Europe's left has vanished from the map

It's a process that's been long in the making, but this weekend's election in Spain seemed to be the final nail in the coffin for European Democratic Socialism - at least for the moment. With the fall of the Socialist government of Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero in Spain, following on the heels of the fall of Socialist prime minister George Papandreou in Greece two weeks ago, the EU is now left with only two centre-left governments - Denmark and Austria.

The already dwindling left was already not in a good position, with just five centre-left governments out of the 27 EU states at the beginning of the year. Four of those governments have since fallen, including the collapse of the Slovenian government in September (new elections, which the Left is certain to lose, will be held next month). Only the Austrian government has survived, and they were joined by the Danish social democrats who won a trend-defying election in September. Cyprus, which has a communist (but in truth more nationalist) government, does not sit with the centre-right grouping in Europe.

At the same time, five governments now have provisional or technocratic governments - effectively under the control of the markets and the dominant centre-right governments of Europe. The presidencies of the three institutions of EU governance - the commission, the parliament and the council - are all held by the centre-right. The situation is unprecedented. The irony is, at this time of crisis when Europe seems to be tearing itself apart, the governments of Europe have never been so ideologically united - at least in terms of the left-right divide.

Europe's left continues to disappear

Yet another centre-left European government was ousted yesterday as the Portuguese voted overwhelmingly for the country's conservatives. Prime Minister Jose Socrates' Socialists, who have been in power since 2005, received just 28% of the vote. The centre-right party, bizarrely named the 'Social Democrats' (a legacy of Portugal's desire to avoid conservative-sounding names reminiscent of the dictatorship) got 37% of the vote, just short of an overall majority. They will form a coalition with the further right People's Party who polled at 11%.

"Centre-right wins in _____" is becoming a familiar headline for European Monday mornings. Conservative governments are re-elected, while centre-left governments are voted out. The left hasn't won an election here since the Socialists took power in Greece in 2009. With the Portuguese Socialists gone, this leaves the EU with only five centre-left governments - Greece, Cyprus, Austria, Slovenia and Spain. Compare this to the 19 governments controlled by the centre-right - plus three controlled by the right-leaning free-market Liberals.

Given the disastrous local election results for Spain's Socialists two weeks ago one can assume they will fall from power in the country's general election next year, if not earlier. This will leave the left with essentially no presence in Europe. It is an unprecedented situation in modern European history - the first time since the advent of widespread Democracy that the European left has had no voice.

Anti-austerity protests shut down EU Quarter

As one of the last remaining Socialist governments in Europe collapses today, the left is taking to the streets in Brussels in what seems like a last-ditch effort to stop the massive austerity cuts to government spending taking place across Europe.

This morning I had the arduous task of trying to make my way to work through the massive union demonstrations by the European Trade Union Confederation that have closed off the EU Quarter. While some parts of the protests seemed relatively peaceful and good-natured, I could already observe danger signs. The security forces are wearing body armour, riot gear and gas masks. Youths with bandanas around their faces were everywhere, particularly on the side streets. Many of the older demonstrators are already intoxicated. I saw eggs being pelted at the windows of buildings on Rue de la Loi. Firecrackers were exploding all over the place (my suitcase got hit by one in fact!). My friend tells me a window in her office was smashed by a rock. It's going to be a fun day…

While the right leads in Helsinki, the left is sidelined in Athens

Center-Right

Center-Left

Liberal (Libertarian)

Europe's two main political groupings – the center-right European People's Party (EPP) and the center-left Party of European Socialists (PES) – are today holding dueling summits in Helsinki and Athens, respectively. The simultaneous timing of the two-day events, a bit like the party conferences in the UK or US – is highly unusual. But they are coinciding because they are both meant to get each side singing from the same hymn sheet at next Friday's incredibly important European Council summit. And given Europe's current political reality, the choice of a Northern capital for the right's meeting and a Southern capital for the left's meeting seems entirely appropriate.

But despite the fact that these are nominally meetings of Europe's two main political groups, the reality is that the Helsinki summit will effectively be a meeting of those running Europe while Athens will be an ignored meeting of those sitting on the sidelines. Because the European left has been pushed to Europe's geographic fringes and marginalized by the debt crisis, the Athens meeting will be a meeting of politicians "in opposition". In Helsinki, German chancellor Angela Merkel will lead a meeting of representatives of the governments of 17 of the 27 EU member states. At the Socialist conference in Athens only five governments will be represented.

In addition to national leaders like Merkel, Berlusconi and Ireland's incoming prime minister Enda Kenny, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy– both from the EPP – are also in Helsinki. The president of the European Parliament, EPP politician Jerzy Buzek, may come tomorrow. They will be discussing the Eurozone Competitiveness Pact drawn up by Merkel and Sarkozy as well as the debt relief fund. They will also discuss a united European response to the events in North Africa. In effect it will be a sort of mini European Council summit.

What will they talk about in Athens? Who knows. Who cares? Whatever is on the agenda, it will have little consequence for the direction of EU policy.

So who are these "liberals" anyway?

I've had a lot of Americans ask me this week "what the hell is a Liberal Democrat?" The UK election has received some coverage across the pond over the past weeks, and I've been watching with interest how the American media has been covering it. Some have chosen to leave any mention of the Liberal Democrats out for fear of confusing people. Others (Fox News notably) have described them as being "another liberal party" with Labour.

The confusion seems to be the result of the fact that "liberal" has different meanings in America and Europe. In the US "liberal" means someone on the left who believes in a combination of social liberalism, public welfare and a mixed economy. The American right wing has been relatively successful in giving the word "liberal" a negative connotation since the 1980's, hence the rise of the word "progressive".

But in Europe "liberal" is associated with classical liberalism, which is someone committed to the ideal of limited government, individual liberty and free markets. The difference has to do with the fact that the term, which originated in 19th century England, was never adopted in the US until the 1930's when FDR coined it to describe his New Deal policies. European liberals can be thought of more as "Libertarians" in the American context. Think Bill Maher.

How individualism shapes the US healthcare debate

Of all the activities I expected to be engaged in Saturday night, finding myself at a bar in Switzerland vociferously defending the right to name a child Adolf Hitler was not one of them. But as it happens, this curious discussion about European naming regulations gave way to a very interesting conversation about the healthcare hullabaloo in the US – a debate that has perplexed Europeans over the past eight months.

The two very different attitudes in the conversation about whether the government should get involved in the naming of a baby was symptomatic of a larger divide between the Anglo-Saxon English-speaking world and continental Europe. Being reminded of this vast difference helped me to put into perspective Americans’ huge resistance to increasing healthcare coverage.

Talking about the US, a German friend of mine who lives in Zurich said he thinks it's strange how Americans give their children crazy names like Apple Blossom or Stapler, and such a thing would never happen in Germany. Of course the most extreme example of a bizarre name, widely reported in Germany, was the case of the neo-Nazi man in Pennsylvania who complained when a local supermarket refused to write his son’s legal name (Adolf Hitler) on a birthday cake. In Germany, where it is illegal to use any of the imagery of the Nazi party, people couldn’t believe that the government would allow someone to give their child such a name in the first place.

Zapatero: the left’s last hope?

Spain’s rather shy, gentle prime minister Jose Luis Zapatero has never been one to seek out the limelight. But with the EU’s top jobs now all handed out, Zapatero has become the lone Socialist voice at the top level of the EU. In fact, the Spanish prime minister may be the last hope of relevance for European Democratic Socialism in the coming decade. Given his personality, this is likely a position he does not relish.

In the last week the European Council has chosen the first people to occupy the much anticipated President and Foreign Policy High Representative positions, and European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso has unveiled the faces and portfolios of the new commissioners. Looking at the line-up one thing is clear: the next five years will see an EU dominated by the centre-right.

The Commission presidency, which will likely remain the most powerful position following the council’s decision to go with a low-profile presidency pick, is still occupied by the centre-right former Portuguese prime minister Barroso. Former Belgian prime minister Herman Van Rompuy, chosen as the first Council President (or “EU president” if you like), is also a Conservative. Baroness Ashton of the British Labour party was chosen to be the first foreign minister, but though she is technically in the Socialist camp, New Labour hardly fits comfortably in that grouping and she will be significantly to the right of most Western European Socialist parties. Even if she weren’t, she has already signalled she intends to maintain a low profile.

With the commission announcement on Friday it was clear that the most important positions had all gone to people from conservative parties. Centre-right Frenchman Michel Barnier got the all-important Internal Market position, for which Nicolas Sarkozy could barely contain his glee over the weekend. Denmark’s centre-right Connie Hedegaard got the newly-created Climate Change assignment, while Centre-right German Gunther Oettinger got the very important Energy post. Conservatives took the Industry, Development, Regional Policy, Health, Budget and Agriculture posts. So what did the Socialists and Liberals get? Something called “Digital Agenda”, Enlargement, Research and Innovation and Maritime Affairs to name a few. Nothing too flashy. It seems to me the only very important DG the Socialists got is Competition. That went to Joaquin Almunia, Zapatero’s colleague in Spain.

Following the pan-European conservative victory in the June European Parliament elections, which made the centre-right the largest party in parliament, that body also has a conservative president in Jerzy Buzek of Poland. This means the presidents of all three branches of EU government – the Commission, the Council and the Parliament – are all from the centre-right.

Wanted: a Sarkozy for the left

Contrary to what had been widely reported in the English-language press (I myself was guilty of the misunderstanding as well), the new Council presidency is not replacing the rotating council presidency that is held by a country. Here’s where it gets a little confusing. The European Council is actually made up of many different councils, each focusing on a different subject area. So for instance, there is a council of finance ministers that meets periodically with the finance ministers from each member state. Likewise for environment, agriculture or trade. Those meetings will still be chaired by the country holding the rotating EU presidency. And starting January 1st, that country will be Spain.

However the European Council of national leaders, when all the prime ministers/presidents meet, will no longer be chaired by the rotating country presidency. That all-important group will be chaired by Mr. Van Rompuy. This will take much of the pomp and ceremony out of the rotating presidency, but will leave it intact with practical power. Of course the question remains, how much power will it have? That detail will largely be settled over the coming months by Messieurs Von Rompuy and Zapatero.

It will be a critically important power struggle waged by two low-key, soft-spoken men. The Lisbon Treaty theoretically gives both men significant powers. Van Rompuy can call special summits of EU leaders, draw up the agenda of the meetings, decide on whether to hold a vote and decide if people outside the EU can attend the meetings. However Zapatero will be running the day-to-day running of the council, and the power over the details could end up eclipsing the power over the big picture. In addition the monthly general affairs council, which is extremely powerful, will still be chaired by Spain.

Zapatero has made statements in the past that he does not intend to role over and allow the rotating presidency to be sidelined. There may be ever-increasing pressure from his Socialist colleagues elsewhere in Europe for Zapatero to assert himself even further, considering he and Almunia appear to be the lone continental Socialists in positions of power anywhere in Brussels.
Of course all of this reflects the will of the voters, who have consistently elected conservatives to office in national elections over the past few years with the exception of Iberia and Greece.

Following UK election in April where the Conservatives will likely win, all three of the main EU countries will be under Conservative governments. In this kind of environment, does Zapatero stand a chance of maintaining a place at the table for European socialists? He’s hardly proved himself to be much of an internationalist in the past. Speaking only Spanish, he has largely relegated himself to focusing on Spain’s domestic issues rather than pushing for a Socialist agenda on the European stage. In this way he is almost the polar opposite of his zealous conservative counterpart Nicolas Sarkozy in neighbouring France.

Perhaps Zapatero could defy all expectations and emerge from his shell to become a sort of “Sarkozy of the left”. As the saying goes, cometh the hour cometh the man. Is this the mild-mannered Spanish leader’s time to shine?

The French Strawman

For decades, it's taken only one word to strike fear into the heart of Americans, and that word is France. Of course Americans aren't afraid of a new Napoleonic army invading the Western hemisphere, what they fear instead is the French economic model. In American political discourse, 'France' is often used not so much as a country but as an ideology; a boogey man representing a bloated welfare state with high taxation, widespread unemployment, overregulation and low productivity. It's a classic strawman argument.

Over the past two weeks, as debate has raged in the US over Barack Obama's revolutionary budget plan, the use of this anecdotal device has skyrocketed. Republicans are calling the proposed Budget the "final moves toward socialism," saying it will lead to the "Europeanization of America." Essentially, the proposed budget does three main things that have elicited this reaction:

-An introduction of higher taxes on the top 3% of income earners
-A funding mandate for definitive healthcare reform
-A massive expansion of the federal debt

David Leonhardt of The New York Times has called this budget, "nothing less than an attempt to end a three-decade era of economic policy dominated by the ideas of Ronald Reagan and his supporters. ... More than anything else, the proposals seek to reverse the rapid increase in economic inequality over the last 30 years." This editorial in the Wall Street Journal this week does a great job of breaking down the tax aspect of it.

Considering the changes afoot, it was only a matter of time before the F word started getting tossed around. On the March 2nd edition of Meet the Press, former McCain advisor Mike Murphy managed to work 'France' into the discussion over this budget a total of five times, no small feat for a short segment. According to Murphy, Obama can "hardly wait to turn us into France," and he is squandering his political capital on a "failed ideology." That ideology, a democratic social welfare state, is not only reviled by American conservatives but has also been deeply unpopular with Americans for decades, particularly after the Reagan revolution. Socialism in most Americans' minds is inseparable from Communism, which any American fifth grader can tell you was a failed ideology which the US triumphantly defeated in the cold war. So for some time the logic has been that if you can associate a policy with 'socialism,' or even better, with 'France,' you're going to have a pretty easy time making the policy unpopular with the American public (one only needs to look at the so-called "Death Tax" debate).

But in invoking the old France cliches, are Republicans missing the way the winds are currently blowing? Isn't it a bit odd that, at the same time that Republicans are trying to scare the American population by saying Obama wants to turn them into France, across the Atlantic Sarkozy is proclaiming the death of the Anglo-Saxon model of capitalism and the vindication of the European social model? If the French economic system translates to more regulation on banks and financial firms, more safety-net protections for people who lose their jobs, and more government action to protect the economy, what exactly is it in that image that would scare an American in 2009? Considering that the current crisis was largely the result of a lack of regulation in the US, 'Anglo-Saxon style capitalism run amok,' if you will, it seems almost absurd for Republicans in the US to still be using the French boogeyman tactic. They seem to be saying, "Look out America! Or else you could become like that country where everyone has healthcare, job security and pensions!" I'm oversimplifying of course, and I don't usually find myself in the position of being a strident defender of the French economic model, but it seems to me that Republicans don't have much of a leg to stand on here if they want to keep using the France-baiting.

I was curious to get the reaction of some of my French friends to this kind of talk. After all, they must have an opinion on the fact that their country still stands as the antithesis of America's self-image, the boogeyman in the closet children remain terrified of at bedtime. "I think it's funny," one French friend who works for the EC told me after seeing some of the comments being made in the US media. "In France we do the same thing with America if we want to scare people about Sarkozy. They say he is 'Sarko the American' and that he's trying to make France become America. That scares the French probably as much as Americans are scared to become France."

As we edge closer to a hammering out of the new "Bretton Woods 2" agreement that will reshape the world's economic structure, this France-America ideological labelling is likely to get even murkier. The ideal solution, as with most things, is probably a happy medium somewhere between the two.

Europe speculates on end of US 'Empire'

Watching the live coverage of the US house floor Monday night in Paris was a truly surreal experience. On my cable system I get both French and British news station, and every station from both countries was carrying live minute-by-minute coverage of the vote on the bailout package, waiting in suspense and watching the vote tally. When the bill didn't pass, there was absolute panic over here. The news anchors were absolutely shocked, as were the commentators.

It really underlined how much the European economy still depends on the American economy. As Angela Merkel pointed out yesterday, this crisis is a problem created by the United States, and the United States is the only one who can solve it. So Europe is now in the position of having to sit back and wait for the United States to take some action as it reels from a painful crisis that is not of its own making. As the saying goes, when America sneezes, the world catches a cold. But what happens when America refuses to take any medicine?

Welcome to the religion century

Tony Blair made some interesting comments at a fundraising dinner in Toronto last night. Coming on the eve of the launch of his new Faith Foundation, which was unveiled to the world today in New York, it offered a stark and blunt assessment of the century we are entering. While probably true, his comments will no doubt be quite troubling to secular Europe.

Speaking at the Women’s College Hospital in Toronto, Blair described the impetus behind his new faith foundation as an effort to “get faith in action,” saying that the goal of his new foundation is to help various religions work together to make the process of globalisation more humane. Sounds innocuous enough. But it was his blunt assessment of the power religion will have over the world over the next century that got my attention. Spoke Blair:

“Religious faith will be of the same significance to the 21st Century as political ideology was to the 20th Century.”