What brought you into the Social Democratic Party?
The region I come from has a lot of heavy industry and high unemployment. I wanted to help the region to contribute to the country’s future – not to be brought to its knees, but to enable people to make the best use of their talents and industriousness. It’s hard to imagine another party that would enable me to fulfill that. I entered politics because of my social awareness and to help ordinary people.
There are many intellectual traditions in European social democracy. With which do you most identify?
I feel the closest toward the social democratic traditions in Germany and Austria. We feel close in terms of mindset and there is quite a cultural affinity. The German SPD have an enormous intellectual output, with access to people like Jurgen Habermas and Peter Sloterdijk, and many other thinkers. There is a great deal of reflection there on the current state of society. But I am inspired by all our sister parties, with their mass of experience, parties like the Labour party, the Parti Socialiste and the Swedish Social Democrats. I was delighted to have been able to go to the Labour party conference in Manchester last year, and am sorry to have missed conference this year. I am very interested in the final verdict on the ‘Third Way’ approach of New Labour. We’re going through an examination of our policies, and we’re interested in the experience of all of our partners in Europe.
The Czech social democrats have had to work within a very hostile media environment, and has yet governed for eight out of the last 12 years. How have you been able to overcome this media hostility?
We communicate directly with voters. This is the foundation of our campaigning work, going round the country, from town to town talking directly to people, presenting our case. Our politics is all about that face-to-face contact, building trust with voters. No other party does anything like this. We are not now in government – but our biggest problem has been a lack of potential coalition partners. Our natural partners lost out to small, new rightwing parties.
Centre-left parties have fared badly all over Europe in the past two years. How do you interpret this failure?
In a way this has its logic – after all, this happened with the left in the 1930s. It seems that social democratic parties do well in times of prosperity. The right has it much easier with the rhetoric of sacrifice, the language of ‘belt-tightening’ is very much in its ideology. Their story, of the need to cut back when times are hard, is one that sounds credible. The idea that the crisis was created by avaricious bankers is harder to get across to the person in the street than the idea that we’re paying the price for a bloated welfare state.
But I also see a great opportunity; our values are exactly the values that society must surely return to. I believe we will return to power across Europe, but the big question is what we do with that power, how we prepare ourselves. And I am not afraid for the future of the Czech Social Democrats. We are really very strong – we have thousands of councillors, we’re the largest party in parliament and we now have an overall majority in the Senate. We’re not in government, but I believe that will come in time, and then we’ll need to articulate a vision for this country – something the current government have not been able to do.
What are your fears in the current political climate?
I fear a polarisation of society, where the majority suffer, and a small minority get rich. This can lead to social tension, and the rise of populist politicians, which we’re seeing across the continent. Our role as social democrats is to resist such radicalisation, to support the values contemporary Europe is built on. We must not allow ourselves to be swayed, even though there might be temptations to go along with the mood.
Lubomír Zaorálek is vice-chair of the Czech Social Democratic Party and shadow foreign minister and is deputy speaker of the Czech parliament.
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