{"id":14996,"date":"2012-05-09T10:19:12","date_gmt":"2012-05-09T14:19:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=14996"},"modified":"2018-01-11T16:07:43","modified_gmt":"2018-01-11T21:07:43","slug":"misreading-the-european-electoral-tea-leaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/05\/09\/misreading-the-european-electoral-tea-leaves\/","title":{"rendered":"Misreading the European electoral tea leaves"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill<\/a> points out that there’s something lacking in the analyses of all the recent electoral upheavals in Europe:<\/p>\n

Great claims are being made in the wake of the local elections in Britain, the presidential elections in France, and the legislative elections in Greece. Britain\u2019s Labour Party may have secured the votes of just 12.5 per cent of the eligible electorate, but it came top in the local elections, and so we\u2019re told that \u2018Labour is back\u2019. The victories of Hollande in France (where he won 51.63 per cent of the vote to Nicolas Sarkozy\u2019s 48.37 per cent), and of SYRIZA in Greece (the anti-austerity, radical left coalition which won 16.78 per cent of the vote), are being talked up as a \u2018new dawn\u2019 for European social democracy. According to a Guardian<\/em> editorial, we have witnessed a \u2018stunning victory\u2026 for the left in Europe\u2019.<\/p>\n

These observers urgently need to take a reality check. Because in truth, the most striking thing about the recent elections in Europe has been the utter absence of any matters of doctrine, of principle, of ideological outlook. In England, France, Greece, Italy, no doctrinal matters whatsoever have been raised, far less contested. These elections are best seen, not as a new dawn for social democracy, but as an unfocused emotional reaction against things — against Sarkozy, austerity, Brussels. Actually, it\u2019s worse than that. Where once the left was concerned with creating a new reality, one based on systems and values quite distinct from those of traditionalists, today\u2019s emerging left is obsessed with avoiding reality, with hiding away from the harshness of economic life in 2012 and simply saying: \u2018Be gone!\u2019 The problem with the newly successful left movements is not just that they\u2019re attracting shallow protest votes, but that they\u2019re extraordinarily infantile, blinkered outfits.<\/p>\n

The only \u2018doctrine\u2019 uniting the various movements against austerity in modern Europe (both the left-wing and right-wing ones) is the doctrine of responsibility aversion, of shirking seriousness in favour of emotionalism. What the cheerleaders of these movements fail to realise is that being anti-austerity without positing an alternative route out of recession, without any serious proposals for stabilising economic life in Europe, is mere gesture politics. In fact it\u2019s an act of irresponsibility, of wilfulness, where the key aim is to insulate oneself and one\u2019s supporters from the harsh realities of our recessionary times rather than face up to those realities and potentially transform them. The new anti-austerity posturing, to quote an old communist, is an infantile disorder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Brendan O’Neill points out that there’s something lacking in the analyses of all the recent electoral upheavals in Europe: Great claims are being made in the wake of the local elections in Britain, the presidential elections in France, and the legislative elections in Greece. Britain\u2019s Labour Party may have secured the votes of just 12.5 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,62,1117,84,1526,339,28],"tags":[188,337,76],"class_list":["post-14996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-europe","category-france","category-government","category-greece","category-italy","category-media","tag-electionwatch","tag-eu","tag-socialism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-3TS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14996","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14996"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14997,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14996\/revisions\/14997"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}