In the US and Europe, the far right is often portrayed as the defender of the working class, the representative of “forgotten” people or the post-industrial “left-behinds”. The working classes, so the argument goes, have flocked to the far right because “the left” has betrayed them. Moreover, far-right parties, it is claimed, have moved to the left on socioeconomic issues such as employment rights, replacing social democratic parties as the “new working-class parties”.

Despite the popularity of this narrative, including among social democratic elites in Europe, workers have not flocked to far-right parties, but rather to the mainstream right and the Greens. And now, our new study shows that while far-right parties might talk leftwing, they still back rightwing anti-worker policies.

We analysed the voting patterns of far-right groups on a range of socioeconomic issues. We specifically looked at the two far-right groups in the outgoing European parliament (2019-2024): the now disbanded Identity and Democracy (ID) group including Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, and the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR), which is dominated by the Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s party, Brothers of Italy. We also looked at Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party in Hungary, which is at the helm of the new Patriots for Europe (PfE), formed as the unofficial successor to ID after the European elections this summer.