“France is scared,” Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National declared this week, as she stood on the promenade in Nice where a terrorist ploughed into revellers on Bastille Day last year. A new report from Demos charts this turbulence. As the author, Sophie Gaston, writes: “There is a spectre haunting Europe: a culture of fear that is finding its form and asserting its growing influence in myriad ways.”
Ukip stalks Labour in its Northern heartlands, with an anti-globalisation, anti-immigrant message. In Germany, Alternative für Deutschland spills into the streets. Commentators on both the left and right have joined the dots and declared a populist wave.
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