Steve Bannon May Be Too Late to the Populist Party

It’s no secret Steve Bannon has his sights set on Europe. The former White House chief strategist announced last month that he would be moving to Brussels to start a new movement—a think tank called The Movement—to support Europe’s right-wing populist parties ahead of the European Parliament’s elections next spring. His goal, Bannon told the Daily Beast at the time, is to create a “supergroup” of united right-wing populist lawmakers within the chamber—a feat that will require the involvement of at least 25 lawmakers representing at least seven European Union member states.

But Europe’s right-wing populist parties may that his party wouldn’t be involved with Bannon’s efforts to unite European populist parties—and appeared to question whether anyone really could unite them. “Mr. Bannon will not succeed in forging an alliance of the like-minded for the European elections,” he said, noting that the interests of these parties “are quite divergent.”