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Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Europe isn't lurching to the far right. That's escapist fantasy

Britain's view of European politics is coloured by Germany's terrible interwar years. But that period is no model for today

Until recently – the watershed came somewhere around the millennium – British perceptions of modern German politics focused not on Germany's government or its main political parties, which were boringly democratic and law-abiding, but on the increasingly distant Nazi past and on extreme parties of the right, which appeared to some eyes to threaten the return to street violence, domestic authoritarianism and foreign aggression.

This perception said much more about the British than the Germans. In the end, given a helpful push by the seriousness of the financial crisis and by the pragmatic leadership of Angela Merkel, the pfennig has finally dropped. Today, better late than never, British perceptions of Germany now focus where they should have been all along – on the resilience of Germany's postwar institutions and on the general good balance of its society and economy in dealing with the problems it faces. It is part of what gives me cautious hope about the outcome of any UK referendum on Europe.

But the conclusion to that is this: one down, 27 to go. That is because, reading some of what is being written and said about the current state of Europe, it feels as if we have been here before. What used to be said about Germany's imminent lurch to the right is now often being said about Europe more generally. Well, it was wrong then and, with certain provisos, it is also wrong now.

The current focus for fashionable doom-mongering about the politics of Europe is the European parliament elections of May 2014. These elections, it is said, are likely to see a far-right backlash across many EU countries. Faced with such a possibility, some observers predict the collapse of the EU itself, and even a new dark age of renewed competing European nationalisms.

It would be foolish to dismiss all these possibilities in every respect, not least because a lot can happen between now and the elections. And foolish, too, to deny that across Europe these elections will be a major opportunity for single-issue and extremist parties – not always the same thing –to make a play for the support of insecure, disillusioned and plain angry voters in the 28 member states. Foolish, finally, because Europe has manifestly not dealt with its banking and fiscal crises in either an even-handed or a sure-handed way.

Nevertheless, these warnings about an impending or a continuing lurch to the right simply do not match the facts. For one thing, they assume that Euroscepticism elides into far-right extremism, when sometimes it does and sometimes it does not. For another, far-right politics is far from homogeneous. Some parties passionately defend the welfare state, while others see it as unworthy of a strong, manly nation. All in all, though, the warnings about the far right amount to little more than scaremongering.

Take the claim that the far right is prospering because of the economic crisis and the relative failure to resolve it. The electoral evidence for this does not exist. Yes, the National Front took 18% in the 2012 presidential election in France and Golden Dawn twice polled 7% in Greece's two legislative elections last year too. Both results were undoubtedly disturbing and newsworthy, and parties of government in those two countries need to take them extremely seriously. Yet they can hardly be portrayed either as triumphs or, in the case of the National Front, as a high-water mark. They represent a challenge to the system, not a threat to it. Thus far, moreover, they have been contained.

And look at the main elections in Europe this year, not last. In Cyprus the nationalist anti-immigrant presidential candidate got 1%. In Germany, the Eurosceptic AFD (by no means a party of the far right) got 4.7%, while the far-right NPD scored 1% (its vote went down, not up). In Lombardy, the Northern League's vote declined by 13%. True, the Freedom party took 21% in September's Austrian general election and put its vote up, while the newly created Action for Dissatisfied Citizens polled 19% in the Czech general election two weeks ago. But the Freedom party has been higher in the past and Austria has survived, and the Czech ADC is a party of the centre-right that was formed to protest against indigenous Czech political corruption, rather than the crisis in the eurozone (of which the Czech Republic is not part).

None of this is to say that the European elections will not provide an opportunity for the right to do better. Something of the sort is almost certain in an election which few voters take seriously, which favours protest votes and which tends to have low turnouts. Even so, according to Cas Mudde, an academic specialist on the subject, the far right is on course to gain 34 to 50 seats in the European parliament, which is roughly 4% to 7% of the total. That's hardly a landslide, even if you elide Euroscepticism and the far right together, which I do not.

Focusing on the real far right has an honourable history. But it is deeply rooted in the terrible experience of interwar Germany. That is not a good historical model for today. The reality is that no country in modern Europe is like the Weimar Republic – and it is time we recognised that the political responses to today's financial crisis are unfolding very differently to those of the Great Depression.

Contrary to what is said by those who focus on the far right, the most striking aspect of the modern crisis is the adaptability and resilience of existing institutions, including the EU, in the face of huge pressures. That's not to say the crisis has not had an effect. In some ways it has given an extra push to trends that were already in evidence when the economy was booming. Nevertheless in most countries, including Britain, most voters continue to vote for traditional political parties, not new ones. And in most countries, also including Britain, most people seem to prefer to give the existing system the benefit of the doubt, albeit often with understandably bad grace. They are wise to do so.

The real choice facing politics is not a grand global showdown between good and evil, the old left and the old right. That's an escapist fantasy. The issue is whether the existing centre left or the existing centre right is better and more creative at building a coalition of interest around a confidence-inspiring and practicable programme – and then keeping enough support get re-elected. Right now in Europe, the centre right is proving a bit better at this than the centre left. The hard graft for centre-left parties across Europe is to turn this around – not to be a 21st-century Don Quixote forever tilting at 19th- or 20th-century windmills.

European electionsEuropean UnionGermanyAustriaCzech RepublicAngela MerkelFranceMartin Kettletheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds


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Will New Talks Bring Additional Aid to Greece?

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Please! Greece Isn't Puerto Rico!

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British Use Cyprus Base to Spy on Middle East

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Greek, Portuguese Workers Stage New Protests Against Austerity

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Greece v. Galloway Could Bring Down a Valuable American Tradition

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Greek Strike: Thousands Protest Austerity Cuts As Services Shut Down

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Greece services grind to halt as unions go on strike over new austerity cuts

24-hour strike causes disrupted public transport and canceled flights

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Greece grinds to a halt as unions protest economy

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Rain dampens latest Greek strike against austerity

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Strike hits Greece as auditors mull further cuts

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Olympiacos Beats Benfica 1-0 in Champions League

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Roberto heroics see Olympiakos beat Benfica

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Coaches agree Roberto was the difference in Greece

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Greece Paralyzed by Nationwide Strike

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Most Taxes Uncollected in Greece

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READ THE ORIGINAL POST AT greece.greekreporter.com

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General strike against cuts brings Greece to a halt

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OECD Better Life index: counting what counts

Grumpy Guardian readers who didn't believe yesterday's report because it sounded too good shouldn't trash the OECD yet

Well, what a glass-half-empty bunch you are. The OECD produces a hefty analysis of everything it can possibly count about what makes life worthwhile and concludes that Britain is a great place to be. But – as of last night – the running tally in our poll of Guardian readers suggests that, by a 2:1 margin, you are not having any of it.

It is easy to sneer. In slump-battered countries like Greece – which recently saw male suicides rise by a fifth, and national income drop by a quarter – well-established statistics suffice to make the point that times are hard; new quality-of-life composites and surveys that ask people how cheery they feel are superfluous. But in the grip of a true Great Depression, Greece is an extreme case. It really should be instructive to track personal security, air quality and feelings of health across a wider set of countries. After all, as Bobby Kennedy put it, a gross national product which counts weaponry but not wisdom "measures everything ... except that which makes life worthwhile".

So efforts of the OECD sort, once enthusiastically backed by David Cameron, are worth trying. But when statisticians shift from what can be easily counted to what they say truly counts, arguments inevitably abound. The granddaddy of such exercises is the UN Human Development Index, which has been around long enough to have acquired a certain respectability over time, but its recognition that, say, years of schooling but not freedom from crime contributes to a country flourishing is obviously arbitrary. So, too, are the relative weights assigned to life span, education and income, in a calculation that has changed over time. Without grand theoretical modelling, which would itself rely on contentious assumptions, double-counting is unavoidable – for instance, the same spending on teachers' salaries will contribute to the education and income components at once. In yesterday's OECD data, spending on housing clocks up as a positive, which it is if it – say – fixes rising damp, but not – as so often happens in Britain – it merely lines a landlord's pockets. While the thinktank went out of its way to provide information on inequality, it did not factor these into its headline index of wellbeing, perhaps for fear of being dragged into controversy. That is a serious omission.

However, the OECD is to be commended for an online interactive, which lays bare its assumptions – and allows anyone to change them. (If not an invitation to play God, this is an invitation to play Aristotle and define the Good Life.) Decree that money is all that matters and the US is suddenly the place to be; if work-life balance matters more, you'd be better off heading for Denmark; but if a well-woven fabric of community is what you're really after, Iceland beckons. Such contrasts might guide migrants, but just as striking are many commonalities in the rankings. Just as in the UN's index, richer countries often do better in other dimensions, too: money may not matter much in itself, but it certainly comes in handy when fixing problems that do, from dirty water to inadequate healthcare.

This brings us back to that finding about British society coming through the recession relatively unscathed. If we have done so, how is this possible, after a chunky fall in GDP? The survival of more jobs than expected is surely one part of the answer, particularly because the OECD statistics do not fully capture the chief blights in today's UK labour market, such as underemployment. Just as important, however, is the period covered – much of the data relates to 2010 and 2011, before private retrenchment gave way to public austerity. The first phase of the Great Recession pain was meted out relatively fairly in Britain, as taxes for the rich increased and benefits for the poor were maintained. It is the subsequent swapping of those positions that could in the end do most social damage. Grumpy Guardian readers who did not believe yesterday's report because it sounded too good shouldn't trash the OECD just yet; another report, a few years' down the line, could yet prove it right.

OECDGlobal economyEditorialtheguardian.com © 2013 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds


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Greece hit by another anti-austerity general strike

Anti-austerity protests in Athens today to mark the return of the Troika

Graeme Wearden


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Race for Greece Town Supervisor

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Costas Constantinides Elected First Greek and Cypriot to Serve on New York City Council

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Anti-austerity strike brings Greece to a halt during troika visit

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Protesters rally in Greece as IMF and EU arrive on inspection tour

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New Greek ambassador seeks to improve China ties

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