Britain Needs Three Strategies for Europe’s Populist Right, Not One

The real threats are a shrinking partner pool abroad and strategic drift at home.

With the AfD now the second-largest party in the Bundestag after its February 2025 result, a PiS-backed candidate having won Poland’s presidency in June 2025, and French presidential elections due in April 2027 and Polish parliamentary elections later that year, Britain is at risk of losing dependable security partners on the continent. A minilateral hedge — the Joint Expeditionary Force, the Coalition of the Willing, the E3, and the Ukraine Defence Contact Group — and the recently published Strategic Defence Review hold some promise for mitigating this risk, but the populist landscape that is reshaping Britain’s continental partners is also reshaping the ground that this hedge sits on.

1. The populist right is not one threat — it is three. AfD-style sovereigntist-nationalism would fracture EU cohesion on Ukraine. PiS-style illiberal conservatism keeps the Atlanticist line but qualifies the Ukraine commitment. RN-style nativist statism is uncertain on NATO at the operational level. Britain cannot plan for a single populist Europe — it has to plan for three distinct disruption modes simultaneously, and the planning starts now, not after the elections.