To win again, Europe’s centre-left must break with the past
This week over 200 political leaders and thinkers from across the world will gather in Oslo for the Progressive Governance Conference, the annual jamboree of the global centre-left launched by Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder in 1999. Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Zapatero and British Labour leader Ed Miliband are among those expected to attend.
‘A post-crisis agenda for the centre-left: securing shared prosperity’, is the theme of this year’s conference. But it is not just the economic crisis that needs resolving. The centre-left itself is also in trouble. Twelve years after Clinton’s Third Way took the world by storm, social democrats are out of power in most European countries. In 1999 all but two EU governments were of the centre-left. Today only 5 out of 27 member states have a socialist or social-democratic Prime Minister. Of the handful of left-leaning governments that remain, most are in serious electoral trouble.
Many believed the collapse of ‘casino capitalism’ would lead to an instant revival in social democratic fortunes. The opposite has happened. With a few notable exceptions, the left’s downward spiral has continued. There are three important reasons for this.
First, the centre-left has failed to keep up with the economic and social aspirations of its traditional supporters. When most social democratic parties were founded in the early 20th century, they represented a large working class in urgent need of emancipation. The interests of trade unions and social democratic parties largely coincided; in fact there was often little distinction between them.
Today, the majority of European workers consider themselves middle class and are wary of outside interference, whether by the state, trade unions or anyone else. They see traditional social democratic parties as an obstacle to fulfilling their ambitions rather than as a helping hand. They rebel against so-called progressive politicians who propagate statist, collectivist solutions for their electorate while sending their own children to the private school of their choice. They resent centre-left leaders who ignore emerging problems such as uncontrolled migration, violent crime in poor neighbourhoods and increased social and cultural segregation.
Instead of responding to these concerns and modernising its approach, the centre-left has chosen to limit itself to defending the remnants of an ageing welfare state. Social democratic parties have become technocratic, focus-group driven automatons more concerned with clinging to office than with winning the battle of ideas.
Second, in their eagerness to endorse capitalism, social democrats also embraced its failings. In the 1980s and early 1990s many voters questioned the centre-left’s commitment to the market economy. But instead of allying themselves with small and medium-sized enterprises and developing a convincing social market alternative to laissez-faire capitalism, the parties’ response was to adopt, uncritically, much of Thatcherite neo-liberal agenda and to develop close, even intimate relations with the corporate business elite, including the now much-maligned banking sector.
When the financial crisis erupted, social democratic leaders were too complicit in the market’s failings and too closely associated with its main protagonists (not least through party funding) to be able to offer a credible alternative. Last week for instance it emerged that the Flemish Socialist Party’s most outspoken critic of ‘fat cat’ bonuses had received just such a bonus himself, when still a banker. Not surprisingly the incident served to further undermine the party’s standing with its already dwindling band of supporters.
Third, social democrats lost touch by failing to modernise their parties and the political system as a whole. In the Netherlands the Labour Party is the only one of the big three traditional parties not to have introduced full one member, one vote at its party conferences. The British Labour Party still has a dominant trade union block vote, which turned out to be decisive in electing Ed over David Miliband as party leader last year. The German SPD doesn’t allow its individual members any direct say whatsoever at national level.
Social democrats everywhere have become major beneficiaries and staunch defenders of ‘jobs for the boys’ networks and appointments in both the public and private sectors. Even cautious constitutional and institutional reforms, such as the proposed introduction of the Alternative Vote in the UK, or the direct election of mayors in the Netherlands, are slapped down by party elites keen to protect their traditional fiefdoms and prerogatives. As a result, centre-left politics has become synonymous with preservation of the status quo – precisely the opposite of what it once set out to achieve.
Does this mean that centre-left politics is dead? Not at all. There will always be an electoral market for a progressive movement that addresses voters’ everyday concerns (a good job, reliable transport, safe streets, affordable health care, a decent education for their children) with common sense solutions which create opportunity but also ensure fairness. A five percent electoral swing is enough to bring progressive parties back into power. But getting there will require brave politicians prepared to lead from the front.
They will have to ditch the rigid ideological and organisational frameworks of the early 2Oth century in favour of pragmatic, results-oriented policies and new alliances, even mergers, between parties and movements of the centre-left. They must promote a new social and economic paradigm that values individual opportunity, choice and initiative above collective provision and consumption and declares war on costly and greedy monopolies and oligopolies (both public and private). And they need to show a renewed commitment, both at home and abroad, to the core values of freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, which constitute the backbone of a civilised society.
A strong and effective European Union is essential in helping national governments achieve these objectives. But first the centre-left will have to re-engage with an increasingly eurosceptic public by improving the transparency of the decision-making process, tackling waste and inefficiency and giving voters more say over the political direction of the European project.
The victory of Barack Obama in the United States and other centre-left success stories in countries as diverse as Australia, Brazil, Chile and Norway show there is a future for progressive politics. Denmark’s Prime Minister-in-waiting Helle Thorning-Schmidt also exemplifies the type of modern social democratic leadership that is required. What it takes now for the centre-left is the courage of its convictions and a decisive break with the past. That’s what this week’s Oslo conference should be about.
