Philippe Legrain

My latest for Project Syndicate

Denmark’s Social Democrats won the election there this month on an anti-immigrant platform. So is immigrant bashing a vote winner for Europe’s beleaguered progressives?

Read my latest for Project Syndicate

With the next few months set to be dominated by unseemly haggling over top EU jobs, starting with the presidency of the European Commission, it may feel like business as usual in Brussels. But if you take the longer view, there are good reasons to hope that EU democracy may be evolving in a positive direction.

Read my column for Brussels Times

The European Union is increasingly caught between the United States and China. Until it finds a common strategic purpose, the bloc will struggle to advance its interests and is increasingly likely to fall victim to great-power plays.

Read my latest column for Project Syndicate.

Quoted in the FT

Quoted in Belgium’s L’Echo

Quoted by Voice of America

Quoted in the Daily Mail

I contributed to a symposium published by The International Economy here.

“Populist” is often used as a derogatory label for any popular political view that someone deplores. But although populism can take many forms, it has a specific meaning: populists claim to stand up for “the people” (their supporters) against the elites (their opponents, whom they tend to view as enemies). Most populists are on the far right or the far left, but they need not be: witness Italy’s heterodox Five Star Movement. And the elites they lambast are often (but not always) economically and/or socially liberal.

Some voters have always hated liberalism and openness. But the main reason why populism is on the rise is that this core support has been swelled over the past decade by a broader constituency of voters who are angry and fearful.

While populists don’t have the answers, voters’ rage against the establishment is understandable. The financial crisis and its unduly austere aftermath have discredited elites, who often seem incompetent, self-serving, out of touch, and corrupt. Both bailed-out bankers and politicians have inflicted misery on ordinary people without being held accountable for their mistakes.

Meanwhile, communities that have suffered from economic change (mostly due to automation, not globalization) have often been neglected. No wonder many voters feel the system is rigged against them.

Populists tap into the resentment of people who feel ignored, looked down on, and hard done by—who have lost status or fear they will. Fears about the future include both economic worries that robots, Chinese workers, and immigrants are threatening people’s livelihoods, and cultural ones that white Westerners are losing their privileged status both locally and globally.

Far-left populists tend to target their fire at billionaires and big businesses that abuse their clout to buy political power and screw workers and consumers. But there is a big debate about whether far-right populism—which focuses its hostility on foreigners in general and immigrants in particular—is driven primarily by economic issues or cultural ones.

In practice, these often can’t be neatly separated. In difficult times, distributional cleavages come to the fore— over access to shrivelled public services, for instance— and are often then overlaid with identity clashes. When people lose status as individuals, they often prize their group identity more. In insecure times, some hanker for the perceived security of leadership by a strongman. In times of economic decline, people are more nostalgic for the past. And so on.

Our age of discontent provides rich pickings for opportunists such as Donald Trump (who was previously a Democrat) and Hungary’s Viktor Orban (who was once a liberal). But successful politicians often are opportunistic: witness Emmanuel Macron, France’s self-styled Jupiterian president who earlier stormed to power posing as an anti-establishment outsider.

To defeat the populists, mainstream politicians need to address the economic and cultural insecurities that create a wider constituency for populism in positive and constructive ways. That includes bold economic policies to promote greater opportunity and fairness and unifying cultural narratives such as progressive patriotism.

On ABC RN’s Sunday Extra with Hugh Riminton on 20 April

Listen here.

Despite the huge challenges they face, refugees are the most entrepreneurial migrants in Australia – and are nearly twice as likely to start a business as Australian taxpayers in general.

Read my piece in the Guardian to coincide with the publication of my new study for the Centre for Policy Development and OPEN on refugee entrepreneurship in Australia.

Greenhouse-gas emissions in the EU actually rose in 2017 – while they fell in Trump’s United States.

Read my column for Brussels Times.

Beware enemies hiding in plain sight. The Audi in the driveway and that BMW creeping around the corner are threats to national security. These days, it’s not the reds under the bed Americans need to worry about—it’s the Mercs on the lurk.

Read my latest column for Foreign Policy on Trump’s threatened trade war against European cars.

Is the eurozone heading for recession? How will policymakers react if the slowdown does get worse? And what damage could an economic downturn do to Europe’s already fractious politics? Those pressing questions ought to be at the top of policymakers’ minds in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in May.

Read my latest column for the Brussels Times

Yesterday’s rejection of the UK’s EU exit deal was the biggest government defeat ever – on the most important piece of legislation of this parliamentary term and many previous ones.

Yet Prime Minister Theresa May has not resigned. The government is almost certain to win this evening’s no-confidence vote tabled by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.

And – yes – the most likely scenario is still that Britain will exit the EU with a deal that looks very much like the one MPs have just overwhelmingly rejected.

Read my latest for CapX.

Now that the UK government and the EU have finally agreed a Brexit deal, Theresa May must seek Parliament’s approval for it. The battle lines are already drawn. But these do not involve hardline Brexiteers facing off against unreconciled Remainers, or Conservatives against Labour.

The big divide is between pragmatists who think that a bad deal is better than no-deal chaos and players who are willing to risk no-deal chaos to achieve their various ends (a hard Brexit, no Brexit, a Labour government), as I explain for CapX.

Far from prompting other countries to want to leave, the Brexit shambles is boosting support for the EU. Even far-right nationalists have concluded that EU exit is a dead end.

But the EU faces a more insidious threat: that it will disintegrate from within, as nationalists first undermine then seek to take over EU institutions, as I explain in my latest column for Brussels Times

Photo by Joy Ekpeti

I debated this with Ian Goldin at The Economist’s Open Future conference in London.

Having just flown in from Sydney I was extremely jetlagged, but apart from saying the word “fundamentally” a few too many times, I hope my positive, reasoned message came across well.

Watch the full day on YouTube; our panel starts around 7 hours 11 minutes in

Angela Merkel’s announcement of her political departure has prompted a predictable response from many quarters: that she was the “steady hand” that held Europe together, and that her “strong and stabilising leadership” will be sorely missed.

Nonsense. Merkel’s 13 years in office have involved domestic drift and European decay. She has complacently coasted along, failing to address Germany’s mounting economic and security challenges, and allowing Europe’s many crises to fester. Her approach would be tolerable for a small country in quiet times; it is catastrophic for Europe’s dominant power in an era of upheaval, as I explain in Project Syndicate.

Mehreen Khan kindly mentioned the piece in the FT’s Brussels briefing

My latest column for Brussels Times

Read my contribution to The National Interest

Refugees are typically very hard-working, highly motivated and loyal employees, and many are highly skilled too. On a fantastic speaking tour of New Zealand organised by Host International and other partners on 6-10 August I made the case for employing refugees including at a parliamentary breakfast hosted by Minister of Finance Grant Robertson and a lunch hosted by the British High Commissioner in New Zealand, Laura Clarke.

I was interviewed on TV on the AM Show and The Project

I wrote an article for the National Business Review

Here’s my interview with Sam Sadcheva for Newsroom.co.nz on refugee employment and the broader threat to openness from President Trump

Here’s a press release from Multicultural New Zealand calling for action to employ refugees

Here’s a great piece by Thomas Manch on stuff.co.nz

I spoke about the threats to our open world at an event organised by the New Zealand Initiative at the University of Victoria in Wellington on 8 August. Apologies for the poor-quality audio.

Watch my interview on Al Jazeera English’s Inside Story