SURVEY the fractured political landscape of Europe’s bigger countries and some similarities are easy to spot. In Germany, France and Britain right-wing insurgent parties are nipping at the heels of governments, denouncing them as has-beens trafficking in cant and doublespeak. They are riding high in polls and bewitching the media. Their prescriptions vary, but on matters such as immigration and membership of the euro and the European Union, they claim a unique ability to speak the unvarnished truth to voters jaded by the old politics. And although they focus more on national than on European politics, their strength is narrowing governments’ policy options within the EU.

In Britain Nigel Farage’s UK Independence Party (UKIP), which supports withdrawal from the EU, has just won its first parliamentary election (see page 31); it may nab a few more seats in next May’s general election. David Cameron, the prime minister, has already promised a referendum on Britain’s EU membership, but he is said to be on the verge of lobbing more Eurosceptic meat to restive Conservative backbenchers. Some want explicit curbs on freedom of movement within the EU; that, to put it mildly, will be a hard sell to Britain’s European partners. If Mr Cameron wins another term next year, his promised renegotiation with the EU will be an extremely tricky affair.

In France the stock of Marine Le Pen, leader of the National Front (FN), is rising, as an unpopular Socialist government struggles to reform the economy and to satisfy its fiscal taskmasters in Brussels and Berlin. The government is set for a row with the European Commission over its budget. Ms Le Pen stands ready to pounce on any sign of capitulation. In Germany the unexpected rise of the anti-euro Alternative for Germany (AfD) is making it harder for Chancellor Angela Merkel to heed calls for a softer line on austerity or monetary policy—or, should it prove necessary, to commit more taxpayers’ money to euro-zone rescues.

Perhaps most worrying, the populists’ rise is hindering the ability of governments to work together. Manuel Valls, France’s reformist prime minister, and Mrs Merkel may not be that far apart on the need to lick France’s economy into shape. But they are tugged in opposing directions by domestic forces. France’s fiscal laxity strengthens the AfD’s charge that Germany is locked into a currency union with deadbeats and scoundrels. Meanwhile Standard & Poor’s, a rating agency, has warned that AfD’s success threatens the stability of the euro zone.

Governments in several other European countries are facing similar challenges from populists. Even in Italy, where the young and energetic prime minister, Matteo Renzi, has earned his centre-left government some breathing space, Beppe Grillo’s rabble-rousing Five Star Movement is second in the polls and ratcheting up its anti-euro rhetoric.

Europe has been here before. In the mid-1950s Pierre Poujade, a bookseller from La France profonde who disliked his tax bill, launched a populist party to stand up for the rights of “the little man, the downtrodden, the trashed, the ripped-off, the humiliated”. Poujadiste later became a synonym for provincialist demagoguery. But listen to Ms Le Pen or Mr Farage on the campaign trail today and you will detect an echo.

Poujade’s outfit took 52 seats in France’s 1956 election (one of them won by Ms Le Pen’s father), but fizzled after a few years, beset by bickering and ideological incoherence. A similar fate awaits his descendants, say optimists, and they may have a point. The populists’ growth has outpaced their ability to exercise quality control. Elected UKIP officials have had to quit after publishing racist and homophobic tweets. A FN mayor who claimed to be cracking down on Sunday trading appeared to target a halal butcher. Even the AfD, which fiercely rebuts accusations that it harbours xenophobic elements, has had to expel an official for uploading an anti-Semitic image to Facebook. The pick-’n’-mix policy platforms of these parties would not survive the sort of examination their mainstream rivals endure.

The centre cannot hold

But such arguments miss a bigger story. Traditional parties are in secular decline, their electoral bases hollowed out by a withering of class identities. For growing numbers of voters, elections resemble spitting matches between empty shells, in which little is at stake. The numbers tell the story: since the early 1970s the combined voting share of the main centre-left and centre-right parties has fallen from 91% to 67% in Germany, from 89% to 65% in Britain, and from 76% to 56% in France. (Other European countries have experienced similar shifts.) Liberal parties have slumped even more. Regional, single-issue and populist parties have taken up much of the electoral slack.

A revival in Europe’s economies, however unlikely, might deflate the populists’ appeal. But don’t count on it. Britain’s economy is holding up, yet Mr Farage is stronger than ever. The rise of AfD began before the German economy took its latest downward turn. The populists, in various guises, play on deeper fears: that mainstream parties will not protect voters, particularly older ones, from the disruption wrought by globalisation, or the discombobulating effects of immigration and social change.

This presents them with a quandary. The populists are not about to win power; indeed, their distance from government helpfully protects them from scrutiny. That leaves the business of governing in the hands of traditional parties, which must conduct it in good faith under the gaze of an increasingly sceptical electorate. As the euro zone pursues deeper integration to keep itself together, that means asking voters to place trust in institutions they have come to loathe. It would be a tricky balancing act at the best of times—which these most assuredly are not.

Economist.com/blogs/charlemagne