Across Europe, social democrats try to explain electoral defeat

The centre-left lost heavily in last week's European elections - despite a worldwide recession and a crisis of capitalism. Are bad campaign tactics to blame, or is social democracy in the middle of an identity crisis?

For a while it looked like good times were ahead for the social democrats in Europe. Capitalism had gone haywire, banks were going bankrupt all over the place and the government had to step in. The free market had finally shown itself to be the destructive monster the left always said it was.

But the good times never materialised. Despite the failure of the free market, and in the midst of a worldwide recession, the European voter still looked to the right, not the left, for answers. Social democrats had been handed a fundamental crisis of capitalism on a silver platter, and they still suffered a humiliating defeat at the polls.

Dull faces

This week, in socialist party headquarters across Europe, people are looking for the reasons why the socialists did so badly when they should have done so well under the circumstances. The Dutch Labour party (PvdA) has set up a working group to review its campaign strategy. The French socialist party (PS) has given itself no less than six months to reflect on last week's election result. Did the social democrats use the wrong tactics - too many dull faces on dull posters? Or is this a crisis of social democracy itself?

Some political experts and party strategists are putting the blame on a combination of unfavourable national settings and a complicated and ambiguous message about Europe. Others point to a more fundamental problem: social democrats in Western Europe no longer know what they stand for.

"The social democrats simply have not been able to come up with credible answers to the challenges of the 21st century," says Olaf Cramme, director of the Policy Institute, a Labour think-tank in London. "It is a development that has been going on for years and that has ultimately led to this disastrous result. Clearly, Wouter Bos is not alone in this."

At the end of the nineties it looked like the centre-left had the upper hand in Europe. Think of Tony Blair, Lionel Jospin, Gerhard Schröder, Wim Kok. Now the British Labour party is left with just 15.3 percent of the vote, the French PS with 16.5 percent, the Dutch PvdA with 12.1 percent and the German SPD with 20.8 percent.

Of course, the European elections took place in national contexts, and the disappointing outcome for the social democrats are also the result of specific national settings. British Labour, for instance, was punished for the parliamentary expenses scandal; in France, the PS paid the price for the chaotic infighting over the future course of the party. Part of the blame must also go to the vagueness of the European message that social democrats tried to convey to voters.

"The social democrats find themselves in a dilemma," says Dominik Hierlemann of the Bertelsmannstiftung, a German think-tank. "They are in favour of more European cooperation, but at the same time they want a different, more social Europe. They don't want to be too critical of Europe either for fear of being seen as eurosceptic. They are stuck between pro-European conservatives and anti-European socialists. And that's just not working."

Elitist

Europe and the left is in any case a bad combination, says David Bailey of the University of Birmingham. "The left doesn't know what to with Europe. British social democrats were hoping to use Europe in the fight against neoliberalism. But that didn't work out. Worse, Europe has only meant more neoliberalism."

According to Hierlemann, social democrats in Germany have not succeeded in explaining the importance of Europe to their traditional voters. "The traditional SPD voter simply didn't show up. The average worker didn't bother to vote in the European election because he doesn't see why it matters to him. Europe is still very much an elite project. The well-educated realise its importance so they vote. That plays into the hand of the liberals and the Greens."

Still, Hierlemann doesn't see the poor election results as a sign of a pan-European malaise for social democracy. "You have to be careful with trends like these," he says. Germany will forget about the European election in no time, he predicts. The SPD will have a much easier job mobilising its grassroots supporters in the election for the Bundestag this fall.

Labour strategist Cramme is less confident. He sees a more fundamental problem. The demise of the industry-based economy has shattered Labour's traditional grassroots supporters. The good old working class is no more. Labour's client base now consists of small groups with a variety of interests: workers, but also the unemployed and single-parent families. It is much more difficult to come up with a unified message for all these voters. Moreover, the old Labour tactics don't work anymore. You can't solve the problems of the unemployed by talking about workers' rights.

The centre-left has been looking for answers to this structural shift for some time. Labour, for instance, is trying to attract new groups of voters and has embraced the market mechanism.

"In a booming economy it made sense to give the market more freedom because it was yielding results," says researcher Bailey. "Now that people are once more in doubt about the virtues of the free market, the social democrats have no alternative to offer. Many are proposing a return to a restyled form of Keynesianism, but most voters see this as going back to the past, a change without real substance."

The recession and the crisis of capitalism have not helped social democrats to find a credible narrative of their own. In a crisis, people will choose certainty, says Hierlemann. In a crisis of the free market system, people will vote for parties they think best understand the free market, says Bailey.

And the socialists were arrogant and lazy, says Cramme.

"They were condescending. They said: the neoliberals are to blame for the crisis and that's why you have to vote for us. They tried to put all the blame on the conservatives without coming up with a real alternative themselves. The voters didn't buy this and they were right not to.

"As long as the social democrats can’t make a plausible case as to how they can guarantee a better future for workers and people with low to middle incomes, they will not do any better at the polls."