The Far-Right Parties

There are many similarities and differences between the two prominent far-right parties in France and the United Kingdom. Immigration reform, Euroscepticism, long-term leadership, and dramatic recent European election success are the most significant ties between the two, and stances with Russia, success in local elections, election structure, and historical background being the most significant differences. Who their supporters are and what the parties are pushing link the two as well but are to be expected in nearly any party that would be considered “far-right.” All of these factors that compare the similarities and differences in the two parties are the reasons why they have been successful, each in their own way but in recent elections, …show more content…
(Ford & Goodwin p.71) When he was elected, the party had been recently been called a “single-issue party” which didn’t leave much room for the party to get a significant percentage of the vote and Farage saw this weakness and immediately acted on it. (Ford & Goodwin p.66) He came in and implemented a number of new policies that for the most part remain the platform today 10 years later; that of being anti-immigration, having socially conservative policies, tax cuts, and even climate change denial. (Ford & Goodwin p. 77) The goal of this was to open the party to accepting more people that had recently become disenchanted by David Cameron’s socially liberal policies, leading to him calling them, “fruitcakes, lunies, and closet racists.” (The Guardian) He found immediate success in gaining a huge chunk of voters in the 2009 EP elections, gaining 13 MEP’s and putting UKIP up as the second most MEP’s in the UK, after the conservatives. (BBC) Farage is still in charge, something that can be said about the Le Pen name in France, which has been the only name in charge of the FN since its …show more content…
They founded the party as a Eurosceptic party that adopted anti-immigration policies to open the door to more voters, but it is first and foremost an anti-EU party. Because the European Parliamentary elections are directly involved in EU politics, the significance of winning the majority of the seats for the UK is huge. It not only gives the party a platform for influence in Europe that it never had before, but it also has brought to the forefront issues that weren’t thought to be major points of topic before such as the referendum on whether the UK would be staying in the EU or not, something that PM Cameron promised to give the UK people in a direct result of the elections in 2014 in an attempt to take the voters that vote for UKIP mainly for that