Portuguese Prime Minister Antonio Costa speaks during a bi-monthly debate at the Portuguese parliament,Lisbon in March, 2018. NurPhoto/ Press Association. All rights reserved. Across the
European continent, support for the
populist radical right has increased over the last
three decades. Even in countries that had seemed immune to such
tendencies for decades, including Finland, Sweden and,
above all, Germany,
right-wing populist parties have made their way into the political arena. On
the other side of the political spectrum, support for centre-left parties
appears to be in free fall. Following
the substantial losses suffered by social democratic parties in the
Netherlands, France and Germany, the Italian centre-left Democratic
Party (PD) was recently outflanked by populists by losing nearly 7 percentage
points (down to 19 percent overall) in the 2018 general elections. In the light
of these developments, the future looks bleak for the mainstream left.
The decline of Europe’s social democrats on
the one hand, and the surge of the far right, on the other, tend to be
presented as two correlated trends. However, electoral
politics is not a zero-sum-game where gains made by one party can simply be
explained by the losses of another. While social democratic parties have
suffered major blows in numerous countries, they are not in decline everywhere.
Under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, the UK Labour Party has crowned itself a
‘government-in-waiting’ after booking a net gain of 30 seats by winning 40
percent of the vote in the 2017 general elections – their strongest result
since 2001. On the continent, the Walloon Parti Socialiste remains the
largest party in francophone Belgium, despite losing support earlier this year
over a series of corruption scandals. Meanwhile, the mainstream left is
flourishing in Portugal. It is clearly too early to bid farewell to social
democracy.
Party systems across Europe have become more
fragmented, thereby making electoral politics increasingly volatile and hence
less predictable. Moreover, the decline of the mainstream left cannot simply be
attributed to the rise of the radical right. Social democratic parties have
lost votes to parties across the political spectrum. In sum,
political fragmentation affects all parties, and the vote-swing from social
democrats to the populist radical right should not be exaggerated.
What is Left?
The causes for the electoral losses suffered
by social democratic parties in recent decades are manifold, including partisan
dealignment and an overall decline in their core electorate. This incentivised
social democratic parties to broaden their voter base by moving to the
political centre in order to appeal to the growing middle class. This, in turn,
paved the way for a period of centrist politics that became widely known as the
‘Third Way’.
Towards the end of the twentieth century,
the ideological convergence between centre-left and centre-right gave rise to a
number of centrist coalition governments. While these ‘grand coalitions’ (and
the policies they promulgated) worked well initially, they ultimately paved the
way for populist challengers. Political convergence generally forces
parties to compromise their ideals by agreeing on a lowest common denominator.
This is likely to frustrate voters who feel that they are being robbed of a
real choice.
In the light of these developments, what
does the future hold for Europe’s social democratic parties? Is the Left
doomed? There are no easy answers to these questions; given the splintering of
the left’s electorate, there certainly is no such thing as a silver bullet to
win back voters. However, in the face of rising inequality, the faltering
support for social democratic parties cannot be attributed to a lack of demand.
Instead, the problem seems to be a shortage of supply – notably the absence of
a credible left-wing alternative. The centrifugal forces of the past have
opened up space for such an alternative. To use the words of the American
critical theorist Nancy Fraser,
we are facing ‘an interregnum, an open and unstable situation in which hearts
and minds are up for grabs. In this situation, there is not only danger but
also opportunity: the chance to build a new new left.’
What might this reincarnated Left look like?
In many European countries, mainstream parties (including those of the
centre-left) have sought to counter the
rise of right-wing populist parties by cosying up to them –
either by entering into coalitions with them, or by copying some of their
policy items. For instance, in the run-up to the 2018 general elections, the
ruling Social Democrats in Sweden recently announced that
they want to impose stricter regulations on immigration. Following a logic
of ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’, mainstream parties may seek to
decrease the political space towards the populist radical right, in the hope
that this might help them win (back) voters that may otherwise choose the far
right.
While these accommodative strategies may
benefit centre-right parties, they are particularly risky for the left.
Firstly, voters are likely to prefer the original over the copy. Secondly, by
cosying up to the populist radical right, left-wing parties will likely end up
alienating some of their most loyal voters. Besides, cosying up to right-wing
populist parties may even result in legitimising them.
Another option for the left might be a
rejuvenated form of centrism, such as the one proposed by Emmanuel Macron with
his En Marche movement. Not unlike the leaders of the ‘Third
Way’, the French President has managed to appeal to voters from both sides of
the political spectrum by insisting that he is both right and left (“et
droite, et gauche”), and by seeking to reconcile a socially progressive
vision with a neoliberal economic agenda. His vision may become clearer in the
months and years to come, as Macron seeks to transpose his ideas to the
European level in the runup to the 2019 European elections. However, thus far,
Macron’s movement is not meaningfully divergent from what the centre-left has
been trying for the past decades. His ‘middle of the road’ strategy, trying to
be everything to everyone, is unlikely to
succeed in the long run, as political convergence risks
satisfying nobody and may end up alienating voters on both sides of the
political spectrum.
A third and perhaps more hopeful solution
for the Left is to move away from the centre and (re)turn to the traditional
tenets of left-wing politics. There are different possibilities for such a
leftwards turn. The Belgian political theorist Chantal Mouffe, for instance,
has argued that left-wing
populism is the only viable solution to
revitalise the Left and counter the right-wing populist tide. According to
Mouffe, centre-left parties cannot offer a solution to rescue progressivism
because they were complicit in the creation of a neoliberal order. To put it
bluntly, the centre-left is part of the problem; after all, ‘Third Way’
policies resulting from decades of consensual politics failed to give a voice
to voters on the left. To Mouffe, democratic politics is a struggle between
adversarial groups – that is, the people and the elites – over full control of
the political terrain. Populism, she argues, is the only way to give a voice
back to ‘the people’.
However, a populist solution to salvage the
future of progressive politics is risky at best because it involves polarisation
by deepening the rift between ‘us’ and ‘them’. After all, populism hinges on a
belief in societal division, as it pits the pure and virtuous people against a
morally corrupt and evil elite. To be sure, in small doses, populism can act as a
political corrective. Indeed, it can flag up public discontent and
issues that may otherwise go unaddressed. However, populism tends to leave very little room for
nuance and pluralism.
The future of
progressive politics
Any viable, long-term solution for the
challenges that left-wing parties are facing will require overcoming societal
divisions by combining expertise with a deep, genuine concern for what voters
actually want. It will involve finding ways to re-establish trust in
politicians by bridging the gap that has emerged between representatives
and voters. To do so, the left ought to start by rethinking what it
actually stands for. This is likely to require a difficult
combination of being able to detect problems locally whilst offering
transnational answers. This, in turn, will involve addressing thorny
questions, including whether to operate at a national or
pan-European level.
Above all, the left must find creative ways
to promote people’s interest in democratic decision-making. It will
involve overcoming factionalism and restoring coalitions between their
splintered electorate, for instance by fostering alliances between working
class voters, trade unions and urban, middle-class intellectuals. Lessons from
Portugal and Wallonia indicate that this could bear some promise. These two
polities have yet to witness the rise of a successful right-wing populist
challenger party. The failure of the far right in these regions can partly be
explained by the fact that social democratic parties have not moved too far to
the centre, thus maintaining close ties to their core voters. This suggests
that social democratic parties could act as ‘buffers’or
‘protective shields’
to the far right – but only if they manage to provide voters with a clear
alternative.
