Surge in immigration and weak economic growth spark voter backlash in France, the U.K. and Germany.
5 min
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LONDON: For the first time, populist or far-right parties are leading the polls in the U.K., France and Germany, the latest sign of growing voter discontent in much of the continent following years of high immigration and inflation.
Far-right and anti-immigration parties have already entered government in countries such as Italy, Finland and the Netherlands.
But this year marks the first time that they have been ahead in Europe’s biggest economies at the same time. That could provoke a period of political turbulence in all three countries, even if national elections are likely still a few years away.
“It’s significant. Leaders in all three countries are grappling with an ascendant far right that looks on the cusp of power unless politicians can address what’s fuelling the rise, which is immigration and cost of living,” said Mujtaba Rahman , head of Europe for risk consulting firm Eurasia.
France’s anti-immigration National Rally has had a consistent lead in polls this year. An Elabe poll last month showed Jordan Bardella, the young protégé of the far-right leader Marine Le Pen , was the most popular with an approval rating of 36%.
Polling for the next presidential vote also suggests National Rally’s candidate—whether it is Bardella or Le Pen—would lead the first round.
In the U.K., the anti-immigration Reform UK, led by the former Brexiteer Nigel Farage , has surged in the past six months and is now comfortably ahead in opinion polls of the ruling Labour Party and the opposition Conservatives, the political duopoly that has dominated British politics for the past century.
In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany, or AfD, has been neck-and-neck with the ruling centre-right Christian Democratic Union in polls since the start of the year. The AfD has pulled slightly ahead in recent weeks, the first time it has done so since April, according to Forsa, one of the country’s leading pollsters.
Like the U.S., much of Europe has experienced two things at the same time since the pandemic: record levels of immigration that have caused a voter backlash, and a surge in inflation that has now eased but left prices for many goods much higher than before—leaving many voters feeling worse off. Social media has also polarised opinions.
Unlike the U.S., however, much of Europe has almost no economic growth, fuelling a widespread sense that the continent faces years of drift , as well as political gridlock.
The sense of economic decline together with rapid immigration is a toxic combination that has turned many voters against established political parties, said Jérémie Gallon, a former French diplomat and head of Europe for consulting firm McLarty Associates.
“It’s the same story from smaller English cities to the French countryside to German towns, where many people feel like the traditional elites look down on them or ignore their concerns,” he said.
Bardella and National Rally have tapped into widespread anxiety that France’s Muslim minority, one of the largest in Europe, is encroaching on the secular values of the French Republic, and into a perceived decline of living standards among working-class and middle-class families.
In recent years, National Rally has evolved from a fringe protest movement to the country’s largest single party in the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament.
That hasn’t proved enough yet for the far-right party to take the reins of government, but it has made the country increasingly difficult to govern. France’s government is again on the brink of collapse , less than nine months after conservative French Prime Minister Michel Barnier was ousted from office.
This past week, National Rally pledged to vote against the government again on Sept. 8, when centrist Prime Minister François Bayrou plans to hold a confidence vote in the National Assembly ahead of what are expected to be difficult negotiations for a new budget. On Tuesday, Bardella called on President Emmanuel Macron to hold new parliamentary elections or resign.
In recent years, Germany and the U.K. both saw the biggest surges in immigration in their history, even if the numbers have begun to fall this year. In Germany, the share of residents born outside the country surged from just over 15% in 2017 to a record high of 22% in 2024, according to government data. That compares with about 16% in the U.S.
The U.K., meanwhile, has grappled with a record rise in legal and illegal immigration. Some 4.5 million people arrived legally between 2021 and 2024, primarily from India, Nigeria and China. That is slightly more than those who legally entered the U.S.—which has about five times the population of the U.K.—over that time. In addition, tens of thousands of people have illegally crossed the English Channel on flimsy boats each year to claim asylum.
So far this year, record numbers of people—29,000 through the end of August—have made the crossing, sparking growing pressure on Prime Minister Keir Starmer , who came to power last year vowing to “smash the gangs” that control migrant smuggling and reduce the crossings.
Adding to the pressure on Starmer, protests flared this summer in some English towns over the use of local hotels where the government is paying for migrants to stay until their asylum cases are resolved.
In Germany, a surprising feature of the AfD’s latest surge is that it has coincided with a drop in immigration numbers under the current government. In the midst of tougher border controls, new asylum requests fell more than a third in the first half of the year compared with the same period last year.
Friedrich Merz , the conservative chancellor, has also done away with some of his predecessor’s green policies, often criticised as excessive by the AfD.
A raft of growth-supporting measures, from corporate tax cuts to rising infrastructure investments, have yet to show any effect, however. The economy contracted by 0.3% in the most recent quarter, extending a two-year recession.
This, said Manfred Güllner, head of Forsa, was one of the factors for the AfD’s recent surge. “Voters are seeing a lot of action, but they’re not feeling any effect,” he said, pointing to the mismatch—or at least the time lag—between promises and results.
The AfD has campaigned for the deportations of immigrants in the country illegally; for Germany to leave the European Union and the euro currency; and for the country to rethink its culture of Holocaust remembrance.
It rejects the notion of man-made climate change. Its economic polices are similar to those of Merz’s Christian Democratic Union, but it also wants to increase pension benefits and limit noncitizens’ access to welfare benefits.
Some of its leaders and lawmakers have drawn scrutiny for their sympathies toward Russia and China —the party has called for Germany to resume energy deals with Moscow—while economists have said its push to leave the EU could damage the country’s export industries.
But the party has also enjoyed the support of people close to President Trump, in particular Vice President JD Vance and tech billionaire Elon Musk .
The AfD has tapped into economic frustration to buttress its appeal. Its program in the lead-up to February’s federal election focused on economic proposals, ahead of topics such as security and immigration.
This has helped it gather support among blue-collar voters in economically depressed regions far away from the party’s historical strongholds in former East Germany, such as the Ruhr, the industrial Rust Belt region east of the Rhine Valley.
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Gold miners are emerging as a compelling way to navigate market uncertainty, with analysts pointing to strong cash flows, attractive valuations and rising profit margins. As gold prices stabilize above US$4,000 an ounce, mining stocks could offer investors both downside protection and long-term upside.
3 min
Gold is one of the market’s go-to hedges in rocky times. Don’t forget that gold miners’ stocks are too.
The stock market’s gains in 2026 belie the rocky macroeconomic picture: elevated inflation, heightened geopolitical tensions, and jitters about the artificial-intelligence trade. That backdrop, in theory, should be the time for gold to shine. Instead, the price of the yellow metal has tumbled more than 5% so far, after last year’s blistering 65% rally. In part, the U.S. dollar’s recovery has stymied gold, which benefited from the greenback’s weakness in 2025.
Even with the precious metal’s recent weakness, gold mining stocks could be the best way to profit from this year’s uncertainty.
Gold miners “are a valuable hedge against macro risks that would likely be damaging for equities,” BCA Research’s Noah Weisberger and Rishabh Shah wrote this week.
Concerns about the Federal Reserve’s next moves to tackle inflation, the increasingly crowded AI trade, and steep valuations for tech stocks are just some of the drivers that could help gold’s price get on even footing— and lead to even bigger gains for miner stocks.
These stocks’ prices tend to outpace gold’s moves, because the companies have fixed operational costs. So when gold’s price rallies, their profit margins soar, and vice versa. For instance, the VanEck Gold Miners GDX +7.39% exchange-traded fund has fallen 11% this year as the metal has slumped.
Now, gold’s price just needs to stabilize to help miners’ stocks take off, and that seems to be happening. The precious metal has recently found support above the $4,000 level, and has stuck in a narrow range since the end of June. But its price rose ever so slightly in July, ending a four-month losing streak for the metal. Technical analysis also suggests that gold is due for a comeback.
Barron’s recently wrote that the pullbacks for both gold miners and the metal itself are overdone. Senior technical analyst Doug Busch noted that the VanEck ETF is on the “verge of a breakout” and has the potential to hit $11o in early 2027, up more than 40% from its current price.
Gold miners also have more than their role as a market hedge going for them. Their fundamentals are solid, too, says Chris Mancini, portfolio co-manager of the Gabelli Gold Fund.
“Precious metals miners are generating substantial amounts of free cash flow given profit margins of over $2,000 per ounce, and are returning this cash to shareholders through buybacks and dividends,” he said in an email.
“Buying the miners is a cheap way to get exposure to the price of gold,” he added. His fund owns Newmont NEM +6.71%, a Barron’s stock pick last year, and Agnico Eagle Mines as top holdings, as well as miners Northern Star Resources, Endeavour Mining, and Kinross Gold K+8.59%.
Miners are better businesses than they used to be, the BCA team added.
“Capex is more disciplined, margins are high and rising…and they are largely independent of the AI story,” Weisberger, BCA’s head of equities, and Shah, a senior analyst, wrote.
That last part is key. AI is disrupting the software industry and many other services and information-oriented businesses, and investors have piled into AI stocks. But ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, and other large-language models aren’t going to replace the need to mine for metals.
“Equity portfolios can benefit from exposure to quality that is uncorrelated to AI risk, and gold miners fit the bill,” the BCA team said.
They recommend that investors buy the VanEck Gold Miners ETF, which owns top miners such as Agnico, Barrick Mining ABX +7.24%, and Newmont.
An important bonus for big gold miners’ stocks is that their valuations are attractive after the gold’s pullback, too. The VanEck ETF is now trading at just a little more than nine times next year’s earnings estimates. That’s a big discount to its five-year average price-to-earnings ratio of 14, according to FactSet.
What’s more, the ETF is currently valued at a more than 50% discount to the S&P 500 SPX -0.17%, which is trading for about 19 times earnings estimates for 2027. Mining stocks have typically traded at just a 25% discount to the broader market over the past five years. So there is significant upside for the group if valuations move back toward normal levels.
One factor that complicates mining stocks as a market hedge, of course, is if stocks bounce back, which has been the case so far in August.
But both the market and economic outlooks remain cloudy, and investors remain nervous about the Fed’s next moves and AI stocks. Gold miners should do just fine, even if the anxious mood on Wall Street persists.
