Halting the rise of Europe's right

Anthony Giddens, Director, London School of Economics, Guardian News Service, London

The political geography of Europe is shifting. Less than three years ago, left-of-center governments were in power in 11 out of 15 EU states. Depending on what happens in elections in France in June and Germany in September, that number could be reduced to five or six. Moreover, we have seen not just the return of the moderate right, but the resurgence of the far right, symbolized by the support gained by Jean-Marie Le Pen in France's presidential contest. What are we to make of these changes? Are we seeing an ideological transition like that of the late 1970s, when free market conservatism gained such an ascendancy?

The answer would be no. To understand why the right has come back to power, we have to grasp why left-of-center parties got into the majority from the mid-1990s. It was not because the electorate was moving to the left. Surveys showed no such move. Social democratic parties did well for a cluster of reasons. They revised their political outlook to appeal to a wider constituency, abandoning some of the ideological baggage that had kept them out of power. Labour became New Labour, the German social democrats spoke of the "new middle", and so forth.

But there were other, more contingent, reasons too. In Britain and Germany, conservatives had been in power for nearly 20 years -- people were tired of them and wanted new faces. In Italy and France, divisions on the right helped give the left victory. In part, the return of the right today is a mirror image of the previous successes of the left.

In Spain, center-right leader Jose-Maria Aznar is in power mainly because voters became disillusioned after a long period of rule by the socialists, whose popularity was dented by corruption scandals. The Italian left was unable to contain its differences and fragmented, whereas the right under Berlusconi put up a show of unity. In Denmark, the social democrats fell from power partly because of losing a referendum on entry to the euro. In the U.S., Bush won -- by the skin of his teeth -- only because Ralph Nader took away votes from Al Gore.

The fall of center-left governments is also the result of policy failure, and it is here that the most crucial questions have to be asked. Many critics argue that the left-of-center governments are in retreat because social democrats have moved too far towards the center. The third way, it is said, is doomed.

This view does not stand up to scrutiny. Voters today are mostly non-ideological. Well over 50 percent in the EU countries (and the U.S.) define themselves as neither on the left nor the right. Parties that have stuck to a traditional leftist agenda get only a small minority of votes -- usually below 10 percent, and that is declining. The policy mistakes of center-left governments have been the other way around -- an inability to modernize enough.

Among the emphases of third-way thinking are two prime elements: reform of labour markets and welfare systems, to place an emphasis on job creation; and the need to address issues traditionally dominated by the right, such as crime and immigration. Social democrats in several key EU countries have resisted or been politically unable to make these adaptations -- and have ceded support to the right.

The core difficulty of France, Germany and Italy is a lack of jobs. Although unemployment did fall for a while, necessary reforms to labour markets were not made by center-left governments in any of these countries. The proportion of the labour force in work in the UK is currently about 76 percent. In France and Germany, it is in the mid-1960s, while in Italy it is only in the 1950s. In France, unemployment is particularly high among young people -- a substantial proportion of whom endorsed Le Pen.

Tony Blair's celebrated intention to be "tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime" was a major element of New Labor's rise to prominence. It recognizes that people's anxieties about crime are real and must be responded to. It focuses on concerns that were previously an open field for the right. Social democrats elsewhere need to do likewise if they are to sustain or recover wide public support.

The renewed polarization of politics on the left and right is plainly threatening to political stability. However, the cause of the modernizing left is by no means lost. It remains the only feasible way forward for European social democrats.