It's hard to find adjectives strong enough to describe the losses which left-leaning socialist and labor parties face in the current European elections. To call it a debacle might be understatement. The European left has crashed and burned and the region faces a complete political paradigm shift with some very unexpected results. Never has a dominant political ideology suffered such an overwhelming rebuke and rejection from the voters since the era of revolutions when autocracy was cast out in favor of representative government. The final results are due tonight, but early reports leave only the question of the degree by which the left will be devastated Europe-wide.
The first indicator came several days ago when news of the result of the EU parliamentary election in the Netherlands was leaked, revealing that radical libertarian Geert Wilders and his Freedom Party had catapulted from being a fringe party to the second largest party in the nation, gaining 4 seats in the EU parliament and likely breaking up the ruling coalition, forcing the Christian Democrats to look for new support to remain in power and making concessions to the Freedom Party and their anti-immigrant, anti-EU agenda.
Britain already set the pattern for electing representatives to the EU parliament who were hostile to the body in which they are serving. The Netherlands will now be sending 4 more troublemakers to join British libertarian firebrand Daniel Hannan, and similar results are expected in other European countries including Ireland, Britain and Spain. Countries which recently elected more conservative governments like Poland, France and Germany are expected to see less radical change, but will likely still experience growth in conservative and libertarian parties. The fuil results of the EU parliamentary election will be announced Sunday evening.
This EU parliamentary election is an indicator of things to come in the internal politics of European nations, as demonstrated by Saturday's devastating defeat for Britain's Labour Party in local council elections. Labour, which used to dominate local council governments, has lost 300 seats and no longer controls any local councils at all. Labour's loss has been described as being "wiped off the electoral map" in Britain, and in the EU election they are expected to come in behind virtually every party of any note, including the radical UK Independent Party.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dan(Miller)
Dave,
Please don't report such things; you may force me to accept the absurd notion that there is, in fact, a God and that She looks after our best interests.
Dan(Miller)
2 - Ruvy
Dave,
This is no surprise at all to me. Could you give details of the German EU seats and Länder elections, if you have them?
3 - Lumpy
Returns are starting to be reported now. Looks like the terrorist appeasing socialists are out in Spain. A good start.
4 - Dan(Miller)
Ruvy,
This just in; can you at least pretend to be surprised?
Dan(Miller)
5 - Ruvy
Dan, I'm stunned! Shocked! I couldn't believe what I was reading!! My hair stood up on the back of my neck!!!
(Will that do for pretense, Dan? I read all this shit on Arutz Sheva about 13 hours ago)
6 - Ruvy
Actually, I'm collecting a whole pile of links to talk about a topic you've never seen me discuss before - how America is putting the screws to the Jews.
You'll be stunned and shocked! You'll be surprised!! The hair will stand up on the back of your neck!!!
7 - Christopher Rose
In the real world, as opposed to various fevered imaginings, the balance of the parties is nothing like as apocalyptic.
Party Votes MEPs
+/- % % +/- Total
EPP +1.4 35 +2 228
Socialists -3.4 23 -15 147
Liberal +0.6 10 -7 65
Green +2.0 8 +14 45
No Group +0.4 12 +18 41
Left +0.8 6 +4 35
UEN -0.4 2 -6 17
Ind/Dem -1.4 1 -11 8
8 - Dave Nalle
Christopher, of course, minimizing the utter debacle for leftists Europe-wide. In reality left parties were crushed in every major country except Greece.
For lots of results see this article. Even in Spain it was almost a 5% victory for (relative) conservatives over the socialists.
And Ruvy, in Germany the Free Democrats surged ahead, with 11%, almost doubling their results in the last election. Looks like they gained most of those seats from the Christian Democrats, even though the Christian Democrats still smashed the hell out of the Socialists who seem to have lost support to the Greens.
That pattern is pretty similar in other countries. Centrist parties are losing votes to more radical parties on the right and the left, while the general trend is somewhat more conservative, which is good for conservative coalition governments like Merkel's in Germany and bad for leftist coalitions like Brown's in England.
Oh, and Chris can also be proud that the BNP managed to get someone elected to office for the first time in history.
Dave
9 - Dan(Miller)
Ruvy, You'll be stunned and shocked! You'll be surprised!! The hair will stand up on the back of your neck!!! Quite probably so; that's one of the few remaining places close to my head where I still have hair.
Dan(Miller)
PS I read Arutz Sheva daily as well; I thought you might be more receptive to something from what we fondly call the Main Stream Media.
10 - Christopher Rose
That's right Dave, printing actual results is "minimizing the utter debacle for leftists Europe-wide", which I could care less about, whilst your little wonkfest fantasy is hard-headed political realism.
Why on earth would I be proud of the fact that the BNP managed to get someone elected to the European Parliament? Or is it just you lashing out like a temperamental tart when your bubble is burst? Tragic and trivial isn't a pretty combination.
11 - Ruvy
Main Stream Media.
Dan, is that where some overpaid prima donna pulls down his zipper, whips out his schlong and pisses in your face the main stream of ideas from the ruling cliques that we're supposed to swallow - like say, Sky News, the BBC, or MSNBC?
You know us Jews up in the mountains don't get hold of real facts too often....
12 - Ruvy
That's right Dave, printing actual results is "minimizing the utter debacle for leftists Europe-wide", which I could care less about, whilst your little wonkfest fantasy is hard-headed political realism.
You shouldn't bait poor Christopher like that, Dave. I'm ashamed of you! Just because Europeans can't stand it when someone other than a European calls a political trend in Europe (they ain't that different from me, for all their damned pretensions), doesn't mean you should hold red kippers in front of his face like one does to a chihuahua for him to bark at....
Just 'taint nice....
13 - Dave Nalle
Chris, how was my bubble burst? Your figures don't contradict anything I was saying. They bear out exactly what I wrote in the article and in subsequent comments.
I only bait you because it's fun to see you get all snippy.
Dave
14 - STM
It's a foregone conclusion that Britain will have a Conservative Party government after the next UK general election.
Brown is deeply unpopular, and the fallout from the MPs expenses scandal virtually ensures that some of the smaller parties will have a say in Britain's next parliament.
The New Labour experiment is over; the "New" Conservative (they are now painting themselves as more middle-of-the-road than Right), and only just to the right of New Labour, which moved from the Left to the centre.
Whether that's true in the case of the Conservatives remains to be seen, but they are certainly a walk-up start next time around.
In the meantime, the right has made its presence right across Europe.
The BNP, the UK's far-right "respectable" party has won two European parliament seats and is already using it (in media interviews) to push its anti-Islam, anti-immigration stance.
Basically, they are saying the UK is "full-up" and it's time to "shut the door" (their words, not mine).
It IS, however, an indication that people are not so fed up with the Left (which in Europe can be a very conservative voice on issues such as immigration and job protection in the face of foreign workers) but on open borders, protections for asylum seekers and illagal immigrants and multiculturalism generally.
15 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy and Dave, it comes as no surprise at all to see two people who start from completely different perspectives on the world share the personality quirks of an overwhelming belief in their own world views and a complete indifference to facts that contradict those arrogant and pompously delivered prejudices. It is beautifully ironic though.
That you both also share a revealingly childish obsession with trying to characterise me as snippy is nothing but yet more fantasy projection on your part and quite divorced from, you know, reality. Congratulations on such fine displays of projection though, well done!
16 - Ruvy
Yup,
Chris is definitely snippy. I begin to see the fun zing has in trying to bait me.
Chris, aside from being pompous, tendentious, lacking a sense of humour, and being unable to see another point of view, you're a great guy with an open mind. I'll even credit you with teaching me the use of these 12 letter multi-syllabic attempts at characterization. In fact, you remind me an awful lot of a Geordie who lives in our humble village. I try to stay on his good side. He's a big wheel here.
Oh, that's right, you're a big wheel at BC. Maybe I better stay on your good side, too.
17 - Christopher Rose
Ruvy, I love this new technique of yours whereby you accuse other people of the very qualities you bring to this site every single time you turn up. It's a complete failure mind you, as nobody is being fooled except yourself...
18 - Ruvy
Ruvy, I love this new technique of yours....
Well, Chris this ol' Jewboy in the mountains aims to please.
At your service, guv'na!
19 - roger nowosielski
Dave,
"As he moves America farther left politically the rest of the world seems to see their answer in moving in the opposite direction."
Without America? It's rather hard to visualize.
20 - STM
Dave: "As he moves America farther left politically the rest of the world seems to see their answer in moving in the opposite direction."
Actually, you guys aren't being strictly truthful here.
American politics is so far to the right even when it's "left" (please, don't confuse namby-pamby, wet, chardonnay-drinking American liberalism with the Left. It ain't left ... It's just liberalism), by the time you finally catch up with everyone else who's allegedly moving to the "right", we all might meet in the middle somewhere.
Now, wouldn't that be nice?
21 - STM
The problem I see with hard-core American liberals is that they're too nice, in that condescending we know better than you kind of way.
What's wrong with wanting UHC, industrial arbitration for workers' rights and conditions, job protection, decent wages set in stone through the courts, etc etc etc AND sticking up for yourselves and tearing terrorists a new set of aresholes.
I'll never understand American liberals (or American conservatives for that matter, who always want to take their bat and ball and go home if you don't agree with them), and how everything has to be boxed in and ticked off like a set of requirements that entitles you to be part of one camp or another, but nothing in between.
That's the problem with America today: too much black and white and not enough exploration of the vast grey area in between.
22 - Dave Nalle
You're quite right, Stan. I didn't want to open up the issue of America's political position relative to the rest of the world because it would require a whole additional article just to explain some of the differences.
The truth is that many of these "conservative" parties are not what most americans would consider conservative. For example, on issues other than immigration Geert Wilders is quite liberal by American standards.
The same is true of a lot of other European political parties. They combine issues and concerns differently than we do. In Europe you'll find major parties which are socially conservative and very far left on economic issues, which is a totally unfamiliar idea to most Americans, except perhaps Joe Lieberman. And in Europe opposition to immigration often goes hand in hand with storng unionism -- which is a combination which makes a great deal of sense and which I think exists here in the US in the grassroots, but which none of our parties really seem to get.
But we can definitely say that there is a move to the right on certain key issues in Europe, particularly immigration and economic policy.
Dave
23 - Dr Dreadful
Brown is deeply unpopular, and the fallout from the MPs expenses scandal virtually ensures that some of the smaller parties will have a say in Britain's next parliament.
If they do, it will be because of some banner local issue. Britain's first-past-the-post electoral system pretty much ensures that lunatics like the BNP don't get anywhere near any sort of power that counts.
Britain uses PR at the European elections, which gives smaller and 'issue' parties like the UKIP and the BNP more of a shout. Nevertheless, the BNP's poll numbers actually went down this time around, and they only got seats because Labour's vote collapsed so spectacularly.
And Stan's correct: the Tories aren't exactly classically right-wing these days, having had to reinvent themselves as a populist party following their own electoral implosion in the 90s. They're actually farther left than the supposedly centrist Lib Dems on a number of issues nowadays.
The diagnosis is less that Europe is moving to the right than that it's moving away from the integrationist, free immigration model.
Dave's right on one thing, though: By the time this here discussion has run its course, Gordon Brown may very well no longer be prime minister.
24 - roger nowosielski
I knew there was something wrong with Dave's picture. Thanks for clarifying this, STM.
BTW, in one of your comments you attributed a statement to me that wasn't mine. I only cited it in order to retort.
25 - Baronius
I've heard it argued that in Europe, the government-leftist parties split from the moderate parties after WWII.
I don't know my way around those European parties. You guys have noted that the Right in Europe is to the left of the US Right, but there are also some crazy elements in the European Right that Americans don't have to contend with. I mean, monarchists? Really? There are parties in Europe that embody SJ's worst fears about American right-wingers.
An American friend of mine is infatuated with the BNP. I think my buddy's been accused of racism so many times (for opposing quotas) that he doesn't realize that the BNP is racist racist. No wonder Euroelites look down on the US when they hear that we elect conservatives.