‘The Left is in meltdown all over Europe’
12th May 2011
The draining away of working-class support isn’t a problem confined to the Labour Party. Left-wing parties all over Europe are facing similar difficulties. Labour was punished by the British electorate last year, polling its lowest share of the vote since 1983, but not as severely as the Social Democrats were by the Swedes, polling their lowest share of the vote since universal suffrage was introduced in 1921. This was the first time in the Social Democrats’ history that it lost two elections in a row. Only 22 per cent of those Swedes in work voted Social Democrat in 2010, a number that fell to 13 per cent in the Stockholm region.
On the face of it, mass immigration has been the undoing of leftwing political parties across Europe since it erodes the shared values that are an essential prerequisite of a well-funded welfare state. Why should indigenous, working populations support the high levels of taxation necessary to sustain generous welfare payments if the beneficiaries are people unlike themselves? If they can’t look at a benefit recipient and think, “There, but for the grace of God, go I”, why should they continue to pay such high taxes? This problem was spelt out by David Willetts a few years ago:
May 13th, 2011 at 11:56
It seems to me that the Left believes that actions have no consequences, and therefore outcomes are determined by outside factors. If that’s the case and they can control those factors, then they can direct things to get the outcomes they desire. Of course, there’s a lot of arrogance in that mindset, specifically the “Just do what we tell you, we’re smarter/better/more enlightened than you are, you couldn’t possibly hope to understand.”