[/caption]Michael Cosgrove - Britain is still coming to terms with the poor showing of the Labour Party in recent local and regional elections, but the left is doing badly all over Europe. Why is this happening? The answer comes in one word – ‘immigration.’
Britain’s coalition government consisting of the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats is the result of the 2010 general election, which saw the Labour Party ousted from power after many long years at the helm. The current government has proved to be an unhappy marriage however and the many disagreements within its ranks have been exploited with glee by the left, which was naturally expecting good results from the local and regional elections. Alas, that optimism proved to be misplaced.
On a national level, these results can be explained by the loss of crucial Labour support groups such as working-class voters and the very Liberals who chose to govern with the Conservatives instead of going into opposition with Labour. Looked at from a European standpoint however, what has happened to Labour is symptomatic of what has been happening everywhere else too.
The facts speak for themselves. France’s Socialist Party presidential candidates have been roundly trounced ever since Mitterand left power in 1995 and there hasn’t been a Socialist government for many years either. Socialists polled only 16% in recent European elections and Italy’s Democrats didn’t fare much better, with only 26%. Dutch right-wing firebrand Geert Wilders has become a power-broker in Holland and election results in Austria, Sweden and elsewhere have given scant comfort to the left. The left also suffered heavy losses in recent elections in Finland. At the same time a rise in fortunes of right and even extreme right-wing politicians and parties is to be seen all over the continent.
As in Britain, the various European Socialist parties have been losing crucial working and lower middle class support to the right, despite the financial crisis, which, as it hit lower income groups hard, should have given them and their “tax the rich and the banks” approach to solving the problem a boost. So what is going wrong?
Most European countries have in common that immigration has become a major issue. Rightly or wrongly, many Europeans consider that there are so many immigrants in their countries that their national identities are being destroyed. This sentiment was exacerbated by 9/11 because Europe – and France in particular – has millions of Muslim immigrants, not all of which are here legally.
The public is no longer prepared to see a cash-strapped left-inspired welfare state system hand out money to immigrants while poor Europeans are suffering financial hardship, and those who pay tax are fed up with being forced, as they see it, to subsidize immigrants who have no hope of getting a job in what is already an extremely difficult labor market beset by high unemployment.
The result is that concepts dear to the left such as multiculturalism and ethnic diversity have been openly declared to be “a failure” by both British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel – that which would have been unthinkable ten years ago - and much of public opinion agrees, saying that those concepts have failed to the point where they have been responsible for the failure to integrate immigrant communities.
Current events such as the flood of refugees beaching in Italy after having risked their lives crossing the Mediterranean Sea from conflict-ridden Libya and Tunisia have not increased sympathy for immigrants and the left seems powerless to suggest policies to counter them. Should Europe integrate them or give them temporary asylum? The left is silent. The right however is surfing on the anti-immigrant wave to demand that Europe introduces emergency legislation to increase border surveillance and that the refugees be returned immediately to Africa.
Can the European left do anything to improve its fortunes? It would be premature to write Socialism off altogether, but turning things around would require a fundamental reinventing of what Socialism means today. As it stands it does not offer a credible working alternative to free-market capitalism, despite the system’s failings. This will need leaders of vision who have the courage to steer the left into previously uncharted waters.
Also, developing and proposing serious and credible alternatives to its current policy of accepting whoever turns up on Europe’s doorstep is also essential, however unpalatable doing so may seem.
In other words, the left in Europe must inject a little more realism into its idealism because failure to do so will lead to its decline and eventual demise. It’s that simple, and it’s that difficult too.
