True Finns: Do Finns (and others) know what they vote for?

The problem with populism is that it is often predicated on ignorance.  Populism in some forms is no bad thing, especially if it is informed by a spirit of pluralism and democracy.  But I fear that the current explosion of anti-EU populism as expressed yesterday in the Finnish election and increasingly in France, Holland, Belgium and Germany is motivated by a self-righteous moralism about the supposed fecklessness of southern European countries buttressed by an (un)healthy dose of anti-immigrant sentiment.

The problem with populism is that it is often predicated on ignorance.  Populism in some forms is no bad thing, especially if it is informed by a spirit of pluralism and democracy.  But I fear that the current explosion of anti-EU populism as expressed yesterday in the Finnish election and increasingly in France, Holland, Belgium and Germany is motivated by a self-righteous moralism about the supposed fecklessness of southern European countries buttressed by an (un)healthy dose of anti-immigrant sentiment.

The danger of this trend is captured perfectly in a sparkingly clear piece by Tony Barber in the Financial Times today.  Barber explains how Merkel's own moralistic rhetoric about the fiscal laxness and economic uncompetitiveness of southern European economies hides the fact that so much of what she has proposed in recent months has been designed to protect German banks from the consequences of their own poor financial and risk management.  In short, Merkel is desperately trying to avoid the day when a significant restructuring of sovereign debt may be required for fear of the losses German banks may incur.

This throws the new populist trend into stark relief.  Do the supporters of True Finns, the French Front National, the Dutch Freedom Party etc. really understand that if the EU were to simply withdraw fiscal support for ailing southern european states that the chances of a default would rise massively resulting in a new, and maybe fatal, crisis for Northern European banks?  I doubt many populist party voters like the banks much either but their collapse would result in lost jobs and economic shrinkage on a grand scale.  In short, all that blustery moralism would end up hurting Northern Europeans far more than continuing bailout. 

But there is far less rationalism in politics than many would like to admit and it might be that just such an outcome would actually provide the populists with a further surge of angry, ill-considered support rather than a discrediting of their project.