Why won’t the right unite in Western Europe?

After months of rumors, Nigel Farage has reportedly said the quiet part out loud: the Reform UK leader told donors that he plans for his far-right party to join forces with the center-right Conservative Party, according to the Financial Times. If the two parties strike such a deal, it will likely mean the British right will return to power at the next election, which will happen no later than May 2029.

It would be the first time in recent memory that the establishment center-right party of a major European country agreed to share power with a far-right populist upstart.

Until now, establishment partiesin Western Europe have refused to entertain such a move. Centrist groups in Germany, for example, have consistently refused to go into coalition with the surging far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, so Chancellor Friedrich Merz has to make do with a fragile alliance with the center-left Social Democrats. In France, the center-right Republicans – the de-facto party of former Presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy – dumped its leader last year for making a deal with the far-right National Rally (RN). In Portugal, the ruling center-right alliance has refused to make a deal with the upstart far-right Chega party, even as it repeatedly fails to draw enough votes in recent elections to win a majority.

Why haven’t these countries done this? For one thing, the center right and far right disagree on many issues, notably on Ukraine, immigration, the remit of the European Union, and liberalism – and establishment parties are terrified that these populist upstarts will undo everything they’ve built over the last few decades. There’s also a tactical aspect: center-right parties may fear that they would lose voters to center-left groups if they made such a pact. Meanwhile, some far-right leaders in Western Europe – Farage, RN frontman Jordan Bardella, and Alternative for Germany head Alice Weidel – may be eyeing power for themselves, as each of their partiesnowleads in the polls.

Some issues are more specific to individual countries. Farage, for example, distrusts the Tories on the personal level: he felt that former Prime Minister Boris Johnsonbetrayed a pact they made ahead of the 2019 election by allowing immigration and implementing a “softer” exit from the European Union. In France, the antipathy between the center-right and the far-right is intergenerational. The German “firewall” that precludes centrist parties from building coalitions with far-right groups is there at least in part to prevent a repeat of 1933 and the Nazi takeover.

Why the change in the United Kingdom? First off, Reform UK is surging in the polls, streaming clear of both the Conservatives and the ruling Labour Party as immigration replaces health care as the top issue in the United Kingdom.

But the reason for a potential right-wing alliance in the United Kingdom is also a systematic one. The United Kingdom has a first-past-the-post system, meaning you can win any seat with a simple plurality. For example, in South West Norfolk the Labour candidate won the 2024 race with just 11,847 votes (less than 27%) to unseat former Prime Minister Liz Truss, who split the right-leaning voters with a Reform UK candidate. This has ramifications nationwide: Labour won nearly two thirds of all seats in 2024, despite winning barely a third of the vote.

Nonetheless, if you add together the polling numbers for center-right and far-right parties in Western European nations, it would be enough for them – in coalition – to win outright majorities. Taking the United Kingdom as a case in point, Reform UK and the Conservative would combine for 45% of the vote. No single party has achieved such a figure since 1970. Even allowing for some leaking of voters, this coalition would likely be the biggest party.

Be careful what you wish for. There is an example of the center-right making a deal with the far-right: Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof struck a deal with far-right leader Geert Wilders to go into a coalition government in 2024. Less than a year later, the government collapsed, as Wilders exited the coalition in protest against its asylum policy. This move didn’t bear fruit, either: Wilders’ party lost seats in the October election.

Shifting leverage. The center right across Western Europe may soon be running out of options, though. The UK Conservatives had their worst performance in history last year. The French Republicans have become a fringe group. And while the center-right Christian Democrats hold power in Germany, the coalition is already cracking – the hard-left bailed Merz out this week during a pension-reform vote. Deal or no deal, these parties must change – in a meaningful fashion – to stay relevant.

“The Conservative Party is changing,” the Tory leader Kemi Badenoch said in her first speech after she won the January leadership race. A year later, with talk of a historic tie up with Reform, it may change far more than anyone could possibly have imagined.