The
recent elections in Italy and the German government finally renewing its
existing coalition government are two important events in a series of European political
impasses and a general move to the right coupled with widespread rejection of
the established political parties in several nations.
The new
Italian bicameral legislature looks like a design for a stalemate.
The
legendary Italian left is reduced to a small delegation of less than a third of
either their assembly or senate.
The
right made small gains, but the real news is a large shift from the traditional
center right to a new hard right represented by the Northern League (La Lega)
which is mostly hard right, originally regional separatist and the first
political party to elect a black Nigerian immigrant as a Senator. The old Berlusconi right is still in the
game, but La Lega is claiming the right to organize the next governing coalition.
Between
the left parties and right wing ones is a populist movement called Five
Stars.
A lot
of commentators have spent a lot of time telling us that nobody in 5 Stars
knows what they want. Funny that because
one of the main 5 Star demands is for the leadership of the traditional parties
to resign, for corruption to be investigated and controlled and for the
politics of the country to be renewed.
The Italian and world press should be able understand this.
Five
Stars has the largest vote of any party, and they too are claiming the right
for their very young leader to form the next government.
The
traditional left took it on the nose with the ruling Democratic Party being
reduced from government to minor party status in one jump. They are not talking about forming any
government and have so far rejected any ideas of doing so with Five Stars.
This
traditional left is the political movement that was once the Italian Communist
Party which was the largest Communist party west of the Iron Curtain. It is mostly represented today by the
Democrats. They are a large social and
trade union movement that has deep roots in all of Italy today, despite their
defeat at the polls this week. There are
a couple other more moderate and harder line left groups that round out the
small delegation left of deputies elected in 2018.
While
the Democrats still had the name “Communist” and used the hammer and sickle as
its symbol it was also the most liberal of the pro-Soviet parties being one of
the two major developers of “Eurocommunism”, the pro-democracy, civil rights, anti-Soviet
occupation of Afghanistan movement of the European left that was essentially
moderate. The Europe they were talking
about was WESTERN Europe of the then 12 member EEC, which we called the Common Market
that became the European Union of 27 members today. There were some uneasy meetings in Moscow,
especially when their gay youth wing leader turned up. They were center left before they took the
name “Democratic Party of the Left” and after they became just the “Democrats’
and dropped the traditional icon from their party symbol, they became a party
of both center left and grand coalition governments.
The
Italian Communists plays a role in Italy similar to the one the Socialists and
Social Democrats play in other nations of Europe and have joined the “Socialist
Club” by having serious electoral defeat this year.
Nowhere
was that defeat any worse than in France.
While Macron and his new Republican Rally movement did well in the
second rounds of their presidential and legislative elections, they did so with
much fractured first rounds. In most
cases, including the president’s election, the top two to come out of the first
round represented well under 40% of the voters.
It is one thing to pick the lesser evil candidate, it is another to have
actively voted for a different party just weeks before. The turnout for the second round of the
French election was a record low.
A
French record low turnout is much higher than we ever get in the US.
Also,
it is hard to tell how much support Macron had because of his own proposals and
how much the French people were fed up with business as usual from the political
parties that seemed to recycle idea and disappointing politicians. Macron is similar to Five Stars in that. The
failed outgoing president was a Socialist.
As
Macron’s original vote was not so large, that leaves the majority of French
people allied with other political parties, all of whom seem to have decided to
have a crisis at the same time. The Republicans and the Socialists have new
leaders and new defections. The leadership decisions among the socialists is
still not over really and there are many splinter groups. The ultra-right has
the same leader, Marine Le Pen, new defections and are considering a new
name. The new left seems to be on the
same track as back during their unexpected better showing in the presidential
first round. They are a smaller party,
but they seem to be stable when others are not.
Altogether,
all the traditional French political parties together don’t add up to even half
of the legislature, so Macron and his people are doing what they want. Given the slowness of the German government
to negotiate their renewal, Brexit, Italian stalemates, and the Trump lack of
effectiveness, French President Macron has become a leader in European and
international affairs. While our press
has been discussing Stormy Daniels and Russians in the back room, Macron has
been an effective negotiator with Russia in places like the Mid-East for
example. His trips to China and India
could use some better US coverage too.
If
anything stands out for Germany it is the awkward slowness of their movement to
the inevitable checkout line and the strangely poor ability of very skilled
German politicians to act skillfully.
Six
months ago they held an election. For
all that time the long established existing Grand Coalition, which the Germans
call GroKo, has run the country as a caretaker government.
In
those elections the Free Democrats got a few fewer votes than expected, as did
Merkel’s Christian Democrats in their two parts. The right wing AfD, Alliance for Germany, got
more votes than expected in earlier polls moving from an expected 7% to an
elected 13%. The Socialists were not
doing well in the earlier local Landtag votes under Martin Schultz’ leadership
and continued to do poorly nationally, but maybe not as bad as before, or as
bad as expected. The Left and the Green
parties got about the same percentages as before and as in the local elections,
and like their French counterparts, they are small but stable parts of German
political life. The difference in
results means that the expected Free Democrat - Christian Democrat majority was
short a few votes.
Somehow
Italy has the reputation for its proportional representation politics being a
soap opera, but Germany is also a show worth watching. If NBC does not cover it, maybe Netflix
should consider a miniseries.
A
renewal of the GroKo would have made the anti-immigrant Alliance for Germany
the official opposition. Martin Schultz
opted out on a renewal of GroKo and said that he personally would not take a
ministerial post. This would have been
good for the Social Democrats because they would have not been part of the bad government
to come and Martin Schultz could maybe rescue his career. It would be good for the country to keep the
Alliance for Germany marginalized.
Then
somebody came up with the idea of a “Jamaica” coalition of the Black, for the
Social Christians, the Yellow of the Free Democrats and the Green of, well we
know who.
Of
course that was never going to work and it took a long time not to do so.
Finally
Martin Schulz reversed himself and tried to become Foreign Minister, kicking
aside the Social Democrats former leader Sigmar Gabriel who held the job. By
the time the scandal of that was over Schultz had to resign as party leader and
withdraw his name for any cabinet post but stays on as a member of Bundestag.
I would
have asked him to resign as party leader just because he lost the elections so
badly. That would be England.
But
musical chairs was not over. The Socialists had to hold a party vote to join a
renewed GroKo and then they still kicked Gabriel aside. A new Social Democrat has the foreign affairs
job, Heiko Maas moving over from Justice ….
Six
months later we have the same two parties in power, as everyone knew would have
to happen, and both of them are weaker and less credible than they were. Alliance
for Germany plays the opposition role.
Merkel
now looks up from her desk to find Macron taking more lead around Europe. Macron looks up from his desk asking if
Germany is finally going to help him advocate for the Europe that they both
want.
And
what a mixed up Europe it is. Prime
Minister May seems able to do everything wrong with Brexit and is not on the
road to a deal. The only good news out
of the U.K. local politics is that the Corbyn branch of the Labor Party has
stayed viable and in charge. Still no
talk about political reform such as proportional representation or at least run
offs instead of first-past-the-post voting.
Germany, Italy and France may have their problems, but at least the
public got to vote on it. We should
expect the next government of the U.K. to continue to represent a minority of
the people.
Spain
still seems to be disjointed. The poor
handling of the Catalan crisis has promised us continued crisis and obvious
backlash. There are two Five Start type
parties in Spain, one on the left and one on the right. They too had a long hard time to get the last
center right government to continue in place and the final solution included
some internal Socialist Party back stabbing.
Moving
past Portugal, which has an old fashioned left coalition government we see
problems in Greece being on the left but not able to do anything about it
because their lives are run by the European Central Bank and private
banks. Similar bank imposed post ‘07 austerity
is happening in Ireland and Portugal, but Greece it is a crisis with another
crises on top of it. That is the crisis
of massive waves of immigrants fleeing the ever more catastrophic Mid East and
other trouble spots of war and collapsed economies. This is happening in many
other European nations, the difference in Greece is one of intensity and
economic means to deal with it.
Merkel’s
original “wir schaffen das” (we can make it happen)
acceptance of a million refugees backfired politically inside and outside of
her Christian Democratic movement as well as inside and outside of Germany.
Public sentiment mixes the recent terrorism in France, Germany and Belgium with
the refuge / immigration situation not matter how unrelated. Any crime
involving these immigrants, especially sexual assault, has become part of the
drumbeat of the right wing press. Acts of violence against foreigners has
become common and is also a staple of local press reports.
Such
are the real economic results of globalization and the real after effects of
expanded western influence in the political and military spheres. One political cartoon shows a conveyor belt
bringing refugees to Europe from the Mid-East, while carrying weapons
back.
That
wave of immigration is part of what sent Germany and Italy to the right,
affects France and has been part of the xenophobic right wing shifts in Poland,
Slovakia, and Hungary. The shift to the
right in those three places is pronounced, but hardly exclusive to them in
Eastern or Western Europe, and only partly related to immigration issues. The refugee crisis has been a boon to right
wing opportunists.
And
good old democratic, liberal Austria finds itself with a Green for ceremonial
president, a very young conservative for prime minister in a government that
has a large contingent from a right wing party that has roots going back to the
original German speaking fascists.
At the
risk of generalizing about what is too complicated to make general
understandings of, one could call the overall trend in Europe to be to the
right, and the left that survives is tending more left. It is no wonder that there are so many people
who are just fed up.
The
free trade miracle that did not happen in the Mid-East and Africa, did not
happen in Europe either. For over a
generation, too many people have lost their established and stable employment
the way US auto workers did. Working
people in Europe would not be turning to the ultra-right if they had job
security and basic welfare for themselves.
In their real lives, they have watched their comfortable lifestyle turn
into an aggressive competition with a lot of people ending up selected
against.
Liberal
politics and liberal free trade is failing working people and they know
it.
European
politics is a mess because they do not know what to do about it.
