Brussels blog

With Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s ruling Labour party heading towards defeat in Thursday’s British general election, the European left may soon be in even worse condition than it was just one year ago.  The trouble started in last June’s European Parliament elections, when centre-right parties swept to victory in the European Union’s six biggest countries – France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Spain and the UK.

Then came the Social Democrats’ crushing defeat in September’s German election: the SPD took a mere 23 per cent of the vote, its worst result in the Federal Republic’s 60-year history.  Finally, Hungary’s ruling socialists were decimated last month in an election that saw the triumph of the centre-right Fidesz party and a strong performance by the ultra-right Jobbik party.

During this period, the centre-left has almost dropped out of sight in Italy in spite of Silvio Berlusconi’s difficulties as premier.  Spain’s socialist government is floundering as Europe’s sovereign debt crisis spreads across the Mediterranean like a Gulf of Mexico oil slick.  The French left did well in regional elections in March, but regional polls take place in different contexts from national parliamentary and presidential elections in France.

Joerg Forbrig, a political analyst at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, thinks there is a pattern to the recent election results.  Traditional social democracy is in decline, he says.  “This weakening of the moderate left, once a bulwark of European democracies, will have massive repercussions for political processes, institutions and culture on the continent.  Among others, it heralds fragmentation in European party systems, complicating and drawing out coalition-building and making continuity of governance more difficult.”

I would make three additional points.  First, the past year’s election results show that European citizens – or at least those who can be bothered to vote – tend, in a severe economic crisis, to put more faith in centre-right parties than those of the centre-left.  This is all the more true when centre-right politicians make clear, as they have done in Germany, for example, that they will shelter citizens from the worst effects of the crisis by protecting their jobs and welfare entitlements.

My second point is that, to a certain extent, Europe’s election results illustrate nothing more than that voters enjoy punishing incumbent parties, particularly ones that have governed for a long time.  This is undoubtedly what is contributing to Labour’s demise in the UK.  Perhaps we should not speak too soon, since we could easily end up with a hung parliament.  But a weighted average of recent opinion polls on Tuesday put the Conservatives on 35 per cent, the Liberal Democrats on 28 per cent and Labour on 27 per cent.

Lastly, the centre-left is by no means in retreat everywhere in Europe.  In the Czech and Slovak election campaigns, for instance, the centre-left is well ahead in the polls.  A month before the June 9 parliamentary election in the Netherlands, the Labour party is neck and neck or slightly ahead of the moderate right-wing VVD party.  The far-right, anti-Islamic Freedom party of Geert Wilders is trailing in fourth place. 

Let us also not forget that the socialist Pasok party won a convincing election victory last October in Greece.  It is another matter, of course, whether the drastic austerity measures contained in Pasok’s IMF-eurozone plan to avoid national bankruptcy will serve as a strong advertisement for socialism.