The Dutch general election in March 2017 may not have led to the predicted major populist breakthrough, but the Tony Blair Institute warns that the “populist wave has not crested” | Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images Tony Blair Institute: ‘Wave of populism not yet peaked’ In a report, the institute points to the strength of nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary and the popularity of Italy’s 5Star Movement.

LONDON — European populism has not yet peaked as a political force and could become the "new normal," threatening the future of democracy across the Continent, a report commissioned by former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair predicts.

While 2017 may have confounded predictions of major populist breakthroughs in elections in France, the Netherlands and elsewhere, the report from the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change points to the strength of nationalist governments in Poland and Hungary and the popularity of Italy’s Five Star Movement ahead of elections in 2018 as signs that the “populist wave has not crested.”

Defining populist parties as those from the left and right that “claim to represent the true will of a unified people against domestic elites, foreign migrants or ethnic, religious or sexual minorities,” the report says their number has almost doubled in Europe since 2000, from 33 to 63, and their average vote share in elections nearly trebled from 8.5 percent to 24.1 percent.

While observing that populism predominantly emerges from the right of the political spectrum, the report also notes the rise of left-wing populism, particularly in Southern Europe, and refers in passing to the U.K. Labour Party that Blair once led as an example of a “mainstream” left-wing party that has “embraced some elements of populism.” Blair has been a longstanding critic of Labour's current leader Jeremy Corbyn, who increased the party's seat count and vote share in June's U.K. election but failed to unseat Prime Minister Theresa May.

The report says that while it may be “tempting” to see 2017 as evidence that populist successes will be fleeting, evidence from around the Continent “points in the other direction.”

Populism could become a “new normal” for parts of the Continent — Report

“Indeed, in many countries the trend line suggests that populists will continue to gain strength in the next round of elections,” it says, citing the Italian 5Star Movement’s lead in the polls ahead of the election expected to take place in March, and the Belgian Vlaams Belang party’s predicted success in 2019 election.

“Meanwhile, despite implementing legislative and judicial reforms that make it very difficult to displace them, populist governments in Hungary and Poland are as popular as ever,” the report adds.

Populism could become a “new normal” for parts of the Continent, the report predicts, with more and more instances of populist parties governing in coalition with larger parties, such as in Austria, where the right-wing populist Freedom Party has just become the junior partner in Sebastian Kurz’s new government.

Any such consolidation of populist strength would likely “transform European public policy in radical ways,” the report says.

"Unless politicians manage to identify and counteract the structural drivers, populism will keep garnering strength in the years to come" — Yascha Mounk

“Many populist parties advocate for the weakening or abolition of international institutions like the European Union; push for protectionist trade policies as a supposed panacea to economic anxieties over stagnating labor markets; or seek to impose stringent controls on immigration in response to cultural anxieties about the identity of European nations,” the report says.

In what the report describes as a “decidedly darker future” scenario, populist or populist-influenced governments in other parts of Europe could follow the example of populist parties in Hungary and Poland that have, the report says, sought to “weaken democratic norms, undermine independent institutions, and intimidate or disempower political opponents.”

It notes that populist parties in Western and Northern Europe have begun to “mimic the overtly authoritarian rhetoric of Eastern European populist parties.”

“A denigration of the media as ‘fake news’ or the ‘lying press’ has by now become a standard part of the populist repertoire in western as well as in eastern Europe; over the past year, attacks on parliamentary procedure, on due process, and on the separation of powers have also been on the rise,” the report states.

One of the report’s authors, Yascha Mounk, a Harvard University lecturer and executive director at the Tony Blair Institute, said that the transformation of European politics was “long-term.”

“This populist wave has not crested and unless politicians manage to identify and counteract the structural drivers, populism will keep garnering strength in the years to come,” he added.