On the surface it would seem that the populists are fragmenting in Europe. In France, Marion Maréchal is about to go into battle with her aunt, Marine Le Pen, as the lead candidate for a rival right-wing party in next year’s European Parliament elections.
A maverick politician of the German left, Sahra Wagenknecht, is about to launch her own party, one that would straddle the far left and far right. Meanwhile, current polling indicates the far-right AfD is the second largest party in Germany after the centre-right CDU/CSU. You might have thought such fragmentation would be bad for the populists: this is not true. The entry of a second populist party could increase their total share of the votes, if they can attract voters from different parts of the political spectrum.
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