Populism Is Diversifying, Why Populism Ends in Disaster. France and Italy.
Back in 2010 Italy was the major worry with its national debt at 120pc of GDP off the back of a decade of stagnation overseen by six different governments. In the end, Italy was “saved” under technocratic leadership.
With £1,800bn of sovereign debt and a 10-year bond yield above 7pc, Silvio Berlusconi, then the prime minister, made way for unelected officials imposed by external creditors.
For Italy, now read France – except the dangers posed to worldwide financial stability are now greater. France is an even bigger economy, the rest of the eurozone is far more indebted than 16 years ago and the ECB has maxed out its money-printing trick.
Paris is managing a national debt of 117pc of GDP, compared to 139pc in Rome. But Italian debt has been falling as a share of GDP while in France it’s been rising.
Initially chided by foreign commentators, Meloni’s administration will become the longest continuously serving government in the history of the Italian republic this week.
Under her, Italy is now running a primary budget surplus – where tax revenue exceeds spending before interest costs – while France’s budget deficit has exceeded 5pc of GDP for four years in a row.
But what’s really spooking financial markets is that recent polling suggests the second round of the French presidential election in May will be a Le Pen-Mélenchon run-off.
Le Pen has opposed almost every deficit reduction proposal put forward by the current government while Mélenchon is calling for the ECB to “freeze” state liabilities while pushing for a fifth of French public debt to be cancelled.
Liam Halligan Telegraph 30 August 2026
Even more importantly they have forced established politicians to discuss subjects once deemed out of bounds, such as immigration, national identity, and social disintegration.
In France, the National Rally (NR) is the largest party of the National Assembly and runs swathes of the south and industrial north.
The French magazine Le Nouvel Obs warned its progressive readers that Jordan Bardella was particularly dangerous because he appeared to be “a new man, clean and smooth.” He grew up in the suburbs, the child of Italian immigrants; has two million followers on TikTok and 800,000 on Instagram
Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News has been putting a populist spin on the news since 1996.
Populism is evolving, splitting into new subspecies, or forming alliances with other lifeforms. The essence of populism remains the same: siding with the people against the powerful; thinking with the gut rather than the head; ignoring cost benefit analysis
The leaders of classic populism are usually white men of a certain age who hanker after a lost world when the population was mainly Caucasian, and the only alphabet soup came in a can. They live in a world of Fox News where stories about social carnage are interrupted by advertisements for hemorrhoid ointment and gold coins.
The most interesting example of hybridization is Javier Milei’s libertarian-populist mix in Argentina. It may take a right-wing populist to undo the damage done by left-wing populists.
Perhaps the most fast-growing form of populism at the moment is on the left.
In his new book, Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster, Richard Hanania argues that left-wing populism is going through the same evolution as right-wing populism.
Kakistocracy: Why Populism Ends in Disaster Richard Hanania
https://www.amazon.com/Kakistocracy-Why-Populism-Ends-Disaster/dp/0063479990
The current right-wing populist wave began in 2009 in the inchoate Tea-Party movement
Likewise, left-wing populism began in 2011 in the equally inchoate Occupy Wall Street and was consumed by internal squabbles.
But now, after a false start with Bernie Sanders, the movement has found several plausible messiahs, principally New York City mayor Zohran Mamdaniand Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and a new taste for hierarchy, organization, and power.
Adrian Wooldridge Bloomberg 17 July 2026
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-07-17/populism-isn-t-peaking-it-s-diversifying
Adrian Wooldridge is the global business columnist for Bloomberg Opinion. A former writer at the Economist, he is author of “The Aristocracy of Talent: How Meritocracy Made the Modern World.”
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