Brits want a rule-breaking leader to fix it, new poll finds

People across Europe say their countries are in decline and society is broken, according to a new Ipsos poll shared with CNBC.

Negative sentiment has grown in the past four years across Europe’s major economies – with citizens in Great Britain, Germany, France and Italy all increasingly sharing the belief that society is “broken” over the past four years.

Clifford Young, president of polling and societal trends, U.S. at IPSOS, on Thursday told CNBC “the predisposition towards populism and anti-establishment sentiment is very stable and high at a global level.”

Populist sentiments have dominated electoral discussions across Europe, with the hard-right Patriots for Europe group securing over 10% of the vote at last year’s European Parliament election.

Within the past week, a Trump-backed candidate won the Polish presidency in a narrow second round vote, while in Romania the pro-EU Nicusor Dan won in a run-off presidential vote after losing the first round to a far-right candidate.  

In Germany, 77% of respondents said they believe society is broken – up 16 percentage points since this research was conducted in 2021. Great Britain and France both also saw double-digit percentage increases.

Europe’s largest economy has seen its share of political upheaval in recent months. Germany’s far-right Alternative für Deutschland party secured over 20% percent of the national vote in February’s election, doubling its vote share since 2021.

The country’s two traditional centrist parties have since formed a government and passed legislation allowing major borrowing for defense and infrastructure.

Teneo’s Carsten Nickel on Thursday described the German government’s plans as “a massive, large scale, live experiment in Europe’s biggest economy. With 500 billion in public investment, can you actually bring the AfD vote down?”

Economic concerns appear to be adding to populist sentiment across the continent. Across every European country that participated in the survey, people were more likely than not to believe their economies are rigged to advantage the rich and powerful.

Around 72% of Brit respondents agreed with that statement, the highest number in Europe and more than any other country in the G7. But the sentiment was shared across the globe, with a majority of 29 of the 31 countries included in the report saying their economies are rigged.

University of York academic Daphne Halikiopoulou says right-wing populist parties are adjusting their messaging to appeal to those voters.

“These parties are increasingly talking economics in a way that appeals to what I call peripheral voters, so people who don’t vote for the far-right as an endorsement, but rather as [a] protest against other parties, mainstream parties, who they think have failed them socially and economically.”

Brits were the most likely to support turning to a “strong leader who breaks the rules” as the solution to the problems they see in their economy. More than half of respondents agree a strong leader was needed, compared to just 24% of people in Germany wanting a rule-breaking leader, and only 38% in the United States.

Young says this is a sign of “people being extremely frustrated because they don’t feel like they’re getting their just dues,” while Lizzie Galbraith, senior political economist at Aberdeen, said “there’s been evidence in the UK for some time now that there is the level of dissatisfaction with the status quo … the drop in living standards is probably a really good reason for why that dissatisfaction is there”.

The U.K.’s governing Labour Party is facing pressure in the polls from the right-wing Reform UK party led by Nigel Farage, who recently outlined a plan to expand welfare payments and cut taxes.

But pressures on the public finances could limit the government’s ability to make spending offers of its own to try and boost its popularity.

Nickel told CNBC that “extremely limited fiscal space” is making the Labour government more reactive to “short-term fiscal and ultimately, interest rate trends, then being able to look at the longer term and really make the investments that would be required, or that might make a difference.”

Those financial pressures could also impact the policy platforms of populist parties if they are successful in securing power across Europe. Galbraith says “actually implementing those policies in practice would be far more challenging.”

She added, “We have often seen populist parties moderate when they sort of enter government because of those fiscal constraints that they find themselves in.”

France is scheduled to be the next major European economy to head to the polls when it holds presidential elections in 2027, and it is another country where we have seen signs of public frustration. 65% of respondents to Ipsos’ survey agreed that “society is broken” in the country.

Galbraith described the French government’s position as “really difficult”, warning that President Emmanuel Macron will be “suffering with political divisions right up until the presidential election” as he looks to deliver economic reforms through a deeply divided National Assembly.

National Rally leader Marine Le Pen has been barred from running in the election after being convicted of embezzlement — an allegation she denies. Halikiopoulou says the decision could be a “double-edged sword”, with the far-right party looking to present themselves as having been “victimized”.