There’s a simple explanation for Calin Georgescu’s ‘shock’ triumph in Romania

On a bus journey in Transylvania last summer, I got talking to a young Romanian man who works in Yorkshire and who had been back home visiting his relatives. He told me how hard it had become for Romanians, particularly elderly people like his grandmother, to make ends meet with inflation so high. He blamed the war in Ukraine for the massive spike in energy prices and said that the conflict ‘needs to end soon’. With times so hard, he told me that some people were becoming resentful of handouts to Ukrainian refugees. I thought of my bus conversation when I saw the BBC report that a ‘Far-right, pro-Russian candidate’ had taken a ‘surprise lead in Romania’s presidential election’. 

The reaction in western liberal-elite circles to the success of the ‘ultranationalist’ Calin Georgescu in the first round of voting this weekend has been one of shock and horror, with much clutching of pearls.