Without leaders, the social democrats lost power and the direction – LA NACION (Argentina)

The left does not know how to reverse the decline that suffers from the crisis of 2008

MADRID.- The european socialists were one big happy family. Were followed, shared successes, and sat smiling for photos. Now look like those relatives who are reunited at the funeral ceremonies: they speak with nostalgia of the golden years as they wonder in secret who will be the next to fall.

The Spanish Pedro Sanchez joined the list a week ago. Tossed out by his peers, he lost control of the PSOE and left a party terrified before the dilemma of supporting a government of the conservative Mariano Rajoy or face mode dying other elections.

a Few days before the chiefs of the british Labour Party plotted to oust their leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Say that your program hard left the sentence to a long stint in the opposition. He challenged him to a duel and managed to ensure that the membership ratify it in the office. The two were wars without winners and they illustrate a phenomenon that is haunting Europe: the collapse of the social-democracy not found a background and put their leaders to the challenge to reinvent itself or die.

How to win back the majority when you break down the welfare State and the policies of adjustment become entrenched as a dogma? Are returning to the ideological purity that rescues Corbyn? Can you still defeat liberals and conservatives with a version attenuated their recipes? Or you need to search for unexplored ways?

“The social-democratic parties have not been able to formulate a serious alternative to austerity, and what they are paying,” says the political scientist Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca, professor of the University Carlos III of Madrid. The result is the growing disconnection between the leaders -that plays within the rules of the european system which he helped to found – and their voters -disappointed by the lack of response to their demands.

In this drift is diluted almost to vanishing Pasok Greek after to manage the economic debacle, in alliance with the conservatives. In less than 10 years rose from 38% to 6% of the votes, at the time that it emerged the radical left of Syriza.

it Is the mirror that scares the PSOE. In 2008 he had the support of 43% of the spaniards; Sánchez remained in the 22% three months ago, with the outraged Can his heels. The party never recovered from the fit dramatic set up by the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in 2010. The option is very likely that the PSOE validates now another turn of Rajoy nourishes the discourse of those who claim that conservatives and socialists turned out to be the same thing: instruments of financial power.

Enrico Letta, former premier Italian by the PD, believes that democracy is the target of a “time of revenge” against the policy. “Companies are looking for the culprits of a reality that will cause frustration. The conservative parties will find it easier to retain support. The moderate left is suffering with the irruption of parties determined to take advantage of this discontent,” he said this week at a conference in Madrid.

The debate extends to France. The socialism of president Francois Hollande sinks in the polls ahead of the elections of 2017. The National Front, the far-right Marine Le Pen, is already the first force among the working class.

Emmanuel Macron, a former minister of Economy, shook the board in April when he formed the movement is On the way!, with the that aims to dispute the power with a flexible structure, adapted to the times. Says that there is “neither left nor right”, praises groups antiestablishment as the M5E Italian and is presented as the reverse side of the socioliberal prime minister Manuel Valls.

The great turning of european socialism crystallized in the 90′s with the success of the Third Way, which had as its star the british Tony Blair. In an environment in which outstripping the working population industrial, the moderate left offered a liberal model with a social sensitivity. It was to regulate capitalism, not fight it. The financial crisis that shook the world from 2008 changed the cards. The Europe of unemployment, inequalities and the phobia of immigrants became a minefield for the social democrats.

“There is a failure of the story, combined with the emergence of a voter less ideological, loyalties uncertain, and that it expects solutions to the negative effects of globalization,” says Patrick Diamond, a political scientist from Queen Mary University of London. Added another shortfall: a lack of leaders of weight as they were in his day, Mitterrand, Felipe Gonzalez or Blair.

coalitions with conservatives have not worked. Blur the SPD in Germany, in free-fall, despite the bad time for chancellor Angela Merkel, and hit the SPÖ in Austria. In the two countries are experiencing a boom surprising to the extreme right, which fishing in the former voters of the social democrats. The closest thing to an exception successful is the Italian prime minister, the moderate Matteo Renzi. Even so, is staking his future on a constitutional referendum that is not sure of winning.

what Is that centrism tinged with populist the recipe to back to win? Is there that embrace the protest of Corbyn? What about the change of the skin which suggests Macron? The only certainty shared in that family accustomed to power is that if you do not find soon the answer awaits the imminent danger of irrelevance.