ON the face of it, it appeared a fairly innocuous tweet.

The image posted on social media last week featured the British St George Cross flag flapping from the guttering of a nondescript suburban home with a white van parked in the driveway.

But the fury the image caused, not least of all directed at its sender, Labour’s now ex-shadow attorney-general Emily Thornberry, is perhaps a symptom of a broader phenomenon that today threatens to tear the European Union apart.

Some are saying it’s a class disenchantment, others are declaring it a sure sign European nations are lurching to the nationalist right and could even lead to civil war, if you believe the Bastille storming-style rhetoric of French political figure Marine Le Pen.

But whichever argument is made it’s clear the EU’s design to unite nations in peace and harmony, on both the political and diplomatic level, is being razed socially by electorates disillusioned with mainstream politics and driving change through the empowerment of social media skills.

The general resentment and disenchantment has been building for some time but the momentum is such now mainstream politicians and parties from UK to Ukraine are changing policies to reflect the mood and retain power.

But first that tweet.

Ms Thornberry no doubt had a chuckle as she posted the image under the banner “image from Rochester” on the day before the southeast England electorate was facing a by-election.

It didn’t matter the home was not even in Rochester as such, with Ms Thornberry wanting apparently to make the sneering point the electorate was working class (white tradesperson’s van) and perhaps a touch too patriotic or nationalist, in wanting to fly not one but three St George Cross flags across their terraced brick home.

media_camera Prime Minister David Cameron faces a fractured political landscape ahead of next year’s election. AFP PHOTO / REBECCA NADEN/POOL

The reason it was powerful, and she was sacked by the Opposition leader Ed Miliband, was because it was easy to take the message from that photo that this was an up-market north London liberal elite Labour politician who was condescending toward a certain type of voter.

It spoke volumes not just about Britain’s Labour Party being out of touch with its traditional voter base but also politicians attitude generally against a groundswell of dissatisfaction. It was no surprise that UKIP, the right-wing Eurosceptic populist party, won the seat and now has two MPs in Westminster and likely more after the 2015 general election.

media_camera Swept into power ... Mark Reckless (left) won the seat of Rochester and Strood - the party’s second seat in parliament, fragmenting the political landscape. AFP PHOTO / LEON NEAL

UKIP’s growing support is not just for its much publicised platform to tighten immigration and nationalist approach for a Britain for the British it’s also because the electorate want something fresh, less proscriptive like the Tories and Labour and someone like its leader Nigel Farage, rarely photographed without a beer pint in his paw, who is less politician and more common man.

It’s similar elsewhere. In Spain the left-wing anti-establishment Podemos Party — founded only in January this year by academic Pablo Iglesias - has stunned the political elite in Europe by gaining an 8 per cent national vote in European Parliament elections. A poll this week found if a general election were held in Spain today it would emerge as the strongest party and at the very least have a say, perhaps in a coalition, over how Spain will be governed.

“Podemos is not a political experiment, Podemos is the result of the failure of regime,” the 26-year-old Iglesias has said.

media_camera ‘We can’ ... The new party, Podemos, led by 26-year-old Pablo Iglesias, would emerge as the strongest party in Spain, if a general election were held today. (AP Photo/Daniel Ochoa de Olza)

Analysts in Spain see Podemos as identifying a window of opportunity to skip the slow haul through town halls to garnish support at grassroots and rise meteorically on the basis voters know what they don’t want but not sure on what they do want.

University of Southampton’s Professor in political science and public policy Dr Will Jennings says like in Britain, it was less about being Left, Right or nationalist and more tapping into the broader sense of political contempt and disenchantment with established political elites.

“Part of it is to do with long term social change, voters have become dealligned from political parties and don’t feel and don’t associate them within social blocks any more,” he said. “There is breakdown in differentialism in societies where we are less likely to be differential to the rulers and you can also argument the nature of modern media means we are much more exposed to information about politics and what goes on and there is an inherent negativity bias in human reasoning that means we respond more to negative information than positive.”

He says there are other factors too such as the general economic state of the EU.

That has certainly proved support motivation for France’s right wing National Front leader Marine Le Pen.

media_camera Far right ... Marine Le Pen (right) has been attracting support this year. AFP PHOTO / FREDERICK FLORIN

She began attracting support this year when she declared France was on the brink of insurrection and bankruptcy, seemingly supported by widespread social dissent on immigration, bordering of racist hysteria and protest over employment rights and the nation’s dire economic state.

France this week was set to announce its labour rules including 35-hour week to become more flexible in exchange for a three-year wages freeze to make companies more competitive; drastic measures to

meet EU set budget targets. That is a big move for the Eurozone’s second biggest economy and more ammunition for the populist Le Pen who like Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party in the Netherlands, Belgium separatist party leader Vlaams Belang and the Liga Nord party in Italy, Poland’s New Right and Freedom Movement in Austria who are enjoying huge success through electorate discontent.

Britain’s Chatham House, the renowned independent policy institute, has declared populist extremist parties to be “one of the most pressing challenges to European democracies” today.

Chatham’s associate fellow Matthew Goodwin argues their popularity was not just anxiety over jobs, economics and welfare but from a belief immigration, minority groups and diversity were threatening national culture. He said these parties like in Austria, France and the Democrats in Sweden had spent years exchanging strategies and ideas that had allowed them to more effectively respond to the electorate more than the mainstream parties who invest more on traditional campaigning leading to less face-to-face contact than populist party rivals. He said mainstream parties needed to forge stronger community links.

“There is no uniform response to populist extremist parties, each strategy comes with risks,” Dr Goodwin concluded. “Engagement and interaction — which focus more heavily on the local arena offer the best prospects for progress.”

Originally published as Tweet that will tear Europe apart