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The left is rebuffed by the poor as it bashes the rich
By John Lloyd
Large sections of the lower classes see social change as disturbing, writes John Lloyd
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The terrible results for the French and the Dutch centre-left parties in local elections last month cast a miasma over social democracy, even as the left has become more prominent in European governments than for many years.
The Socialists govern France; leftists are the biggest party in a governing coalition in Denmark and the junior partners in Dutch and German administrations. In Italy, the left Democratic party (PD) holds the prime minister’s office.
Yet the continental left is in poor heart, the two big beasts uncertain of themselves. The Socialists are increasingly restive over François Hollande’s leadership in France; for the German Social Democrats, still low in the polls after a smashing by Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats last year, junior partnership is a small salve.
For momentum, look to the new prime ministers of the left in France and Italy. Relatively young – Manuel Valls is 51, Matteo Renzi is 39 – they are the most vigorous of their country’s politicians and carry the largest political burdens. Mr Valls must arrest the slide in the Hollande presidency and the assault of the far-right National Front. Mr Renzi must give hope to a country with huge public debt, minimal growth and a fatalistic resignation to failure.
And both are Blairites, proud to say so. Mr Renzi told the daily Il Foglio last June: “What fascinates me is the idea of being able to do in the Democratic party what Blair did in 1994 [when he became leader] with New Labour.” Mr Valls wrote, in his 2010 book, Pouvoir, how much he had admired Mr Blair when he met him, with Lionel Jospin, then French prime minister, soon after he came to power in the UK in 1997.
Mr Blair returned both men’s compliments, warmly wishing Mr Valls “congratulations and good luck” in a speech in Paris this month. He dined with Mr Renzi a few days later, when the latter visited London on his European grand tour. In a subsequent interview, Mr Blair said: “He impressed me with his very strong patriotic sense about Italy. He’s no ordinary politician. In normal times, to take on as much as he is all together – the economy, labour issues, changes in Europe – would be very hard. I think he understands completely how big a challenge this is. But if he attempts to do it by small steps he’s not likely to create the momentum he needs.”
Is this a Blairite International? Mr Blair says the circumstances in which New Labour governed were quite different from today’s but maintains that “the basic progressive position – breaking through the ideological divides of the past – is still relevant”. As he did when prime minister, he deprecates “false choices” between austerity with reform and no jobs, “and jobs and growth with no reform”. He even seeks, at least rhetorically, to reconcile the distrustful Germans to the southern Europeans caught in austerity’s toils. Those Germans, he says, “who have been hawkish for perfectly understandable reasons, would understand the need for flexibility more if reforms were more far reaching and would create strong policies in the longer term”.
Both Mr Valls and Mr Renzi have ideological divides to break through. The Democratic party elected Mr Renzi but does not love him: like Mr Blair, he was elected to win. Mr Valls, an enthusiast for the market and individual aspiration, governs a country whose president said before his election: “I hate the rich.” In the current issue of City Journal, liberal philosopher Pascal Bruckner writes that “the idea that the [French] nation’s prosperity is not a pure government decision and that private actors can overturn the rules of the economic game unsettles our deepest convictions”. Progress, the Blairite group in the Labour party, tartly pointed out this week that, unlike Mr Blair’s pledge to “govern as New Labour” while campaigning as New Labour, Mr Hollande campaigned as a leftist, only to execute – in the midst of a personal crisis – a U-turn to the centre, depleting trust.
But ideology may be a small worry. Blairism came to power on a rising economic tide: Mr Valls and Mr Renzi on ebbing ones, with powerful reactionary movements blaming the left for unstoppable immigration, leaping unemployment and mountainous public debt. The fate of Mr Hollande – rebuffed by the poor even as he sought to bash the rich – illuminates a harsh fact. Large sections of the working and lower- middle class see social change as more disturbing than gross inequality, or do not believe that the left can do anything about either.
Mr Valls and particularly Mr Renzi are seen, especially by their parties, as the last chance. This is in part because there are few competitors for such unforgiving jobs but also because the left has, reluctantly, taken leaders from their parties’ right, after attempts to inject socialism into the present economic bloodstreams had failed. If what Mr Blair calls the radical centre cannot hold here, it is hard to see what future the democratic left might have: a rougher beast might grow again, to fight the far right for the hearts and minds of millions caught in stagnation and fear.
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