As the debris was cleared from the Capitol after the storming of Congress, it looked like Donald Trump would also soon be consigned to the dustbin of history.
“There is truth, and there are lies. Lies told for power and for profit,” Joe Biden said at his inauguration in a rebuke of Mr Trump’s false claims the election was stolen.
The Capitol riots on Jan 6 2021 surely made it impossible for Mr Trump, a notoriously bad loser, to return to the White House.
Besides, he was facing a string of legal battles that would end the career of any politician.
The shock of Mr Trump’s defeat of Hilary Clinton had rippled across the world in 2016, coming just months after the political earthquake of Britain’s Brexit referendum.
Donald Trump spoke at a rally outside the White House on Jan 6 2021
The Trump presidency now looked like the high water mark of a populist wave that had broken, and was now rolling back.
After a series of strongmen leaders who were inspired and emboldened by Trump’s first term, the liberal establishment was reasserting itself and the “adults in the room” were back in control.
Strongmen
In Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, dubbed “the Trump of the Tropics”, won his country’s presidency in 2019. Like Mr Trump, he was an outsider populist prone to outrageous outbursts, with little time for environmental policies.
In El Salvador, businessman turned politician Nayib Bukele became president after running a MAGA-influenced campaign notable for his canny use of social media. The politician and businessman is credited with bringing stability to his country, turning a global murder capital into a country safer than Canada.
But his critics point out he has imprisoned tens of thousands of people and more than one per cent of the population is behind bars.
Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines in 2016 and launched a brutal law and order crackdown that has seen him accused of ordering extra-judicial killings. Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi won a landslide triumph in 2019.
In the Old World, Matteo Salvini’s League was on the rise in Italy, propelling the anti-migrant Trump-admiring populist to the post of deputy prime minister.
In Spain, the far-Right Vox became a serious force. In Poland, the nationalist Law and Justice won a bolstered majority in a 2019 general election. They welcomed Mr Trump to Warsaw for the president’s first major speech in Europe; bussing in cheering supporters for the address and he rewarded them with fulsome praise.
Viktor Orban, the Right-wing nationalist dubbed “Trump before Trump” and now darling of US conservatives, won his third election in a row in Hungary.
The same year, Boris Johnson won a landslide victory in the UK for the Tories against Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour after promising to “get Brexit done”.
Nigel Farage forged a friendship with Mr Trump based on a shared disdain for the EU. His Brexit Party returned the most MEPs in the 2019 European elections, which would be the last the UK contested before leaving the EU.
Nigel Farage with Mr Trump at a meeting at Mar-a-Lago in Florida in February last year – X
Populist wave rolls back
But when Mr Biden sealed his victory with the presidential oath in Washington in 2021 and began reversing Mr Trump’s policies, it looked like the world had moved on.
The Left was on the march, with their average vote share in the West rising from 41.4 per cent in 2020 to 42.3 per cent in 2024.
In Germany, the centre-Left Olaf Scholz won elections in September 2021. The centre-Right CDU headed into opposition for the first time since Angela Merkel took power in 2005. The far-Right Alternative For Germany’s vote share nationally dropped by 2 per cent.
In 2019, a year of two general elections in Spain, Pedro Sanchez, the Socialist party prime minister, embraced the hard-Left to secure his grip on power.
When a Left-wing Italian government collapsed in 2021, Mario Draghi was parachuted in as the technocrat prime minister. The highly capable former European Central Bank chief was widely credited with saving the euro during the financial crisis. It would be hard to think of a more establishment candidate.
In Canada, liberal heartthrob Justin Trudeau formed another government after calling a snap election in September 2021. In New Zealand the year before, Jacinda Ardern, a standard-bearer for woke politics, had won a landslide victory.
In 2022, Mr Bolsonaro crashed to defeat against the Leftist Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. In an echo of Mr Trump, he refused to concede defeat and allegedly plotted a coup to remain in power – a move that has seen him face charges.
‘America is back’
“America is back,” a smiling Mr Biden told European leaders when he met them at the G7 summit in Cornwall for his first trip abroad in June 2021.
There would be no more threats of tariffs, no more scathing criticism of missed Nato defence spending targets, and no more playing hard and fast with the rules that had formed the international rules-based order since the Second World War.
The relief among the likes of Emmanuel Macron was palpable. Finally, a return to normality after the turbulent and unpredictable years of Trump’s first term.
“It’s great to have a US president who’s part of the club and very willing to co-operate,” Mr Macron said. Even Mr Johnson praised Mr Biden as “a breath of fresh air”.
Boris Johnson and Joe Biden spoke at the G7 summit in Cornwall in June 2021
But behind the scenes in Paris and Brussels, the French president was urging his allies to prepare in case of a second Trump presidency.
Joe Biden did not usher in a period of renewed calm. First, there was the shambolic withdrawal from Afghanistan and then, in February 2022, Vladimir Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine.
The era of the strongman was clearly not over, after all.
Rumblings of a resurgent Right
Many on the European radical Right, such as France’s Marine Le Pen and Italy’s Matteo Salvini, had long histories of open admiration for Putin.
Ms Le Pen, whose National Rally party had taken controversial loans from Russian banks, did her best to distance herself from the pariah Russian leader.
She had a presidential race to run against the centrist Mr Macron, whose first-term bromance with Mr Trump had soured.
Mr Macron beat Ms Le Pen in the second round run-off of the presidential election in April 2022.
It was the first time a French president had won a second term in two decades but was a temporary reprieve for the Europhile centrist. A matter of months later, Mr Macron lost his absolute majority in national assembly elections.
Ms Le Pen’s National Rally made a historic breakthrough, taking 89 seats in the French parliament.
Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron prior to the start of a live prime-time election debate in 2017 – Eric Feferberg/Reuters
It was a turning point; the first rumblings of the resurgence of the Right, which gained momentum as the war in Ukraine dragged on, driving up inflation and the cost of living.
In September, famously liberal Sweden turned conservative after the hard-Right Sweden Democrats, which was founded by neo-Nazis, became the country’s second-largest party.
Seen as too toxic to enter government, they agreed to prop up a Right-wing coalition, in return for an extensive crackdown on illegal immigration.
Meloni’s moment
In July 2022, Mr Draghi resigned as Italy’s prime minister after losing the support of the Left-wing Five Star Movement.
He was replaced by a woman widely described as the most far-Right Italian leader since Mussolini.
Back in 2016, the year of Trump’s first victory, Giorgia Meloni, a Eurosceptic nationalist, had come third in the race to become Rome’s mayor. In October 2022, this politician with a penchant for accusing the EU of plotting to force people to eat insects became prime minister.
Many suspected her government would be short-lived but she proved herself to be an exceptionally canny stateswoman.
She has forged EU-wide alliances with other soft and pro-Ukraine Eurosceptics such as Poland’s Law and Justice, and is friendly with Mr Orban’s Fidesz and Spain’s Vox.
She has steered herself and her once fringe Brothers of Italy party into the mainstream and dragged her fellow EU leaders further to the Right on migration.
President-elect Mr Trump met with Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, this month – Reuters
It is thanks largely to her migrant processing deal with Albania that the EU is mulling Rwanda plan-style offshore detention centres for failed asylum seekers.
European diplomats now see her as the key interlocutor with Mr Trump as the EU tries to head off his threats of a trade war.
Close to Elon Musk, she undoubtedly has the chops to be an effective Trump-whisperer.
Earlier this month, the pair met in Mar-a-Lago and a clearly impressed president-elect praised her as a “fantastic woman”.
2023 began with a bombshell as New Zealand’s Jacinda Arden, the global queen of woke politics, resigned. Eight months later, New Zealanders elected their most conservative government in decades.
In April, Finland voted out the socialist government led by Sanna Marin and ushered in its own Right-wing coalition government, which includes the populist Finns Party.
The ‘madman’ with the chainsaw
There was an even greater boost to come for the global radical Right.
When Mr Trump first entered the White House, Javier Milei was best known in Argentina for his flamboyant TV appearances, his willingness to burst into song and his scathing critiques of socialism.
A rock star libertarian economist with a confrontational style honed on TV chat shows, he called himself an “anarcho-capitalist” and boasted of being a former tantric sex instructor.
Given to asking his beloved dogs for advice, he shared a taste for the televisual limelight with Mr Trump, as well as a similarly iconic haircut.
Argentina was a political and economic basket case. It was ready to give its elites a bloody nose and the man dubbed “El Loco” – the madman – by his critics, a chance.
Javier Milei, Argentina’s president, at the political festival Atreju in Rome organised by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party – Ciro De Luca/Reuters
Mr Milei won the presidential election, wielding a chainsaw in a symbol of his intent to make deep cuts to public spending.
A delighted Mr Trump declared this kindred spirit would “Make Argentina Great Again”. The admiration was reciprocated in spades and Mr Milei was the first foreign leader to visit Mr Trump after his second election win.
Mr Milei has clashed with Pedro Sanchez, the prime minister of Argentina’s former colonial master Spain, but he was geniality itself when he met Ms Meloni in Rome. Such is the strength of their alliance, that Ms Meloni awarded Mr Milei, and his sister, Italian citizenship.
Dutch Trump leaves the Wilders-ness
Historically, nationalists have been notoriously bad at international co-operation. However, alliances and networks of hard-Right parties have become stronger; aided in Europe by the formation of alliances of like-minded parties in the European Parliament.
The MAGA movement has only been too happy to fuel such cross-pollination.
When tractor protests against EU climate rules paralysed the Netherlands, Mr Trump and Mr Musk weighed in on social media, turning it into another trope in the endless US culture war.
They were aided by conservative commentators such as Tucker Carlson, who gave airtime to conspiracy theorists claiming that Dutch government plans to buy farms to cut nitrogen emissions were part of a shadowy land grab by the elites.
In March 2023, the BBB, a populist farmers’ party, won a shock landslide victory in senate elections but a bigger surprise was in store.
Geert Wilders was a veteran of Dutch politics who had never come close to a sniff of real power. Nicknamed the “Dutch Trump”, he was almost as well known for his bleached blond hair as for policies like demanding a ban on the Koran.
His fiercely anti-migrant policies, constant criticism of Islam, and strongly pro-Israel stance had made him the target of death threats and he lives under 24/7 close protection.
Geert Wilders won a landslide election in 2023 in what the press called the Netherlands’ ‘Trump moment’ – Piroschka Van De Wouw/Reuters
An unabashed admirer of Mr Trump, he is also addicted to Elon Musk’s X, which he uses relentlessly to push his talking points in the same way the US president did to such effect in his first term.
Mark Rutte, the longest-serving prime minister in Dutch history, had made clear his pro-business VVD would never countenance an alliance with the divisive Mr Wilders.
After Mr Rutte resigned, his successor did not rule out a coalition with Mr Wilders before an election dominated by immigration and asylum.
The result was a landslide for Mr Wilders in what the press called the Netherlands’ “Trump moment”.
Mr Wilders’ manifesto, which included a “Nexit” referendum and a ban on Islamic schools, was too controversial for his potential coalition partners.
A deal was struck where Mr Wilders, and other party leaders, would stay out of the cabinet of the coalition government but have ministers in it.
That has left him free to rant on X, while the Dutch government, under his influence, has implemented its strictest-ever asylum policy.
Orban nails his colours to Trump’s mast
The Dutch election was a tasty starter for the main course of 2024; a year when more than 1.5 billion people would vote in more than 70 countries, including the United States.
Mr Orban for one could not wait. It had been a long few years on the naughty step for Hungary’s long-serving prime minister since Mr Biden had taken office. In his final days in the White House, the president slapped one of Mr Orban’s close allies with sanctions.
Mr Orban was the only EU leader to openly endorse Mr Trump ahead of the US election and had nailed his colours firmly to the tycoon’s mast.
When the US conservative group CPAC held a conference in Budapest, Mr Trump sent a video praising his friend.
“There’s nobody that’s better, smarter or a better leader than Viktor Orban. He’s fantastic,” Mr Trump said after the two met at Mar-a-Lago in March 2024.
On the campaign trail, President Biden was scornful. “You know who he’s meeting with today down in Mar-a-Lago? Orban of Hungary, who’s stated flatly that he doesn’t think democracy works, he’s looking for dictatorship,” he said.
“I see a future where we defend democracy, not diminish it,” Mr Biden added.
Viktor Orban with Donald Trump in July 2024 at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida – Zoltan Fischer/AFP
Liberal commentators claimed that once in power, Mr Trump would emulate Mr Orban’s authoritarian crackdown on the media.
In the EU and Nato, there were concerns over Mr Orban’s pandering to Putin and his calls to end Western sanctions on Moscow.
Mr Orban kept himself busy waiting for November’s US presidential election last year. There were European Parliament elections to fight in June first and Mr Orban was keen to spearhead a breakthrough of Eurosceptic nationalist parties.
As fate would have it, Hungary’s turn to hold the six-month rotating presidency of the EU began on July 1. With characteristic mischief, Mr Orban decided to give the presidency the Trumpesque slogan of “Make Europe Great Again”.
Make Europe great again
The European elections saw the EU swing to the Right, with the centre-Right emerging as the largest bloc but far-Right parties in Austria and Germany making big gains.
Vlaams Belang had long languished on the fringes of Belgian politics before its leader Tom Van Greiken brought youth and a savvy, Trump-influenced social media presence to the party.
He was rewarded with a surge of successes in June’s European and Belgian elections, where his party came second.
So convincing was Marine Le Pen’s victory in the EU vote that Emmanuel Macron called snap assembly elections. His gamble on effectively daring French voters to elect the far-Right backfired dramatically.
National Rally was only stopped from seizing power by a “cordon sanitaire” of Left-wing parties, ranging from the centre to the hard Left, operating in tacit alliance with Mr Macron.
Even so, Ms Le Pen finds herself at the head of the largest party in the national assembly and Mr Macron has been left a lame duck domestically.
The first minority government set up after the elections collapsed after just three months when Ms Le Pen refused to support it in a vote of no confidence. Ahead of 2027 presidential elections, which Mr Macron cannot contest, she looks to be in a powerful position.
Mr Macron has made efforts to reignite his bromance with Mr Trump, flattering the president with a VIP invitation to the opening of the restored Notre-Dame cathedral.
Ms Le Pen and Mr Trump do not seem to have clicked. She has not snagged an invitation to his inauguration but her one-time rival, Éric Zemmour, has.
Mr Zemmour’s star has dimmed since 2022 when it looked like he could overtake Ms Le Pen in the race for the Élysée and tempted her niece to join his party.
An Alternative for Germany?
Ms Le Pen has also clashed with the Alternative For Germany (AfD). She threw the far-Right, pro-Putin party out of her European alliance after one of its senior members said that not all members of the Waffen SS were criminals.
It came after a newspaper revealed some AfD members attended a neo-Nazi conference where the forced remigration of foreigners was discussed.
It’s not a good look for a party placed under observation for suspected extremism by German intelligence.
This did not deter Elon Musk from endorsing the party and interviewing Alice Weidel, its co-leader, on X this year.
Alice Weidel, co-leader of the Alternative for Germany party, which scored notable results in state elections last year – Annegret Hilse/Reuters
During their cosy chat, Ms Weidel insisted her party had nothing in common with Adolf Hitler because, in her words, he was a socialist.
During Mr Trump’s first term, the AfD was nowhere near government. When he won his second, the hapless Left-wing Chancellor Olaf Scholz promptly collapsed his dysfunctional coalition government.
Now the AfD, which scored notable results in state elections last year, is polling second behind the centre-Right CDU before voters head to the polls in February.
The CDU won’t be willing to breach the “firewall” keeping the AfD from government but that horse has already bolted in Austria.
The Freedom Party of Austria won its first-ever general election in September last year. Herbert Kickl, its leader, a pro-Putin populist who raged against lockdown rules, is now in coalition talks that could see the far-Right politician made chancellor.
The Right roars back
In November, Mr Trump made his jaw-dropping comeback, winning the popular vote, as he defeated Kamala Harris, who had replaced Mr Biden as the Democrat candidate.
In Western Europe and the US, the rise of the Right was such that it won 55.7 per cent of the average vote share, compared with the Left’s 42.3 per cent.
According to Telegraph data analysis, it is the widest gap in vote share since 1990. Left-wing parties have not been so unpopular worldwide since the end of the Cold War.
Britain was one of the few countries to buck the trend, as Labour won a landslide victory. Even then, Nigel Farage’s Reform won a record four million votes and finally secured its leader a seat in Parliament.
The Rightward trend looks set to continue.
Earlier this month, a tearful Justin Trudeau resigned. Pierre Poilievre, a Right-wing firebrand backed by Elon Musk, is the favourite to replace him as Canada’s prime minister. The Right is leading Australia’s Left-wing government in the polls.
In November, Trump’s global network of allies and imitators celebrated. Mr Bolsonaro said Mr Trump’s victory represented “the triumph of the people’s will over the arrogant designs of an elite who disdain our values, beliefs, and traditions”.
Mr Milei congratulated Mr Trump on his “formidable victory” and wished him “success and blessings”.
The next day, as he hosted the European Political Community summit in Budapest, Mr Orban looked like the cat who had got the cream.
“Good job Mr President”, tweeted Ms Meloni, while Santiago Abascal, the leader of Spain’s far-Right Vox posted photos of himself meeting Mr Trump and his vice-president JD Vance.
“Never stop, always keep fighting and winning elections,” Mr Wilders said. “Congratulations President Trump! Congratulations America!
A second inauguration
Now it is Mr Trump’s turn for an inauguration ceremony, while the Democrats try to pick up the pieces after their crushing defeat.
Characteristically, he has broken with protocol and invited foreign leaders, and some of the world’s most controversial politicians, to his big bash.
They include Mr Milei, Ms Meloni, Mr Orban, and Salvador’s Mr Bukele, who calls himself “the world’s coolest dictator” on X.
Not all will make it because of scheduling issues. Mr Bolsonaro, who like Mr Trump survived an assassination attempt on the campaign trail, wants to make the pilgrimage to Washington.
But he must first get his passport back from the Brazilian authorities, who seized it after accusing him of plotting a coup to stay in power.
Mr Farage will certainly be in Washington, as will Mr Wilders, Mr Zemmour and Tom van Grieken of Vlaams Belang. The AfD’s Ms Weidel was invited and her co-leader will attend. Poland’s Mateusz Morawiecki, the former Law and Justice prime minister, will also be there.
They have much in common, with Mr Trump and each other. A provocative style, a hostility toward migrants, wokery and those they call “the elites” and the effective use of social media to communicate directly with voters.
The new president, the inspiration for their MAGA-style rise, can boast an international network of proxies ranging from the powerful to useful stooges who will parrot his talking points.
Back home, the liberal establishment has long derided them as populists of the worst sort.
But as the rising Right flocks to pay tribute to the 45th and 47th president, Mr Trump’s troops will feel the future belongs to them.
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