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.
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.
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.
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!).
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
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…
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.
> 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!).
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