[Imerso]

That's not what politics in Europe look at all at the moment. The extreme right and the extreme left are growing a lot. And the center-right and center-left are pretty much merging in many countries, they are either governing in coalition, or they will have to govern in coalition in the near future if they want to remain in power.

Syriza in Greece won the European elections and may govern in the future. FN is rising in France. UKIP in UK.

And in Spain Podemos is not fizzling out at all, the last polls put it as the 3rd party and getting very close to be the 2nd one, and even if they disappear what the polls seem very sure about is that neither center-right nor center-left could govern by themselves, and if they need to create a coalition that would mean political suicide for any future elections, at least with the current political atmosphere, maybe they are able to sell that coalition somehow. But there's probably too much corruption at the moment to sell it as anything else than as the last "let's keep stealing money" card.

[mercurial]

> FN is rising in France.

What is particularly worrying is that through a mix of bad economic results and an economic policy borrowed from the right-wing, the current government is incredibly unpopular. At the same time, the right wing has lost most of its credibility due to both numerous corruption scandals (and more coming to the surface on a regular basis) and infighting. With a completely withered left, this leaves the road wide open to the extreme right wing.

[Ntrails]

I thought France had a hardline socialist president?

[netcan]

I wonder what is driving this all, I don't really think it is the EU, or even immigration. Those sound more like just the issues of the day, not political paradigm movers.

The reality is that Europe has been in a state of ideological vacuum for a while. The hard right (including most dramatically fascism) really failed between 60-40 years ago as a movement. The hard left failed 25-35 years ago as a viable movement. The old left-right paradigm continued. In many places it's been centrist policies combined with left wing rhetoric. How long can that be the paradigm?

All that's left is the reality that governing bodies, parties and paradigms have been under fire for 5 years now. Political populism and dissidence sells. All that's left is to find a rhetoric that appeals to young, radical or reactionary pockets of political capital.

To me, one of the important takeaways from marxism/socialism is that forces of political stability and instability dictate history to a large degree. I'm very far from Marx on his determinism, but I agree with the broad brush idea. If the current paradigm is both unsustainable and unchangeable, pressure will mount. Technology is a force that Marx never truly reckoned with, but it contributes to the process. If people don't benefit from the system or suspect they could benefit more from some other system, they'll try to kill the old system.

UKIP make almost as much effort to recruit from the hard left as they do from the hard right.

[narag]

I wonder what is driving this all

Corruption. A lot. Spanish situation is kafkaesque right now. The former treasurer of the governing party is in jail. The prime minister sent him a SMS telling him "to be strong" when he was sent to prison. PM and rest of ministers were paid substantial extra from the construction companies briberies. No, they haven't resigned in two years. Only the scapegoat is canned.

Then similar scandals have arisen for the PSOE, former party in power until 2008, and CiU, the party that is promoting secession of Cataluña.

This week we have the phantom card show: bankers and politicians (politicians and union leaders are in the board of credit unions) using an opaque cards to spend 15.5 millions euros without paying any taxes.

Response from PP and PSOE has been very very very weak. They've lost credibility like... forever.

[nhaehnle]

> The reality is that Europe has been in a state of ideological vacuum for a while.

Correct. It appears that the established parties do not dare touch big visions any more. In itself, I expect most people would actually be happy with this, as long as it works. The problem is that in most of Europe it doesn't: the recovery from the financial crisis in the Eurozone is now actually lagging the recovery from the Great Depression.

And yet, my experience in Germany is that there is complete silence about the failure of politics. When polls show low approval for policies, even journalists tend to excuse this by saying that the policies just haven't been explained properly to the population. The possibility that the mainstream consensus regarding Eurozone policies might be wrong is not seriously considered. There is no serious intelligent debate about political choices.

This is also a failure of journalism. I had some hope when Frank Schirrmacher, one of the editors of the FAZ, a very influential serious newspaper, made steps towards raising the possibility that the mainstream consensus is wrong. Unfortunately, he died recently.

Ultimately, people feel misrepresented by the mainstream parties. The result is a mixture of apathy in the form of dropping participation in elections, and remaining voters going to the non-mainstream parties, which tend to be more extreme.

[spindritf]

That's the problem with trends, they can turn. I'm sticking with it though, I've seen protest and single-issue parties make it all the way to the government before sliding back into single digits or complete irrelevance.

There's a reason mainstream parties are mainstream. Usually, they adjust to push out new contenders. Although the immigration issue (a driver for FN and UKIP) is interesting because some are far too invested to turn around now.

[mercurial]

This Podemos thing is reminiscent of the Five-Star movement in Italy, which apparently did well at the EU elections earlier this year.

[slapresta]

Actually, the polls seem to imply that neither center-right nor center-left could govern by themselves or even if they formed a coalition with each other, which is an amazing change for Spanish politics.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

That's not true at the moment. It is true that some polls give the sum of the two major parties less than 50% of the votes, but the electoral law is far from being purely proportional, so they would still get more than 50% of the seats.

[sebkomianos]

Slightly offtopic probably, but to provide more context: Syriza is heavily criticised for making a very conservative turn to the center.

[raldi]

What is your extreme right like? I'm curious where their views would fall on the American spectrum.

[spindritf]

On the continent, less free-market and much more nationalistic. UKIP is pretty close to American right with vouchers, cutting spending... they even picked up private gun ownership lately.

[blueskin_]

UKIP are centre-left, not 'extreme right'. On economic issues, they're to the left of the big 'left' party in the UK (Labour, who are really a more centrist party) and only really go to the right on immigration rather than social issues in general. You're confusing them with the BNP.

[anon1385]

On the economy UKIP are certainly right wing. They supported a flat tax for gods sake. More broadly their entire reason for existing is to promote deregulation of all kinds (financial, environmental, health and safety etc).

[ZeroGravitas]

I wouldn't call them centre-left, they're a bit of grab-bag of policies e.g. some member have been a bit libertarian (which can be socially "left" but economically "right" depending on particular issues). But Xenophobia is the biggest theme, see for yourself:

http://www.ukip.org/issues

[mickoforpington]

see www.theeuroprobe.org 2012-016 What is Left Wing, Right Wing and Centre in UK politics?