7. Right-Wing Parties in Europe

Ok, that was the story. Now the vocabulary in more detail.

So the first piece of vocabulary this week, number one, was populist surge. And this, if you remember, means a sudden and great increase in parties that try to be popular with ordinary people and to represent their ideas and opinions.

Populist refers to that political phenomenon.

The word surge, S-U-R-G-E, can be used in other contexts so let’s look at some other contexts now.

You can say, for example, There’s been a surge in house prices recently. So what would that mean, if there’s been a surge in house prices? Well, it means a sudden and great increase.

And you can also use surge as a verb. So listen to this example. The company’s profits have surged.

Is that a good thing or not? Well, if you work for that company or you own shares in that company, that’s very good. Their profits have surged, they have increased suddenly and massively.

Vocabulary item two was grassroots support. So support is people who believe in the party and who like the party, and grass roots literally means the underground parts of grass plants.

But metaphorically, the grassroots means that the support comes from the bottom – not the elite, not the top level of society – from ordinary people in a society or organisation, especially when you’re talking about politics.

And you can just use the word on its own. So listen to this example. The grassroots of the party feel that the leaders are not radical enough.

So this means ordinary people that support the party want the leaders to be more radical. The grassroots of the party.

As we saw in the story today, the populist parties around Europe have grassroots support.

Political vocabulary item number three this week is protest vote, which is another noun phrase, like the first two.

A protest vote is actually a fascinating political signal, and I think politicians should pay more attention to this. It’s less about choosing a preferred candidate and more about expressing dissatisfaction with the available options or the broader political system, and it’s often used as a way to send a message, not necessarily to win, but to express frustration or demand change.

It’s a way for voters to say, “None of these choices represent me,” while still participating in the democratic process.

So how exactly can you cast a protest vote? Well, here are some examples with some useful vocabulary.

So you can vote for minor or fringe parties. Fringe means on the edge politically. You can vote for these parties not because you expect them to win but to send a message to mainstream parties.

Another way is that you can cast a blank or spoilt ballot. This means that the voting slip, the voting paper that you mark normally to show your vote, is left empty or you mark it incorrectly on purpose.

Another way is tactical voting as a protest vote so you can vote strategically, not for your ideal candidate but for one that you hope will block another. And this happens a lot these days as well.

So for example, you could vote for Labour, not because you support Labour, but just because you are trying to keep out a Conservative candidate or vice versa.

Let’s just take a minute to look at the pronunciation of that. So protest vote. Protest vote.

You can see we have two diphthongs there: /ˈprəʊ.test vəʊt/. And they’re actually the same. It’s the same diphthong twice: pro and vo, protest vote. /əʊ/, /əʊ/, protest vote.

Ok, number four was mainstream parties, another noun phrase. Mainstream means considered normal and having or using ideas, beliefs etc that are accepted by most people.

You can use mainstream in other ways, not just to talk about political parties so let’s look at that for a moment.

You can say the mainstream media, which means the typical news channels and newspapers that represent generally accepted beliefs and opinions. Mainstream media. That’s used a lot in English.

You can also say mainstream education, so this means “normal” in inverted commas – normal schools. You’re not educated at home; you’re not educated in a specialist school. You’re in mainstream education.

Returning to politics then, mainstream parties were established long ago and have lots of support from ordinary people.

In the UK, for example, do you know our mainstream parties? Labour are the traditional left-wing party and the Conservatives are the traditional right-wing party.

So these are the mainstream parties in the UK.

By the way, what’s a nickname for the Conservatives? And we very often use this. We talk about the… Tories, T-O-R-I-E-S, the Tories, and it’s a nickname for the Conservatives.

So these parties have shaped policy and government direction for generations while smaller parties like Reform, or even the Green Party, are still working their way towards mainstream status, despite growing visibility.

And then number five, we had centre-right, centre-left, far-right, far-left. So generally we talk about left-wing and right-wing to mean that something is left politically or right politically. So that’s left- or right-wing, W-I-N-G.

And more specifically, if we say centre-right or centre-left, this means the party or the person sticks more to the political centre.

So in the UK, traditionally this would be the Liberal Democrats, or as we more often call them the Lib Dems. They’re traditionally a centrist party, centrist, or centre left.

A party that is in the middle of the political spectrum is centrist. Are there any of those left?

Now onto the far-left or far-right. In other languages, people tend to use a translation of extreme, whatever that word is in their language. So they’ll say extreme left or extreme right. And we can certainly use that expression in English – definitely can. But it’s more common to say far, far-left, far-right. You’ll see if you read political articles and discussions, we more normally say far-left, far-right, F-A-R.

The pronunciation far, far.

So you can say, for example, to give you some example sentences: Reform in the UK are really far right. Or you can say, as another example, Oh, the greens are a far-left party.

Of course, there’s disagreement these days over what those terms – far left, far right – actually mean, especially when politics is becoming more extreme in both directions.