Pauline Hanson, Minister for Immigration in the Liberal-One Nation coalition, looks into the camera and says: "Australia is closed for asylum seekers coming by boat." After its second term as the junior partner in government, the future looks bright for the party she founded nearly three decades ago. It is the only party gaining new members and there are numerous young One Nation MPs capable of replacing Hanson when she steps down after a stellar political career.

If the history of the populist radical right in Australia had followed the same script as in Western Europe, the above would not be an exercise in alternate reality, but a plausible scenario. In Europe, radical right populists have gone from being seen as "flash-in-the-pan" protest parties to fixed points in the political landscape.

Pauline Hanson struck a popular chord in the 1990s but could not turn that into a sustainable political party.

Australians these days think of Hanson as a blip, but at the time she was a major threat to the mainstream. The reasons her party failed were many, but bad organisation was one. Another was the reaction of the Liberal Party that (after some hesitation) condemned the messenger while incorporating part of her message.

In Western Europe, it has been a very different story and the radical right has been one of the key political phenomena since the 1990s. These parties owe their fortunes not just to public frustrations about immigration, the economy, the European Union and the ideological convergence of mainstream centre-right and centre-left parties. Their durability is also thanks to capable leaders and well-developed party machines.