Across the continent, the popularity of centre-left parties plummeted during the age of austerity. The new focus on economic growth and meeting climate targets offers a way back
Over the past decade, many of Europe’s centre-left parties have been battered, bruised and not infrequently humiliated at elections. In France, the Socialist party languishes at below 10% in the polls. The Dutch Labour party underwent a near-death experience at the general election of 2017. Italy’s Democrats have lost swaths of working-class support to the populist right and were at one point eclipsed by the Five Star Movement. Germany’s Social Democratic party (SPD) has slipped badly behind the Greens. Soul-searching about the future of the left has not been confined to Britain and Labour.
This week, elections in the Netherlands are likely to see the dismal record continue. The Labour party is predicted to improve only modestly on its dire performance of four years ago, when it lost 75% of the seats it held. But the weekend offered the first tentative signs that, after the wilderness years, the wheel of political fortune may just be turning for Europe’s beleaguered social democrats.
