. Every day from now on, and in every constituency, the party should be asked which hospital, which educational institution and which government service will be the first to be cut or closed.

The Stakes and the Alternative

“Faragism” is neoliberalism at its most inhumane, more destructive even than monetarism, and vindictive far beyond austerity. What the people are telling us all over the Western world is that they want their governments to rebuild our financial systems and our civic societies. “The party” and its international partners should be exposed repeatedly for plans that would devastate both. And for those of us who believe our greatest achievements could be in the future, we can go beyond highlighting the party's contradictions by setting out a argument for a better Britain that resonates not just to idealists, but to realists, to personal benefit, and to the daily kindness of the British people.