In an otherwise pretty mediocre analysis of European Parliament elections which ended yesterday, the New York Times led with this: :
Center-right parties emerged Monday from European Parliament elections claiming triumph over left-of-center groupings that failed to draw political advantage from their adversaries’ handling of the global economic crisis.
First of all, let's dispense with all the talk about the victory of the right. None of the mainstream parties did well, generally speaking. So, while it is correct, as far as it goes, that the center-right parties did relatively better than their center-left counterparts, the parliamentary right-wing grouping in Strasbourg actually went down, in membership, from 36.6% of total seats to 36.2% (Though it is true that the Tories in the UK pulled out of that grouping, presumably to maintain Eurosceptique bona fides in advance of a potential withdrawal of the UK from the EU for which many of the rest of us would be grateful.)
But it is also true that "Center-left" parties did poorly yesterday, pretty much everywhere, with the notable exception of Italy, where the coalition of left parties did better than expected, thanks to Silvio Berlusconi's increasingly transparent near-pedophilia on top of the already renowned corruption for which he has longtime been known.
But one would do well to be careful reading too much into this as an endorsement of the center-right governments who lead, whether in coalition or outright, in the core EU countries of Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Italy. In fact, the effects of the economic crisis haven't hit here as much as in less socially protected places like the US. When you lose your job here, you keep your home, you keep your health coverage (forever, in fact), you can feed your kids and make sure they're well clothed. And anyway, we don't blame our right-leaning governments, by and large, for this mess. We blame America, starting with its banking industry in passing through Wall Street and ending with the Bush Administration. It's not Nicholas Sarkozy's fault, goes the thinking, that the Americans and their 51st state "Great" Britain inflated a massive property bubble whose bursting took out more than the guilty, with us being among the collateral damage. So why blame him?
Another curious part of the Grey Lady's analysis was to headline what happened in Germany yesterday:
"It’s a sad evening for social democracy in Europe," said Martin Schulz, a Social Democrat whose party won less than 21 percent of the vote in Germany — its worst showing in a national ballot since World War II — while Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats secured 37.8 percent. The figure was more than six points down on the Christian Democrats’ showing in the previous European elections five years ago, but enough to encourage the party’s ambitions to end its uneasy coalition with the Social Democrats.
It's odd that the Times would underline this statistic about the SPD's worst showing in European elections since WWII, for in fact, their showing is only 0.7 percentage points lower than the last time around. European elections are where the Greens, quite strong on the EU stage, notoriously take SPD votes. So, saying this is the worst showing since the late '40's for the SPD is pretty meaningless, though certainly par for the course for a US press given to meaningless hyperbole.
The Christian Democrat's desire to break from the "grand coalition" with the Social Democrats is not because of the strength of the CDU/CSU alliance in Germany, but because of the good showing of the Free Democrats, a party which in German history has been part of coalition governments led by both Conservatives and Social Democrats and the big winner, along with Die Linke, an alliance of former Communists and progressive former Social Democrats, of yesterday's poll, and which ostensibly Merkel's conservatives believe would form a coalition government with them in German federal elections later this year. Funny thing though - virtually all of the Free Democrats' votes were bled from the same well of conservatives from which Christian Democratic votes are cast, while Die Linke , the real Left, saw it's score easily bled both from the Greens and the SPD. If anything, in Germany, economic liberals don't think Merkel is right-wing enough, while decent lefties in the SPD are sick of Steinbruck, the SPD Finance minister in Merkel's government, being the rhenish conservative he's turned out to be.
The theme, if any there is one, is that milquetoast center-leftism was rejected nearly everywhere. Nowhere was that more apparent than here in France, where the Socialists were singularly thrashed by the ruling center-right UMP and very nearly beaten by a surprisingly resurgent Green Party led by former hero of the 1968 student protest, German-born Daniel Cohn-Bendit, former anti-corruption judge and crusader, the Franco-Norwegian Eva Joly, and Seattle WTO protest hero Jose Bove, which obtained as many seats as the Socialist party. The Left Front, an alliance of communists and dissident defectors from the socialist wing of the socialist party, also did well, increasing its representation in Strasbourg by 40% despite a shrinking parliament.
Moral of the story: the left does well, as long as it stays relevant to the lives of people. France's Socialist Party didn't, and was massacred. Ditto the SPD in Germany, where Die Linke picked up some slack. The same would have been undoubtedly true in the UK were there a viable left alternative to the Iraq-warmongering and Wall Street betrothed Labour Party.
Even when the New York Times gets the details finally right, the prescription leads to the same sort of neo-liberal mush the Time's editorial pages are known for:
In the Netherlands, the anti-Islam party led by Geert Wilders won about 15 percent of the vote, according to early results. Exit polls predicted the Austrian far-right Freedom Party would double its vote from its showing in 2004, to 13 percent, while in Denmark the anti-immigrant Danish People’s Party was also projected to double its 2004 tally. "At a time of crisis," Ms. Grabbe (head of the Open Society Institute in Brussels) said, "people often lose faith in the established political parties, but they will typically move to the left when there is the prospect of higher unemployment, in the hope that the state will look after them. This is a wake-up call to politicians," she added. "People no longer believe the narrative, particularly from the left, of how to organize the economy and society."
It's true, the real winners are the extremists. But even here, her analysis is wrong. People here in France trust that the state will look after them, whether run by the right or left. Elsewhere, notably Germany, they know that the welfare state was dismantled not by the conservatives, but by the center-left SPD. And in Britain, the center-left (right wing by continental standards) is in bed with the same financial sector which brought us this crisis.
And good riddance to them.