The Folly of Center-Left Parties Chasing after Nativist Voters
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Last night we had dinner with my parents. For reasons that aren’t worth going into, Maia and I found ourselves explaining, as best we could, what the hell is up with Labour. Maia mentioned Labour’s proposal to cease the valuables of asylum seekers. It’s obviously a terrible ideas if your goal is to help refugees become independent, productive members of society. On the plus side, it sends a clear signal that Labour is happy to engage in performative sadism. I’m sure this will make at least a dozen anti-immigrant voters briefly reconsider Labour before the next time they back Reform.
The proposal is directly borrowed from the Danish Social Democratic Party, whose embrace of hard-line immigration policies is widely credited with helping it regain power in 2019 and gain a single seat in 2022. I made an offhand comment about how that strategy wasn’t working out for the Social Democrats these days, but Cas Mudde just published a piece that absolutely skewers the “Danish Model” of center-left nativist posturing.
Research by social scientists overwhelmingly shows that adopting far-right positions leads neither to electoral success for centrist parties nor to electoral defeat for far-right parties. But this has not stopped centre-left advisers, politicians and strategists. Whenever my colleagues and I refer to this research, someone will point to the alleged success of the “Danish model”. The lure is so great that even as polls were predicting the loss of Copenhagen, Britain’s Labour government ignored internal opposition and introduced a number of policies designed to emulate Denmark’s extremely stringent asylum rules.
To be clear, the Danish model has never worked. Although the nativist turn predates the current Social Democrat party leader, Mette Frederiksen made it her signature policy, not just as prime minister of Denmark but also during the Danish presidency of the EU. Her victory in 2019’s general election did not represent a great electoral surge: the party lost 0.4% of the vote but, because of specific bloc politics, regained the premiership. In 2022, her party did make small electoral gains (1.6%) but only remained in office by governing with the mainstream right. Currently, the party polls just above 20%, and is expected to reach a historic low result in next year’s legislative election.
At the same time, the far right has not been defeated. The main far-right party, the Danish People’s party (DPP), which was already on a downward trend before the ascent of Frederiksen, saw a modest comeback in this week’s local elections. At the same time, new far-right parties, such as the New Right (NB) and the Denmark Democrats (DD) have emerged. Today, the DPP and DD together poll close to the record high of the DPP in 2015.
Other social democrats should learn the right lessons this time. Opportunistic and often half-hearted anti-immigrant policies will not win over far-right voters. Moreover, their nativist turn will push away progressive voters, particularly younger ones, who want a party that is socioeconomically and socioculturally leftwing. This is particularly visible in Britain, where Keir Starmer’s desperate attempts to win over Reform UK voters is failing miserably, as Labour haemorrhages support to the Greens and Lib Dems.
The good news, I guess, is that even those Democrats who swung right on immigration in 2024 rarely toyed with the “Danish Model.” Trump has, rather predictably, increased support for immigration. Strong majority of Americans disapprove of suspending asylum applications. So I don’t expect to see it gain traction here.
