Daphne Halikiopoulou

There is a new big cleavage emerging across Europe.

Those people who don't want to pay more for the environment who are actually voting for the far right because they believe that they are being hurt.

by environmental policies.

These people are living particularly in rural areas of Europe where they can't afford to, say, give up their car and, I don't know, buy a new one that has no emissions or buy more environmentally friendly cars.

environmentally friendly cars or vehicles, etc.

So with these, I call these the peripheral voters.

It is capturing these voters that allows far-right parties to extend well beyond their secure voting base and get people

to vote for them.

How do they do that?

This is the key of what I'm arguing, because do you know any society that doesn't have insecure people?

There is no society that has no insecure people.

There is always going to be people who are worried about their economic situation, they're worried about their status in society, but these may or may not

be captured by voters depending on what the parties do.

So parties have power to shape their own electoral fortunes.

How are the far-right parties in Europe doing this?

Well, they are putting forward what I call civic nationalist narratives, or in other words, they are sort of shifting the boundaries of toleration on its head.

These parties are no longer saying, I'm extreme, and I don't want people who are biologically different to me.

because you know who's going to vote for a party that is openly racist.

No, what they say is we exclude those who do not espouse our liberal democratic values.

We exclude those who don't espouse our liberal democracies.