“The very soul of Europe is at risk,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez warned fellow European centre-left politicians who had gathered in Rome ahead of a difficult EU election campaign.
At stake was how to halt the seemingly unstoppable rise of right-wing and far-right parties in the European Parliament vote, which starts on Thursday in the Netherlands and continues across all 27 EU member states until Sunday.
Only four EU member states have centre-left or left-wing parties in government and recent performances at the ballot box have been poor. The omens for the coming days are not good.
The European left is in “bad health”, says Prof Marc Lazar of Sciences Po in Paris and Rome’s Luiss University, the result of a steady decline that began in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
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In only four countries are the Socialists and Democrats projected to come out on top - in Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania and Malta. Even then, Denmark’s Social Democrats under Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen are geared up for a big drop in support.
Hers is one of only four out of 27 member states with centre-left or left-wing parties at the helm.Spain, Germany, and Malta are the others.
The rise of the far right is accelerating, fuelled by inequality. At the moment in the UK Right to far right are polling at 53% and 36%, actual left leaning parties just 6% and below. The swing to the right and far right especially is dramatic in the past 15 years.
Because the political left got enamoured with corporate cash and forgot that they’re ostensibly a labour party. The spent the post-Soviet era indulging on third-way neoliberalism.
Heck, several of them are more actively hostile to actual leftist economics. Labour in the UK fought its own voters and threw elections over Corbyn, the Democratic Party in the US hates the Sanders wing more than it hates Republicans and the Canadian NDP voted for a fundraiser instead of actual lefties.
And in doing all this, they ceded working class politics to protofacists.