– The economic situation is beginning to exert powerful effects on the political landscape. Witness this analysis of current events in Europe.
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The establisment Left had been crushed across most of Europe, just as it was in the early 1930s.
We have seen the ultimate crisis of capitalism — what Marxist-historian Eric Hobsbawm calls the “dramatic equivalent of the collapse of the Soviet Union” — yet socialists have completely failed to reap any gain from the seeming vindication of their views.
It is not clear why a chunk of the blue-collar working base has swung almost overnight from Left to Right, but clearly we are seeing the delayed detonation of two political time-bombs: rising unemployment and the growth of immigrant enclaves that resist assimilation.
Note that Right-wing incumbents in France (Sarkozy) and Italy (Berlusconi), survived the European elections unscathed.
Left-wing incumbents in Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Poland, Denmark, and of course Britain were either slaughtered, or badly mauled.
The Dutch Labour party that has dominated national politics for the last half century fell behind the anti-immigrant movement of Geert Wilders (banned from entering Britain). It serves them right for the staggeringly stupid decision to force through the European Constitution (renamed Lisbon) after it had already been rejected by their own voters by a fat margin in the 2005 referendum.
The Portuguese Socialists face Siberian exile after seeing a 18pc drop in their vote. The slow drip-drip of debt-deflation for a boom-bust Club Med state, trapped in the eurozone with an overvalued exchange rate (viz core Europe, and the world), has suddenly turned into a torrent. The country is already in deflation (-0.6pc in April). It has been suffering its own version of Japanese perma-slump for half a decade.
Portugal’s opposition is calling for an immediate vote of no censure, while the Government clings to constitutional fig-leaves to hide its naked legitimacy. “O Governo está na sua plenitude de funções,” said the chief spokesman. You can guess what that means. Not long for this world, surely.
In Germany and Austria, the Social Democrats suffered their worst defeats since World War Two. I don’t say that with pleasure. A vibrant labour-SPD movement is vital for German political stability. It was the peeling away of Socialist support during the Bruning deflation of the Depression years — so like today’s Weber-Trichet deflation — that led to the catastrophic election of July 1932, when the Nazis and Communists took half the Reichstag seats.
More… ➡
– Research thanks to Robin S.