“Across Western Europe, you start to see a new form of racism in the form of Islamophobia. And that happens in different European countries in different ways. In France it’s very much around the veil and the kind of public debates about veiling that have been going on there. In Holland it’s about a kind of perceived failure of multiculturalism that’s tied to Islam … but what all of these different moments have in common across Western Europe is that again this idea of values, right? And this idea that there is a clash between these kind of alien values that non-white immigrants are bringing into the country and an idea of European values.”

“What they are concerned about are social cultural issues, about identity, about Islam, about people changing their country, taking away their sovereignty. Those are issues that you can discuss when your basic issues are being dealt with so when your country is secure and when you are affluent, you can be busy on the one hand with green issues but also on the other hand with radical right issues like national identity and so that is one of the explanations why it would happen in countries like Denmark and Austria and The Netherlands later.”

“After that, millions of French went out in the streets and decided to protest against Jean-Marie Le Pen, against his victory, even his participation in this election. And after that, people voted for Jacques Chirac, even if they were not rightist voters, and he was elected with 82 percent of voices, so … But it was not the end of the story. It was just one step in something worse.”

“All means were employed to avoid that this first round did [not] result in a nationalistic victory. A general mobilisation of the establishment against the candidature of Jean-Marie Le Pen and [for] Jacques Chirac obtained over 80 percent of the votes and we got nothing. Because it was artificial.”

“There were many people who didn’t accept the situation of immigrants in France. The problem of security became a very important issue for French people. And once again, it was a trial … the trial of immigrants, and Jean-Marie Le Pen was the symbol of the existential crisis of the French society.”

“The demand then continuously throughout that period is tougher immigration control, particularly the idea that government is too cosmopolitan, that the leaders do not really share the kind of native instincts of the ordinary people.”

“The UK Independence Party, or UKIP, which essentially was a Eurosceptic party, that had been struggling in the wilderness since the 1990s, but now realises that actually, with concerns over immigration, and concerns over the EU, it could do much better. And UKIP comes into British politics and quickly turns itself into a very serious political force that becomes the third-most popular party in the country.”

“When he took over the leadership he had ex National Front candidates fighting for UKIP. There’s always been ex BNP National Front people involved in UKIP. There’s all sorts of ex criminal types been allowed to be candidates by Farage …”

“We saw countries like Greece taking on mass debt, going into default. We saw countries like Spain and Italy doing the same thing, Portugal as well. We started to see not a Europe united but a Europe divided.”

“I had to take these very difficult measures. I knew that many of these were unjust but otherwise our country would have fallen off the brink, we would have gone bankrupt.”

“This idea that we in the north now have to pay for them in the south hit home hard. It was also the first time that we saw the so-called dark side of the euro, that our currency was now linked to the behaviour of others including people in the south about which we already have a large prejudices. The radical right directly jumped on that”

“We really see the emergence of more and more of these political parties, and not just their emergence but their ability to frame what's happening in Europe in a political agenda that benefits them.”