Has Coronavirus Exposed the Weakness of Populist Radical Right Parties?
![Matteo Salvini wearing a tan cord jacket and trousers and darker tan rollneck is seated next to a woman in a white blouse and another woman wearing spectacles, a white blouse and a jacket. All three in the row are white with dark hair and aged around 40 years. They're clapping. The room that they are in is marble and white plaster with carvings that look like they're from the Renaissance period or just after partially visible on the walls](https://more.bham.ac.uk/populism-in-action/wp-content/uploads/sites/40/2019/07/Salvini.jpg)
Spain’s El Confidencial speaks with PiAP’s Daniele Albertazzi as part of a lengthy examination of the populist radical right today.
Albertazzi explains that, amid Coronavirus:
Cultural and identity issues, which are the ones on which populist radical right parties focus, inevitably become far less relevant to voters when they are fearing for their own lives. Then issues of competence and credibility take center stage instead.
Refugees, ships crossing the Mediterranean and the threat allegedly posed by Catalan separatists to Spanish national identity do not seem that urgent if you cannot even get out of your apartment or are scared that a trip to the supermarket will kill you.
And populist radical right parties are not generally seen as particularly competent in handling existential crises.
Other specialists quoted in the article include Nonna Mayer, Cas Mudde, Pippa Norris, Guillermo Fernández-Vázquez, and Giovanni Orsina.