What explains the poor performance of centre-left parties?

It is well documented that since the financial crisis, European centre-left parties have performed poorly in elections. The previous chapter demonstrated that the support-base of social democratic parties has eroded significantly in recent decades, and the centre left can no longer rely on traditional class and political allegiances. But the reasons why social democrats have not performed effectively in elections go beyond the process of structural change and class de-alignment. There are a set of short-run and long-term factors which explain the centre left’s anaemic performance since the 2008 financial crisis. The short-term factors relate to particular events and contingencies:

Economic credibility

The 2008 crisis destroyed the reputation of many centre-left governments for economic competence especially in countries such as Britain and Spain; they were in power when the crisis hit and social democrats had been associated with deregulatory policies and fiscal profligacy in the previous decade. Even in countries where the centre left was not in government, the economic crash did not produce any dramatic shift towards the left. The crisis highlighted the problems of inequality and disorderly financial markets, but voters more often yearned for stability and a ‘safe pair of hands’ rather than radical ‘anti-austerity’ policies. Social democrats were caught in an electoral bind: if they offered more austerity, voters could not tell the difference between them and the centre right. But if the centre-left appeared complacent about debt and public sector deficits, it faced electoral annihilation.

No money left

The fiscal aftershock of the economic crisis has in turn destroyed the traditional rationale of modernised social democracy: increased public spending and investment in infrastructure and the public realm. The question with which centre-left leaders are wrestling almost everywhere is what does social democracy stand for when there’s no money left? The task of coalition building has become much tougher since parties can no longer dish out palliatives and electoral ‘sweeteners’ to key electoral groups.

Too few leaders

Across Europe, centre-left parties have recently had too few credible, persuasive leaders. They appear to lack a model of effective ‘charismatic’ leadership which can inspire voters while being honest about the challenges and trade-offs confronting politics in the real world. In many countries, traditional social democratic parties have maintained ‘closed’ selection processes which require successful politicians to advance through the party bureaucracy, working against more exciting ‘insurgent’ candidates with experience outside conventional political institutions.

Pasokification

The ‘Pasokification’ of European politics since 2008 has been significant, as the previous discussion showed. The rise of ‘challenger parties’ on left and right in many countries has repeatedly weakened the position of social democrats. Long-term changes in voting patterns and electoral systems have been attenuated by the impact of the crisis, which has forced voters to seek solutions on the radical margins of politics. From Scotland to Spain, traditional social democratic supporters have defected to left nationalist parties in protest against the perceived corruption of the democratic process.

The rise of ‘compassionate Conservatism’

In reaction to the electoral dominance of social democratic parties in the late 1990s, centre-right parties have shifted pragmatically to the political centre, intensifying the electoral competition for social democrats where they confront new projects of ‘compassionate Conservatism’ notably in Germany, Sweden, and Britain. Christian democratic leaders such as Angela Merkel and Frederick Reinfeld have embraced traditional centre-left policies such as higher minimum wages and more generous welfare support for families. The new British prime minister, Theresa May, has made a similar bold move. The distinction between left and right appears less clear cut.

The fracturing of the European Union

Europe itself is weaker in the aftermath of the eurozone crisis, the decision of the UK on 23 June to withdraw from the EU, and uncertainty about the European project’s future direction. Despite initial doubts about the Common Market and the single currency, social democrats in most countries have come to view the EU as an instrument to help achieve their political objectives, especially in social and environmental policy. Today, the European project is seemingly bereft: divisions over how to handle the migration crisis and the growing threat of terrorism force a retreat behind national borders. Voters perceive the EU as distant, bureaucratic and anti-democratic; parties respond by refusing to defend the European project. Euroscepticism is by no means confined to Britain. The weakening of political cooperation in Europe is perceived to be bad for social democracy.

Given these myriad problems, it is little wonder that social democrats have performed poorly in European elections over the last 15 years. Nonetheless, there are long-term challenges that have eroded the electoral position of centre-left parties since the 1960s and 1970s:

The death of class politics

The ‘death’ of class has made it tougher for social democrats to forge viable long-term electoral coalitions. As the previous chapter demonstrated, class still matters in the economy and society, but class no longer drives politics into monolithic blocs of ‘working-class’ and ‘middle-class’ voters. The process of structural de-alignment has been underway for over 50 years, eroding the capacity of social democrats to mobilise their electoral base. The third way sought an escape from this electoral dilemma by bringing middle-class voters firmly within the centre-left coalition; but the third way was unable to reconcile the ‘materialist’ orientation of its blue-collar working-class voters with the ‘post-materialist’ orientation of the post-1968 middle-classes (Callaghan, 2009).

Individualisation

Another long-term challenge has been individualisation. Industrial and post-industrial societies have become increasingly individualised since the second world war, disrupting the traditional ethic of collectivism that was once at the core of socialism and social democracy. The sociologist Ulrich Beck has illustrated the yearning for greater personal autonomy and freedom which has been underway in industrialised societies since the 1950s. The 1968 ‘social revolutions’ confirmed the growth of post-materialist values in Europe which have cut against traditional forms of collectivist organisation.

Social democratic institutions under pressure

In the meantime, structural change has put greater pressure on traditional social democratic institutions, notably the welfare state and public services which have been in difficulty since the 1970s. In the aftermath of the second world war, it was widely believed that economic growth would be sufficient to fund universal provision; demographic and technological changes have thrown this assumption into doubt. Greater longevity and growing demand from a more affluent population has increased the long-term cost pressures on the welfare state. Centre-left parties in power have often been slow to contemplate necessary structural reforms.

The ‘hollowing-out’ of democracy

The weakening of representative democracy as manifested in declining election turnouts and the ‘hollowing out’ of mass centre-left parties and trade unions has damaged social democracy. Historically, the rise of social democracy was predicated on the ‘primacy of politics’. The centre-left no longer has the capacity to mobilise voters as it did immediately after 1945; the risk is that economically marginalised and younger voters are permanently disengaged from democratic institutions and representative politics.

The rise of identity politics

The growth of nationalism and identity politics has been uncomfortable for social democrats who have adopted a predominantly liberal cosmopolitan outlook. It forces these parties to make difficult choices about where to strike the balance in immigration policy; and it makes the centre left vulnerable to the drift of traditional social democratic supporters to the populist right, particularly in northern Europe. Where older nationalist enmities emerge such as in the UK and Spain, the risk is that the nation state breaks up in its existing form, disrupting traditional class alliances.

Have the ‘old battles’ been won?

Finally, social democracy may have been the victim of its own success since the 1950s and 1960s. Having forged an enduring postwar consensus followed by the social reforms of the ‘permissive society’ in the 1960s and the 1990s, there is less of a clamour for political change in most of the industrialised countries. The liberalisation of social and cultural attitudes has proceeded apace. Social democracy acquired its identity from the sense of righting wrongs and injustices in society; this is harder where the old ‘giants’ have been tackled, abolished or have just disappeared.

‘Nostalgia’ and ‘despair’

None of these developments have pre-determined consequences for centre-left politics; nor is there a ‘golden age’ which they should seek to re-capture; in reality, social democracy has always been tough going, including in the 1950s and 1960s where there were regularly economic and political crises. But social democratic parties have to adapt and change if they are not to remain electorally marginalised. This book warns against the widespread claim that history is stacked inexorably against the left, and that the long march of progress has gone into reverse (Gamble, 2010). Social democracy does face ‘testing times’ in Europe and across much of the world, but the pessimism can be overstated, lapsing into what Andrew Gamble terms the politics of ‘nostalgia’ and the politics of ‘despair’.1

This interpretation of history is pervasive among many European social democrats: as Gamble states, it begins with the claim that third way social democracy has achieved little since the late 1980s, in the face of increasing acquiescence to neoliberalism. Many traditional social democratic values have apparently been abandoned, as governments everywhere seek to roll back the state. Having asserted social democracy’s capitulation to economic liberalism, what follows inevitably are the politics of ‘nostalgia’ (Gamble, 2010). The period between 1945 and the early 1970s is hailed as a ‘golden age’, in which social democracy fought to entrench universal social citizenship encapsulated in the welfare state, and a model of regulated capitalism that protected citizens within the nation state from misfortune (Berman, 2006). In Britain, the postwar Attlee government is still regarded as the pinnacle of socialist achievement.

This narrative might appear politically persuasive, but it radically overstates the efficacy of neoliberalism during the 1980s, giving a false impression of social democratic durability during the years of the ‘long boom’ (Gamble, 2010; Callaghan, 2009). In the 1950s, for example, many western European countries were dominated by parties of the Christian democratic right, having skilfully captured the postwar settlement promising a new model of social market capitalism (Callaghan, 2009). It was only in Scandinavia that the centre left was capable of sustained electoral hegemony. Another weakness of the politics of nostalgia is that too much ground is conceded to the free market right. The ideology of neoliberalism became influential in the early 1980s, as the postwar settlement collapsed (Blyth, 2011). Indeed, many of its guiding assumptions live on, even in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. But the state has hardly been rolled back or entirely dismantled, as the critics of third way politics commonly allege. Even in the UK, among the most ‘neoliberal’ of the western European countries, the struggle to rein in public expenditure after 1979 was far from successful (Taylor-Gooby, 2013). Welfare spending as a proportion of national income was substantially higher when the Conservatives left office in 1997; across the industrialised economies, expenditure on the welfare state and social protection as a proportion of GDP increased from 1980 to 2005 by more than six per cent (Gamble, 2010).

The fundamental weakness of the politics of ‘despair’ and the politics of ‘nostalgia’ is that they emphasise the defensive preservation of existing ideals and institutions, instead of engaging radically with the challenges of the future. Social democracy has to adjust to new challenges in order to address the needs of today’s society; that requires deep reflection about the strategic aims and guiding purpose of centre-left politics (Gamble, 2010). The next chapter addresses that question directly by undertaking an assessment of the various governing programmes and strategies that social democrats have sought to develop in power since the late 1990s.

Note

1. A. Gamble, ‘Social Democracy’ on ‘Social Europe’, January 2010.