Thanks for an excellent analysis of European political trends. We Americans tend to be intellectually insular, and our media do a terrible job of informing us of world affairs other than war coverage. Reading or watching media in Europe reveals a large contrast with American media, by taking a more international perspective.
Many of us have reluctantly abandoned our love affair with the left, and at least in the US, the current administration is so absorbed in ideology that it has wrought havoc in the real world. And the political inversion of the two parties is very slowly being realized by the public. Who would have predicted 10 or 20 years ago that the republicans would take on the mantle of advocating for working and middle class voters, while the democrats revile them as deplorables?
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, if only we manage to survive the next year without a total fracturing of the country.
One issue is that for the most part since WWII the European (more generally Western) right has merely been following the left by about one or two decades. Thus even countries that were nominally dominated by the center-right have implemented the same agenda as the center left, just more slowly.
True. I think that this is a common theme in Western democracies. Conservatives complain, but then they typically implement the same policies at a slower rate. They rarely roll back bad policies even if they and their voters hate those policies.
I think this is because the Right does not accept the concept of Progress, and they have no way within their worldview to determine what is good change and what is bad change.
> I think this is because the Right does not accept the concept of Progress, and they have no way within their worldview to determine what is good change and what is bad change.
The left has the opposite problem, they can't admit that some changes are bad.
That is why we need to shift towards a focus on RESULTS. Neither the Left nor the Right has answers, but I am confident that answers do exist. We are just not looking for them because both sides are more concerned about rallying their base.
I think 2008 is too early in the timeline to pinpoint the collapse of left-wing parties - they really died in 2021.
From 2008 through to 2020, growth was so sluggish that interest rates were kept at rock-bottom. Those low interest rates in turn led lulled left-wing governments into a sense of fiscal & monetary complacency; they saw no risk with running massive deficits to essentially buy votes. The Trudeau government was particularly bad with their declarations of "budgets balance themselves" and "We don't spend time thinking about monetary policy"
Now that inflation has returned and interest rates are much higher, left-wing parties have now hit a policy dead-end because the problems caused by runaway spending cannot be solved with runaway spending. They basically have 3 choices left:
1) Raise taxes on the middle class and hope to avoid backlash (unlikely)
2) Print money and hope to avoid inflation-driven backlash (also unlikely)
3) Cut spending (i.e. pivot to the right on fiscal policy)
I wrote this about the Canadian government but it applies equally to Europe and the US:
Thanks for the comment. I do not think that our two views are mutually exclusive. The very slow economic growth since 2007 created the problem, while massive deficit spending since that time enabled them to obscure the problem temporarily.
This is somewhat similar to the dead end that the Communists hit. The sluggish economic growth in the 1970s was obscured by high oil prices. Then when oil prices declined around 1986, the entire regime began to collapse.
As a 90s millennial, why were Communists so exposed to a drop in oil prices? I thought the Russian O&G sector really took off after the USSR collapsed and Western firms moved in to start building out the necessary infrastructure
No, the oil and gas industry was the major export for the Soviet Union. The money from petroleum exports gave the Soviets hard Western currency which enabled them to buy Western technology. This was essential because the Soviet economy could not innovate non-military technology, so they had to buy it from the West.
From 1973 (when oil prices spiked) until 1986 (when oil prices collapsed), Soviet petroleum kept the economy from collapsing.
In the 1980s the Soviet gas pipeline running to Europe was a huge political issue. The Western Europeans wanted to help the Soviets construct it, while Reagan wanted no Western financial support for its construction because he understood its importance to winning the Cold War.
When the Soviet Union collapsed most of the industry collapsed, particularly those areas where they needed to drill through permafrost. In permafrost, the hole keeps moving so if you do not pump out, the hole eventually collapses. After the 90s they essentially had to start over, but this time with Western help.
Wise words. Having been raised by socialists/communists in post-war Britain, it took me many years to "age out of my beliefs" as you put it. The intentions never matched the outcomes. My father and his friends and relatives seemed to ignore the horrors of Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Their atrocities are unthinkable to the current mind, yet given the actions of the Left, we are headed towards those atrocities at speed. I hope your point about the rise of the populist Right comes about, yet I see a bloody future. There is far too much power and wealth at stake.
In addition, Left and Right of themselves are political constructs to divide us and keep us fighting each other. We need unification, not division. The People vs the 1% seems to be the more accurate battle. Or even the 1% of the 1%.
The problem with this analysis is that the centre right, whose ideas are closest to the liberalism you seem to espouse, has also seen its star fade. In the US, they’ve been more or less wiped out of the Republican Party by Trump. In the UK, they are polling behind Reform. In Europe they are benefiting from an overall shift to the right, but really only because they are now closer to the median voter, with extremists on either side, because the extreme right has got more popular. So, if centre-left failure is driven by the failure to grow the economy, what is the centre-right doing wrong?
Another problem or question. The US has grown, Europe has stagnated. But the US has hardly had libertarian or classically liberal policies. It’s had Obama - quite leftist - then Trump - more nationalist than libertarian. And it has seen the growth of huge new monopolies (ask Thomas Philippon or Matt Stoller). Its impressive growth seems more Schumpeterian (à ka Peter Thiel) than neoliberal. How did that happen?
Thanks for the comment. I am not center-right. I do not subscribe to any ideology.
When I say that the Left has hit a dead end, that does not preclude other ideologies having problems as well. But increased government spending that is enabled by economic growth is central to the electoral success of the Left. This does not seem possible in Europe for the foreseeable future. Nor can the Left implement changes to make it possible. That is why I believe they hit a dead end, comparable to the dead end that Communism hit in the 1980s.
"It’s had Obama - quite leftist - then Trump - more nationalist than libertarian."
For all the press rantings and despite the utterances that came out of Trump's mouth, while I agree that Trump is not libertarian / classical liberal, his first time around his policies were decidedly center-right, and he did more for deregulation arguably than anyone in the last 90+ years, even including Reagan. On spending he governed as a center-leftist, but on all else, center-right is quite an accurate description.
It remains to be seen exactly what his policies will be this time, but center-right is by far the most likely overall for his economic policies.
True, but if he obviously succeeds in resuscitating Argentina after 100 years of economic and political stagnation, it will send shockwaves through the entire world.
I am not predicting success. It is a long shot, but it is worth watching. And if he fails, it may be another 20-40 years before anyone else tries.
Our political systems are on an unsustainable course, so something has to change. When it happens and what it will lead to is anyone's guess. It is likely to be some weird event overseas that nobody expects (perhaps in Argentina!).
Edit needed (let me know if this is annoying or helpful): “Germany - the dramatic SPD-Green victory in the Sept 2021 election finally seemed to have *finally* brought down the long-dominant Christian Democratic party.”
Edit needed? “I am not claiming that the Center-Left wants that outcome. Only that it is the necessary outcome of this choice if political opposition from the Right is *to be* overcome.”
Complex self ordering systems, family, state, capital, ethic systems have feedback loops that incentivize people to reproduce and extend them. They are tools humans use to extend their journey fortunately as it seems clear that reasoned choices without these systems would squelch all advance quickly. At the same time paradigms organize learning and reasoning, people, groups and organization knowledge contest contend compete paradigms. As you say they are and always will be flawed and eventually fail and be defeated and replaced. However that’s the same as saying hypotheses are wrong, yes they are but the value is trial, experiment discovery. Pragmatic practice and learning is great but conjuring it up isn’t easy. Who would have thought the Chinese communist party in 1978 would proceed to establish market structures and preeminent state capacity to coordinate commercial environment? Paradigms or ideologies will organize accumulation of knowledge as will pragmatism, overall it’s learning, criticizing paradigms a most critical part
I have been thinking of ideology along the lines of 'perspective' 'lens' 'bias.' Rather than the stark terms you use at the outset. I think ideology is a rather normal phenomenon, and that we all operate under it; life is big and complicated, and every person inevitably has a set of principles that winnow down what it is they actually look at, understand, and fix.
Ideologies can grow to huge proportions, and, they can cause suffering when they diverge from material reality, especially when the ideology moves a lot of power and resources around. But ideologies can also remain flexible, hear critique, and allow new knowledge and new perspectives on material reality to inflect and change the ideological conclusions.
Calling something an ideology - and accusing only certain types of brains and people of being 'susceptible' to ideology - is rather tautological. If it contains ideas I don't like or causes harms I can identify, it's an ideology, but my own beliefs are rational, based in material reality, and not subject to ideology; this is not very satisfactory analysis.
I tend to think that my ideology (with its unchecked assumptions about material reality) + your ideology (with its unchecked assumptions about material reality) = a good way to find blind spots so that we can create better material reality, together.
I don't disagree with anything you write. I do, however, believe that those with strong ideological views are very difficult to persuade with rational discussion. It is unfortunately inherent in the mindset.
"I believe that the Center-Left hit a similar dead end in 2008"
Pretty sure I agree with your basic thesis/ideas here, but I disagree with your terminology.
You are describing "the Left" as failing on material reality. Not an actual Center-Left.
I am a person economically of the right (libertarian / classical liberal), but I merely respectfully disagree with the center-left. it is not actually whack on material issues, even if it is usually sub-optimal and often wrong.
Now if your point is that in most left-of-center coalitions, their policies have drifted further left and are no longer center-left, I'd agree with that. And surely it is true of the U.S. today, at the federal level and in blue states.
And while I don't claim to know *all* that much about international politics, France's ruling coalition seems to be actually center-left and closer to the center than most of the rest of Europe's left governing coalitions, and it in fact has done less worse on material reality than most of the rest of western Europe as a result over the last few years, especially since COVID.
I don't think that center-left ideas hit a dead end per se. But clearly the center-left is NOT what the great mass of "the left" is any longer.
All of those parties are in significant electoral decline, and I believe that is due to the reasons listed in this article. My guess is that they will continue to decline. This is also true in France.
Many parties to the Left of those listed above, however, are doing fairly well electorally and my guess is will decline far less.
Yes, the Center-Left has clearly moved to the Left over the last 20 years, but I think that is due to the dead end that they have hit and their refusal to acknowledge it.
Gotcha. We disagree only on which is cause and which is effect.The center-left of Bill Clinton in the 1990s need not have died, and could still be popular and win - at least in the U.S. - today.
Yes in a parliamentary system the center left has it even tougher today, but "the center" (center-left in coalition with center-right; e.g. as in France) can still succeed if they changed policies.
So if your point that politically in parliamentary systems the center-left is now screwed and at a dead end in the medium term, I can mostly accept that.
"Many parties to the Left of those listed above, however, are doing fairly well electorally" is surely true, but that's very different than the idea that any of them has any meaningful chance of winning elections and leading a durable coalition (save for very brief periods of reaction, like Starmer now doing).
But we are in agreement that "the left" has moved so far to the left in terms of material reality (your term) that they are now failed and destined for more failure in the short-medium term.
My problem is with your seeming implicit claim that the broad left can somehow regain power without moving their "material reality" policies back towards the center.
I agree with you until the last paragraph. I am not sure what you are trying to say in that paragraph. I never made a claim about the Left "moving back towards the center." I do not think the Center-left can move towards the center. I believe that they will keep moving to the Left and keep shrinking.
And "material reality" is not a policy. I am saying that their entire worldview is in conflict with material reality, so they must radically change or make themselves increasingly irrelevant. That is not the same as "moving to the center."
Maybe this article will clear it up (some of it restates this article):
It could of course be said that the right has come to the state of complete religious, moral and intellectual bankruptcy too - much more so than the left.
Evidence for the prosecution is the appearance of the orange haired monstrosity aka Donald Trump (Orange Jesus). He is hugely popular with many right-thinking Christian true believers who even pretend that he is "god's" chosen vehicle to re-Christianize America.
He is a religiously and cultural illiterate nihilistic barbarian. He has trashed all of the normative conventions upon which a civilized country and world depends for its continuity.
And speaking of a man-made hell, such is very much in the pipeline if this outfit gains the necessary political power to enforce its all-encompassing religious, cultural and political agendas.
The re-election of Orange Jesus will enable this project - very muchly so.
It has a very detailed manifesto describing what it intends to do. It is supported by at least 72 deep-pocketed right-wing think tanks etc. Many/most/all of which promote a very right-wing Christian religiosity.
UK’s govt has nominally been in power for 13 years so “time for a change” is very strong. If Labour fails to deliver over the next four or five years then i predict that the electoral benefits will not swing back to the (for all their rhetoric decidedly centre-right in actual policy - they’d be democrats in the US) conservatives but to another right wing party. The vice like grip of first past the post makes predicting who that will be difficult, but if the next election sees the effective destruction of the cons as an electoral force it will be all to play for in the right in the UK.
UK is interesting. It is not fitting the overall pattern.
I actually lived in UK during the coal miners strike in the 1980s. For so long Britain had competent Tories and a semi-suicidal Labour Party. Over the last few years both parties seem semi-suicidal. It is hard to believe that the oldest party in the world may suddenly collapse, but the Reform party is growing fast. They might just replace the Conservatives as the party on the Right. Only time will tell.
Thanks for an excellent analysis of European political trends. We Americans tend to be intellectually insular, and our media do a terrible job of informing us of world affairs other than war coverage. Reading or watching media in Europe reveals a large contrast with American media, by taking a more international perspective.
Many of us have reluctantly abandoned our love affair with the left, and at least in the US, the current administration is so absorbed in ideology that it has wrought havoc in the real world. And the political inversion of the two parties is very slowly being realized by the public. Who would have predicted 10 or 20 years ago that the republicans would take on the mantle of advocating for working and middle class voters, while the democrats revile them as deplorables?
It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, if only we manage to survive the next year without a total fracturing of the country.
One issue is that for the most part since WWII the European (more generally Western) right has merely been following the left by about one or two decades. Thus even countries that were nominally dominated by the center-right have implemented the same agenda as the center left, just more slowly.
True. I think that this is a common theme in Western democracies. Conservatives complain, but then they typically implement the same policies at a slower rate. They rarely roll back bad policies even if they and their voters hate those policies.
I think this is because the Right does not accept the concept of Progress, and they have no way within their worldview to determine what is good change and what is bad change.
I go into more detail here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/why-neither-the-left-nor-the-right
> I think this is because the Right does not accept the concept of Progress, and they have no way within their worldview to determine what is good change and what is bad change.
The left has the opposite problem, they can't admit that some changes are bad.
Bingo!
That is why we need to shift towards a focus on RESULTS. Neither the Left nor the Right has answers, but I am confident that answers do exist. We are just not looking for them because both sides are more concerned about rallying their base.
You can read more here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/t/reforming-policy-making-process
I think 2008 is too early in the timeline to pinpoint the collapse of left-wing parties - they really died in 2021.
From 2008 through to 2020, growth was so sluggish that interest rates were kept at rock-bottom. Those low interest rates in turn led lulled left-wing governments into a sense of fiscal & monetary complacency; they saw no risk with running massive deficits to essentially buy votes. The Trudeau government was particularly bad with their declarations of "budgets balance themselves" and "We don't spend time thinking about monetary policy"
Now that inflation has returned and interest rates are much higher, left-wing parties have now hit a policy dead-end because the problems caused by runaway spending cannot be solved with runaway spending. They basically have 3 choices left:
1) Raise taxes on the middle class and hope to avoid backlash (unlikely)
2) Print money and hope to avoid inflation-driven backlash (also unlikely)
3) Cut spending (i.e. pivot to the right on fiscal policy)
I wrote this about the Canadian government but it applies equally to Europe and the US:
https://milesmcstylez.substack.com/p/how-to-defuse-canadas-debt-bomb
Thanks for the comment. I do not think that our two views are mutually exclusive. The very slow economic growth since 2007 created the problem, while massive deficit spending since that time enabled them to obscure the problem temporarily.
This is somewhat similar to the dead end that the Communists hit. The sluggish economic growth in the 1970s was obscured by high oil prices. Then when oil prices declined around 1986, the entire regime began to collapse.
As a 90s millennial, why were Communists so exposed to a drop in oil prices? I thought the Russian O&G sector really took off after the USSR collapsed and Western firms moved in to start building out the necessary infrastructure
No, the oil and gas industry was the major export for the Soviet Union. The money from petroleum exports gave the Soviets hard Western currency which enabled them to buy Western technology. This was essential because the Soviet economy could not innovate non-military technology, so they had to buy it from the West.
From 1973 (when oil prices spiked) until 1986 (when oil prices collapsed), Soviet petroleum kept the economy from collapsing.
In the 1980s the Soviet gas pipeline running to Europe was a huge political issue. The Western Europeans wanted to help the Soviets construct it, while Reagan wanted no Western financial support for its construction because he understood its importance to winning the Cold War.
When the Soviet Union collapsed most of the industry collapsed, particularly those areas where they needed to drill through permafrost. In permafrost, the hole keeps moving so if you do not pump out, the hole eventually collapses. After the 90s they essentially had to start over, but this time with Western help.
Wise words. Having been raised by socialists/communists in post-war Britain, it took me many years to "age out of my beliefs" as you put it. The intentions never matched the outcomes. My father and his friends and relatives seemed to ignore the horrors of Lenin, Stalin and Mao. Their atrocities are unthinkable to the current mind, yet given the actions of the Left, we are headed towards those atrocities at speed. I hope your point about the rise of the populist Right comes about, yet I see a bloody future. There is far too much power and wealth at stake.
In addition, Left and Right of themselves are political constructs to divide us and keep us fighting each other. We need unification, not division. The People vs the 1% seems to be the more accurate battle. Or even the 1% of the 1%.
The problem with this analysis is that the centre right, whose ideas are closest to the liberalism you seem to espouse, has also seen its star fade. In the US, they’ve been more or less wiped out of the Republican Party by Trump. In the UK, they are polling behind Reform. In Europe they are benefiting from an overall shift to the right, but really only because they are now closer to the median voter, with extremists on either side, because the extreme right has got more popular. So, if centre-left failure is driven by the failure to grow the economy, what is the centre-right doing wrong?
Another problem or question. The US has grown, Europe has stagnated. But the US has hardly had libertarian or classically liberal policies. It’s had Obama - quite leftist - then Trump - more nationalist than libertarian. And it has seen the growth of huge new monopolies (ask Thomas Philippon or Matt Stoller). Its impressive growth seems more Schumpeterian (à ka Peter Thiel) than neoliberal. How did that happen?
Thanks for the comment. I am not center-right. I do not subscribe to any ideology.
When I say that the Left has hit a dead end, that does not preclude other ideologies having problems as well. But increased government spending that is enabled by economic growth is central to the electoral success of the Left. This does not seem possible in Europe for the foreseeable future. Nor can the Left implement changes to make it possible. That is why I believe they hit a dead end, comparable to the dead end that Communism hit in the 1980s.
It is very unclear what will takes it place…
"It’s had Obama - quite leftist - then Trump - more nationalist than libertarian."
For all the press rantings and despite the utterances that came out of Trump's mouth, while I agree that Trump is not libertarian / classical liberal, his first time around his policies were decidedly center-right, and he did more for deregulation arguably than anyone in the last 90+ years, even including Reagan. On spending he governed as a center-leftist, but on all else, center-right is quite an accurate description.
It remains to be seen exactly what his policies will be this time, but center-right is by far the most likely overall for his economic policies.
> Perhaps in a few generations, a follower of Javier Milei will get elected.
It remains to be seen whether Milei will even succeed given that he appears to be a borderline autist up against the entire political establishment.
True, but if he obviously succeeds in resuscitating Argentina after 100 years of economic and political stagnation, it will send shockwaves through the entire world.
I am not predicting success. It is a long shot, but it is worth watching. And if he fails, it may be another 20-40 years before anyone else tries.
Our political systems are on an unsustainable course, so something has to change. When it happens and what it will lead to is anyone's guess. It is likely to be some weird event overseas that nobody expects (perhaps in Argentina!).
Edit needed (let me know if this is annoying or helpful): “Germany - the dramatic SPD-Green victory in the Sept 2021 election finally seemed to have *finally* brought down the long-dominant Christian Democratic party.”
Corrected.
Edit needed? “I am not claiming that the Center-Left wants that outcome. Only that it is the necessary outcome of this choice if political opposition from the Right is *to be* overcome.”
No, this is correct. Your edit changes the meaning. I did add a comma.
Edit needed: “The goal of those who invent and follow ideologies is the transform society.”
Corrected
Complex self ordering systems, family, state, capital, ethic systems have feedback loops that incentivize people to reproduce and extend them. They are tools humans use to extend their journey fortunately as it seems clear that reasoned choices without these systems would squelch all advance quickly. At the same time paradigms organize learning and reasoning, people, groups and organization knowledge contest contend compete paradigms. As you say they are and always will be flawed and eventually fail and be defeated and replaced. However that’s the same as saying hypotheses are wrong, yes they are but the value is trial, experiment discovery. Pragmatic practice and learning is great but conjuring it up isn’t easy. Who would have thought the Chinese communist party in 1978 would proceed to establish market structures and preeminent state capacity to coordinate commercial environment? Paradigms or ideologies will organize accumulation of knowledge as will pragmatism, overall it’s learning, criticizing paradigms a most critical part
I have been thinking of ideology along the lines of 'perspective' 'lens' 'bias.' Rather than the stark terms you use at the outset. I think ideology is a rather normal phenomenon, and that we all operate under it; life is big and complicated, and every person inevitably has a set of principles that winnow down what it is they actually look at, understand, and fix.
Ideologies can grow to huge proportions, and, they can cause suffering when they diverge from material reality, especially when the ideology moves a lot of power and resources around. But ideologies can also remain flexible, hear critique, and allow new knowledge and new perspectives on material reality to inflect and change the ideological conclusions.
Calling something an ideology - and accusing only certain types of brains and people of being 'susceptible' to ideology - is rather tautological. If it contains ideas I don't like or causes harms I can identify, it's an ideology, but my own beliefs are rational, based in material reality, and not subject to ideology; this is not very satisfactory analysis.
I tend to think that my ideology (with its unchecked assumptions about material reality) + your ideology (with its unchecked assumptions about material reality) = a good way to find blind spots so that we can create better material reality, together.
I don't disagree with anything you write. I do, however, believe that those with strong ideological views are very difficult to persuade with rational discussion. It is unfortunately inherent in the mindset.
"I believe that the Center-Left hit a similar dead end in 2008"
Pretty sure I agree with your basic thesis/ideas here, but I disagree with your terminology.
You are describing "the Left" as failing on material reality. Not an actual Center-Left.
I am a person economically of the right (libertarian / classical liberal), but I merely respectfully disagree with the center-left. it is not actually whack on material issues, even if it is usually sub-optimal and often wrong.
Now if your point is that in most left-of-center coalitions, their policies have drifted further left and are no longer center-left, I'd agree with that. And surely it is true of the U.S. today, at the federal level and in blue states.
And while I don't claim to know *all* that much about international politics, France's ruling coalition seems to be actually center-left and closer to the center than most of the rest of Europe's left governing coalitions, and it in fact has done less worse on material reality than most of the rest of western Europe as a result over the last few years, especially since COVID.
I don't think that center-left ideas hit a dead end per se. But clearly the center-left is NOT what the great mass of "the left" is any longer.
Which is a shame.
By “Center-Left” I mean:
Social Democratic parties in Europe
Labor parties in the Anglo world
Democratic and Liberal parties in North America.
All of those parties are in significant electoral decline, and I believe that is due to the reasons listed in this article. My guess is that they will continue to decline. This is also true in France.
Many parties to the Left of those listed above, however, are doing fairly well electorally and my guess is will decline far less.
Yes, the Center-Left has clearly moved to the Left over the last 20 years, but I think that is due to the dead end that they have hit and their refusal to acknowledge it.
Gotcha. We disagree only on which is cause and which is effect.The center-left of Bill Clinton in the 1990s need not have died, and could still be popular and win - at least in the U.S. - today.
Yes in a parliamentary system the center left has it even tougher today, but "the center" (center-left in coalition with center-right; e.g. as in France) can still succeed if they changed policies.
So if your point that politically in parliamentary systems the center-left is now screwed and at a dead end in the medium term, I can mostly accept that.
"Many parties to the Left of those listed above, however, are doing fairly well electorally" is surely true, but that's very different than the idea that any of them has any meaningful chance of winning elections and leading a durable coalition (save for very brief periods of reaction, like Starmer now doing).
But we are in agreement that "the left" has moved so far to the left in terms of material reality (your term) that they are now failed and destined for more failure in the short-medium term.
My problem is with your seeming implicit claim that the broad left can somehow regain power without moving their "material reality" policies back towards the center.
I agree with you until the last paragraph. I am not sure what you are trying to say in that paragraph. I never made a claim about the Left "moving back towards the center." I do not think the Center-left can move towards the center. I believe that they will keep moving to the Left and keep shrinking.
And "material reality" is not a policy. I am saying that their entire worldview is in conflict with material reality, so they must radically change or make themselves increasingly irrelevant. That is not the same as "moving to the center."
Maybe this article will clear it up (some of it restates this article):
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/the-central-moral-dilemma-of-the
It could of course be said that the right has come to the state of complete religious, moral and intellectual bankruptcy too - much more so than the left.
Evidence for the prosecution is the appearance of the orange haired monstrosity aka Donald Trump (Orange Jesus). He is hugely popular with many right-thinking Christian true believers who even pretend that he is "god's" chosen vehicle to re-Christianize America.
He is a religiously and cultural illiterate nihilistic barbarian. He has trashed all of the normative conventions upon which a civilized country and world depends for its continuity.
And speaking of a man-made hell, such is very much in the pipeline if this outfit gains the necessary political power to enforce its all-encompassing religious, cultural and political agendas.
http://www.project2025.org
The re-election of Orange Jesus will enable this project - very muchly so.
It has a very detailed manifesto describing what it intends to do. It is supported by at least 72 deep-pocketed right-wing think tanks etc. Many/most/all of which promote a very right-wing Christian religiosity.
Let’s keep the comments more focused on the topic of the post.
It is a rule in this column.
UK’s govt has nominally been in power for 13 years so “time for a change” is very strong. If Labour fails to deliver over the next four or five years then i predict that the electoral benefits will not swing back to the (for all their rhetoric decidedly centre-right in actual policy - they’d be democrats in the US) conservatives but to another right wing party. The vice like grip of first past the post makes predicting who that will be difficult, but if the next election sees the effective destruction of the cons as an electoral force it will be all to play for in the right in the UK.
Thanks for the comment.
UK is interesting. It is not fitting the overall pattern.
I actually lived in UK during the coal miners strike in the 1980s. For so long Britain had competent Tories and a semi-suicidal Labour Party. Over the last few years both parties seem semi-suicidal. It is hard to believe that the oldest party in the world may suddenly collapse, but the Reform party is growing fast. They might just replace the Conservatives as the party on the Right. Only time will tell.
Well Nigel Farage has a bad habit of dissolving his parties for no particularly good reason.
> United States
Well, the Democratic party's strategy appears to be to resort to ever more egregious amounts of election fraud.
I get into that topic here:
https://frompovertytoprogress.substack.com/p/ballot-fraud-is-a-very-serious-problem