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| Europe |
| EuropeÂ’s great shift to the right - Rise of anti-immigrant parties |
| 2009-06-20 |
| While it was the mainstream centre-right that actually won the election—Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP took 28.5 per cent of the French vote, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi’s People of Freedom Party captured 35 per cent, and Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union took 38 per cent—few traditional parties saw their vote increase. And the left and centre-left vote all but collapsed in many countries. In France, the opposition Socialists took just 17 per cent of the ballots, Germany’s Social Democrats turned in their lowest result ever at 21 per cent, and Britain’s ruling Labour Party captured only 15.3 per cent, its worst showing since the Second World War. The colliding trends—the rise of the far right and the left’s vanishing act—underline a fundamental shift in European politics, says Grabbe. “In a way, it’s the legacy of 1989 [the collapse of the Soviet Bloc] catching up with the left,” she says. “They don’t have a narrative of how to get out of a crisis like this. They don’t have a clear ideology to offer.” And faced with a choice between the discredited theories of the socialist past, and the rapacious reality of the free-market present, the majority of voters seem to have thrown up their hands in disgust. Going forward, the biggest question is whether the anger and apathy will spill over to national elections. (Germany, Portugal and the U.K. will all go to the polls within a year.) Despite the fact that the European Parliament now has the power to amend or abolish two-thirds of the EU’s laws, voters in many countries continue to view it as a less important institution than their own legislatures. “It’s not treated very seriously,” says John Curtice, a professor of politics at Glasgow’s University of Strathclyde. “People use it as an opportunity to protest against the government or support smaller parties.” |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #2 thebiggest question is whether the anger and apathy will spill over to national elections. Anger and apathy tend to be mutually exclusive, especially when voting is involved. Had the journalist written "anger or apathy," the statement would make a great deal more sense. But so few news organizations pay their journalists to produce sense as well as elegant prose. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2009-06-20 21:52 |
| #1 The European Parliament is an interesting, if failing experiment, in creating a government that is nothing *but* bureaucracy. Its prerogative is the avoidance of conflict of any kind, at all cost. As such, all it can perform are acts that are stagnant at best, and decrepit at worst. As a rudderless ship, it waits in neutral for any authoritarian to take control. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2009-06-20 13:46 |