For the last decade immigration has rated high in opinion polls across Europe as one of the issues voters care most about. In addition, since 9/11, and the emergence of the spectre of Islamic extremism, concerns about the legitimacy of ‘multiculturalism’ have grown, though the term itself means different things to different people.
No one should underestimate the political salience of this bundle of issues for social democracy. The centre-left has lost electoral ground in many European countries to populist parties who have successfully played on ordinary people’s fears and anxieties about identity, culture and migration.
Research has shown that the European centre-left’s response has been, at best, muddled. It has ranged from ignoring the issue and talking about something else, to tackling populism head-on with principled and passionate arguments.
Yet, worrying trends continue to set in across the continent, not least that parties campaigning on populist platforms are predicted to do well in upcoming elections in France, Finland and Denmark. And these strong performances would add to the consolidated positions such parties already occupy in the Netherlands, Austria, Hungary, Italy, Slovakia, Belgium, and Norway. Even Sweden’s social democrats, who, along with the other mainstream parties adopted the evasive approach in last year’s election, have suffered a haemorrhage of voters to the far-right.
Moreover, this political threat is taking on an increasingly sophisticated form as populist parties triangulate onto values traditionally associated with the left. In Finland, the True Finns made a significant electoral breakthrough in the elections earlier last month. They have combined a critique of multiculturalism with a potent mix of economic populism and anger at the euro-crisis bailouts. Likewise, in France, Marine Le Pen, who succeeded her father Jean-Marie as leader of the National Front at the start of the year, has adopted left-leaning socioeconomic rhetoric, while claiming, somewhat improbably, to be on the side of Jews, gays and secularists in protecting western values of liberty, toleration and gender equality. Her party is now pushing 20 per cent in the polls as she weaves this convenient veil for her father’s blunt prejudice.
This is not a new phenomenon. Before his assassination in 2002 Holland’s Pim Fortuyn was labelled a ‘postmodern populist’ for his fusion of leftwing and rightwing ideas. And today, of course, Geert Wilders has adopted a similar blend and props up the government with his party’s 15.5 per cent vote share in last year’s general election. Yet the implication is that the upfront removal of fascist and racist narratives could further boost the appeal of populist parties in the eyes of the electorate. This worry was recently highlighted in Britain by Searchlight in its report, Fear and Hope.
Disentangling this complicated bundle of issues is not easy. The figureheads of modern conservatism, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and David Cameron, may score cheap points by lining up to denounce the politics of multiculturalism, but what is the social democratic response?
At Policy Network, as part of our Amsterdam Process of reflection on how European social democracy can be revitalised, we held an expert seminar in Berlin, the papers for which we have published as Exploring the Cultural Challenges to Social Democracy. This Europe-wide gathering on anti-migration populism, identity and community demonstrated that, within the left, the debate about the root causes of sociocultural anxiety is far from straightforward. It creates tensions both between the left’s electoral constituencies and within parties’ political and policymaking circles.
However, the reactions and standpoints can roughly be grouped into three approaches:
First, social democrats need to engage in a process of reflection relating to their cultural raison d’etre and basic values positions in a world of globalisation, migration and individualisation. The centre-left’s current positioning on sociocultural issues is out of kilter with the views of the electorate at large, necessitating strategic and ideological revisionism.
Second, social democrats must not throw the baby out with the bath water. Diversity, if properly linked to key orientations of social democracy, can be a powerful force for European societies, both socially and economically. The left should not be seeking to emulate positions it has traditionally contested.
Third, social democrats have to look at creative new ways to strengthen common bonds and common life in the 21st century. Rather than getting tangled up in diversity, the emphasis should be on bonding and bridging solutions to economic insecurity and loss of status.
Some have spoken of ‘the left’s civil war’ and depict a value and lifestyle split going through the heart of European social democracy. ‘Cosmopolitans’, who are better placed to prosper from globalisation through educational attainment and status, are pitted against more traditionally orientated ‘communitarians’ in working-class and lower middle-class areas, who disproportionately do not benefit, both economically and culturally. The fault lines run through attitudes and approaches to multiculturalism, migration, national identity, values and culture.
However, this debate muddies the waters. Labour and its European sister parties will not find the answer on one side of the divide as opposed to the other. Rather they need to forge a new synthesis between these different policy and political standpoints. A good starting point is to recall Roy Jenkins’ speech to the National Committee for Commonwealth Immigrants in London in 1966. He defined integration ‘not as a flattening process of assimilation but as equal opportunity, accompanied by cultural diversity, in an atmosphere of mutual tolerance’. This is a sentiment and guiding principle which we would do well to remember and hold close.