Well met in Kyiv
(Shutterstock)
Anyone who has watched Servant of the People, the television drama series that propelled its protagonist, Volodymyr Zelensky, to presidential office, will recognise a familiar archetype. The hero is the little guy versus the system: an ordinary history teacher, whose expletive-laden cri de coeur — surreptitiously filmed by a pupil and posted online — makes him a celebrity overnight. He wins the election without even knowing that he is a candidate. The people embrace him because he is incorruptible, authentic and patriotic.
What has not been acknowledged by most European and American leaders is that this kind of politics is usually dismissed as populism or nationalism. It explains why Boris Johnson, who has been accused of both, is visibly more comfortable with Zelensky than the rest — and the feeling is mutual. One only has to see the footage of these two walking through the war-torn streets of Kyiv to see that the chemistry is genuine.
After the Prime Minister’s surprise visit last weekend, the Ukrainian President was fulsome in his praise for his guest, whom he always refers to as “Boris”. His gratitude for “the leadership of the UK in providing our country with the necessary assistance, especially in terms of defence, as well as in sanctions policy, will remain forever in history of the defence of democracy and Europe.” Note that Zelensky, though not actually a history teacher, nonetheless sees everything in historical terms, sub specie aeternitatis. Nobody but this buccaneering British Prime Minister, warts and all, could have rallied the West behind Zelensky — and he knows it. “Ukraine will always be grateful to Boris and Britain for this.”
What this camaraderie demonstrates is that it’s a great mistake to lump all nationalists and populists together. Zelensky, for example, has no time for Viktor Orbàn, who has just been re-elected in Hungary despite his cosy relationship with Vladimir Putin. Likewise, there is no love lost between Boris Johnson and the various far-Right populists of Europe such as Matteo Salvini in Italy, the Alternative for Germany (AfD) or Marine Le Pen in France. In the unlikely event that Mme Le Pen defeats Emmanuel Macron in the second round, the PM will have no choice but to work with her, but he has no truck with her hardline policies towards Muslims or her visceral anti-Semitism. Johnson knows that the British have always found such attitudes abhorrent. Three centuries ago, as the French Huguenots were fleeing to England, John Locke was creating a theoretical basis for religious toleration.
History is crucial in France, too, especially the history of Vichy and the Occupation. Le Pen — like her far-Right and far-Left rivals Éric Zemmour and Jean-Luc Melenchon — tries to deny French responsibility for the deportation of Jews to Nazi death camps. Never forget that Boris Johnson won the 2019 election against Jeremy Corbyn, who like Melenchon tried to mobilise a Left-wing version of anti-Semitism. Zelensky may be a national populist, but he is also a Russian-speaking Jew under whose leadership extremist parties of Left and Right polled so badly that they have no virtually representation in the Ukrainian Parliament. He has recently banned some small pro-Putin parties, just as Churchill banned Mosley’s British Union of Fascists during the Second World War. It is not only possible but almost unavoidable to espouse a liberal form of nationalism in wartime. Even in peacetime, however, it is striking that extremist parties have never gained a foothold in Westminster, unlike most Continental parliaments. In France, as Professor Matt Goodwin points out, the only age group that puts Macron ahead of Le Pen in polls are the over-60s. Populist support has been in double figures in all recent European elections, except for Portugal.
The Conservative Party has remained the dominant force in British politics by harnessing history in the service of liberal democracy and ensuring that a healthy patriotism is part of its DNA, while keeping the toxins of xenophobia and racism outside the mainstream. As long as it can continue to do that, this country may hope to avoid the extremes of Continental or American populist politics. But it is equally important to find allies in Europe among those who share the moderate, cosmopolitan British vision of nationhood. A good test is their attitude to Putinism, an authoritarian ideology that condemns the West as irredeemably decadent, distorts history to deny the existence of entire peoples and promotes a brutally intolerant form of Russian imperialism. This is the dividing line that matters most in today’s world, not the unclear ones between populism and liberalism, nationalism and globalism or Right and Left. The image of Boris Johnson and Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv symbolises the solidarity of the democratic, patriotic West with its embattled outpost in Eastern Europe.
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