Sydney Morning Herald Lessons from Europe's political earthquake Comment (editorial) May 27, 2014 Anyone surprised by the political earthquake in western Europe has not been paying attention. The confluence of economic stagnation, loose immigration and constrictive monetary union has driven an inevitable rise of nativism and nationalism as people revolt against what they see as the occupation of their countries by a bureaucratic class operating above democracy. The elections for the European Parliament this week gave a pan-European platform for a revolt against pan-European ideology. Millions of people want their countries back. They do not want bureaucrats in Brussels running their lives. Another schism has opened between the indebted south of Europe and the debt-holding north. A third schism has opened up between the European Monetary Union advocates and those who think the euro has become an economic straitjacket. Yet another schism exists between Europe’s rapidly growing Muslim population and anti-Muslim nativists, especially working-class Christians. That is too many schisms for comfort. When you put them all together in a Europe-wide election, you get a Euroquake. The results for the 28-nation European Parliament elections showed a vote of no-confidence across numerous electorates for traditional political parties and traditional centrism. In the most traumatised states, the centre did not hold. Although the 751-seat European Union legislature will see centre parties holding a majority, the number of Eurosceptics inside the new Parliament will double to about 180.
The most dramatic outcomes of these elections have been seismic. In Britain, the UK Independence Party, which wants Britain out of the EU, topped the poll with 28 per cent of the vote, ahead of Labour’s 25.7 per cent and the Conservatives’ poor 24.5 per cent. Prime Minister David Cameron has promised a referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU in 2017. Similarly seismic was the result in France, where the anti-Muslim, anti-Euro National Front humiliated President Francois Hollande’s ruling Socialist Party by topping the vote with 25 per cent, ahead of the conservative UMP’s 21 per cent, with the Socialists wallowing a distant third on 14.5 per cent. The leader of the National Front, Marine Le Pen, summed up the sentiment of the insurrection: ''This is a massive rejection of the EU. What is happening in France prefigures what will happen in all European countries, the return of the nation.'' Most of the parties of revolt want the euro dead. They want the European Monetary Union dissolved. They want the European Union to function as a free-trade zone, not a federal state. They want the EU bureaucracy to cost less, intrude less and stop behaving like an unelected government. And they want more secure borders. In Greece, the most economically ravaged state in Europe, radical parties of the left and right won a combined 40 per cent of the vote. In prosperous Denmark, the anti-immigration People's Party topped the poll. In Hungary, the far-right Jobbik party finished second. In the Netherlands, the anti-Islam, Eurosceptic Dutch Freedom Party, led by Geert Wilders, finished joint second. In Spain, which has been in a depression, the Popular Party and the Socialist Party saw the combined 80 per cent dominance of the vote they had in 2009 sink to a new low of 49 per cent. The recently-formed Podemos party, created out of protest against Spain’s austerity measures, took five seats from the Socialists. There are lessons for Australia, despite our very different circumstances. The trajectory of debt and deficit under Labor, which put Australia on a path to match European levels in 10 years, showed how important it is to arrest the trend early. The visceral reaction of the Australian public to boat people issue also showed the power of border sovereignty as a national issue. Even though Australia has not suffered from the debt-driven stagnation and high unemployment across much of Europe, the volatility of the Labor Party over the past four years, and the tepid enthusiasm for the Coalition alternative, has seen an outbreak of populist rejection of the major parties, exploited by Clive Palmer and his Palmer United Party. This small taste of European-style revolt has already made the Senate an unpredictable and precarious place for the federal budget and all that lies beyond. -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <[email protected]> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
