Social democrats moved to the centre and got caught in the middle
AST Sunday, Labour stalled at 5% in two opinion polls. Its German sister, the Social Democrat Party (SDP), slumped to 20% of the vote, its lowest share since the Second World War. In France, a once-great Socialist party got barely 7% in this year’s presidential election. In contrast, left-wing challenger, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, received 19.58% of the vote. A one-time supporter of François Mitterrand, he remains loyal to socialist principles that the pliable president abandoned in power.
In Germany now, and for a long time in France, a far-right has emerged. It is embedded among those afflicted with real or imagined fears of migration and globalisation.
There is a crisis for social democracy across Europe. Each story has national characteristics. But there is a bigger picture. Habituated to power for significant periods, which first preceded and coincided with globalisation, it made compromises that allowed it cleave to the centre. But the centre has swallowed social democracy. Power in every capital is more orientated to Brussels and to international markets than ever.
In contrast, those who traditionally voted for social democrat parties feel further removed. The dislocation of the economic crisis, coinciding elsewhere, but not here, with renewed issues of migration and terrorism, has contributed to the emasculation and enfeeblement of once-mighty social democrat power structures. Sometimes they were in government, but, if not, their extended base in the trade union movement meant they were seldom out of power, and never without a platform.
Labour’s result here, at the last election, was 6.6% of the vote, down from a historic high of 19.5%, in 2011. It only did worse once, in 1987. Then, in a different, less-crowded landscape, 6.45% of the vote gained 12 seats. Its slightly higher tally in 2016 garnered only seven Dáil seats. It has been encircled on the ground politically. Power and the university education that characterises its activists mean the life experiences of those inside social democrat parties are increasingly different from those outside, yet the latter are the political base on which social democrats depend.
Mass education is an achievement of social democracy or of those who emulated it. But it also launches people out of mass employment, where solidarity is a requirement for efficiency and a mechanism of self-defence. All the while, over at least two generations, we have become a less communal society. It’s not just that trade unions have diminished; churches have emptied and technology has multiplied channels of communication. Common threads of conversation are fewer. Better educated and better connected to almost infinite sources of information now, whether we are more independent or simply cut adrift is beside the point. This is an era much more about “me” than about “we”. The context for, and narrative of, the social democrat tradition is disrupted. Its cadres are disconnected from their base.
Brexit; a far right; a far left; and, in the US, President Donald Trump, are all symptoms of the entrapment of social democrats in the centre, just at the moment the centre contracted under the pressure of economic crisis. So, too, are Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Saunders and Mélenchon. Outliers, who appeared irrelevant during the pomp of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, they now have a second life, based on an “I told you so” narrative. Old men, who enjoyed righteousness untroubled by the reality of power, have re-emerged with legions of young supporters, bursting with an authenticity which belies their vanity.
The achievement of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, in realigning social democrat traditions, albeit very different ones, after Reagan-Thatcher, was one of extraordinary political dexterity. They rode the rise of globalisation and were gone before the crisis caused by its under-regulated exuberance. They left depth-charges, which when discharged elsewhere, contributed significantly to the migration crisis. They also left a playlist of centrist rhetoric that was replayed by centre-right politicians, including David Cameron and Angela Merkel. Paschal Donohoe does it well here. It’s karaoke. And it competed successfully with social democrat parties campaigning from the centre, but without truly talented chameleons, like Blair and Clinton.
The ultimate legacy of those two, besides astonishing electoral success, is a doubling down on the clever and clear distinction between economy and society. The economy is there so that we, as individuals, can mediate it, for ourselves. Yes, there must be regulation and programmes, to deliver on public objectives. But the economy has become an object of society, not its subject. Everything else is tinkering at the edges, served with platitudes by people who are largely well-educated and relatively privileged, compared to those they purpose to represent.
It’s not that the centre cannot hold. It certainly will. It’s that the social democrat tradition, once vast in scope of ambition and power, has lost its base. A changed society means that the circumstances of its origin can’t be replicated. Authenticity has been eroded: first by genuine opportunity, which is partly a tribute to social democracy itself; and, secondly, by careerism and opportunism.
Here, the legacy of 2011-2016 is a millstone for Labour. Specifically, the contrast with what it said before 2011 and what it did afterwards, rather than the deeds themselves, were fatal. Unlike 1987, they are now surrounded by intense competition and perhaps the biggest enemy is time. There is the time that is required for anger to cool.
There is also a critical timing factor of a general election likely before the local elections of June, 2019. Decimated in local government as well as in the Dáil, councillors are the essential subs bench, for credible national candidates.
This week, Brendan Howlin was at the British Labour party conference in Brighton. The contrast between his career and Corbyn’s couldn’t be greater. Neither could their respective political fortunes now.
Howlin, previously a senator, was first elected to the Dáil for Wexford on that very worst day in 1987. He had no effective competition on his left, was young, and the traditions of the [Brendan] Corish seat held for two generations were still live. Times are utterly changed now. But there is one contrast with Corbyn he will remember. He, like others untainted by power, has never been tested by responsibility. It is doubtful he can successfully avoid either, much longer.
Blair was the ultimate result of the incoherence of the Michael Foot and Tony Benn era. They were grist to Mrs Thatcher’s mill. But she still owns the mill. She changed the world, and it is not going to change back. Globalisation is an unstoppable phenomenon. So, too, is the fact that it benefits far more than it leaves behind. For those left behind across Europe, social democrats are typically people who talk about them, rather than live with them.
