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The European Right's Powerful Push
By Arielle Thedrel
Le Figaro
Monday 05 May 2008
Does Boris Johnson's victory in the London mayoral contest portend a Tory victory
in the British legislative elections that must take place between now and 2010?
Regardless, it tallies with European electorates' more general movement to the
right. In London, as in Italy, the right has just resumed power. It was already
in control in Germany, the Netherlands, and, in Scandinavian countries, of Denmark,
and also of Sweden, long presented as a bastion of social democracy. This shift
to the right also holds for Eastern Europe. Conservative or [neo]Liberal parties
have been elected in Warsaw, Prague, the Baltic countries, Bucharest. They have
the wind in their sails in Hungary, where the left in power is in its death
throes as the 2010 legislative elections approach.
Virtually alone, Spain seems to resist. However, José Luis Zapatero's
election owes much to the tactical errors committed by his right wing rivals
during the March elections, as well as to their anachronistic takes on social
issues.
So the phenomenon is as extensive as it is spectacular and the wear and tear
of being in power - which obtains most notably for Great Britain, governed by
Labor since 1997 - does not suffice to explain it. "In the background,"
emphasizes Georges Mink, Research Director at ISP-CNRS, "there are enormous
economic and social changes, the wilting of ideological certainties and - since
the fall of the Berlin Wall - the appearance of new threats such as immigration."
Transformations to which the left has yet to produce a convincing response:
for the right's success is undoubtedly based on the failure of the social democratic
model. "Globalization," Corinne Deloy, researcher at the Robert-Schuman
Foundation, explains, "has made the social software obsolete. That's especially
true now that - with the economic crisis we've entered into - there's nothing
left to redistribute. Suddenly, people trust the right more to find solutions
to problems that called the left's competence into question, for example, such
primary themes as the demographic aging of European societies and retirement
financing."
The right has profited from Social Democracy's decline, but so have more radical
movements on the left: witness Olivier Besancenot's breakthrough in France,
but also that of the Socialist Party in the Netherlands, which became the third
power in that country in 2006, and of the People's Socialist Party in Denmark
(which garnered 13 percent of the votes in last November's elections), or, still
better, of Die Linke in Germany (a coalition that brings together former DDR
communists, unions and hard-line purist socialists).
If the right appears better armed to confront the shock of globalization, it's
also true that it has transformed itself by betting, to use Georges Mink's expression,
on "ideological confusion." To mobilize voters, the right has, as
Corinne Deloy reminds us, borrowed from the left: "In spite of opposition
from part of the CDU, Angela Merkel has exploited certain social themes such
as women's status and child care. In general, the right strives to retool the
social model defended by the left in a rational manner."
It has also cannibalized themes that traditionally belonged to the far right:
the security issue, protection of [national] identity and immigration. In Italy,
the new mayor of Rome, Gianni Alemanno (National Alliance), is the poster child
for that strategy. In Hesse, the CDU didn't hesitate to exploit populist themes
in the January regional elections. In the former Communist countries, where
the welfare state reigned up until the end of the 1980s, the phenomenon was
even more brutal. These countries' entry into the European Union in 2004 coincided
with the emergence of a nationalist and openly anti-European right. Even today,
in Prague, President Vaclav Klaus refuses to hoist the European flag alongside
the national flag.
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Arielle Thedrel is a star reporter in le Figaro's international division.
Translation: Truthout French language editor Leslie Thatcher.
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