Chapter 1 - Introduction

Summary

“Social democracy is at a dead end, but is by no means dead”

Ingo Schmidt

“Europe’s centre-left progressive politics is in crisis, maybe in its most existentialist crisis since the foundation of the social democratic movement in the late nineteenth century”

Christian Schweiger

“The unique place of the social democrat to be the champion of the people is over and is never coming back”

Neal Lawson

“Labour is becoming a toxic brand. It is perceived by voters as a party that supports an ‘open door’ approach to immigration, lacks credibility on the economy, and is a ‘soft touch’ on welfare spending”

Jon Cruddas

“People are fed up”

Jeremy Corbyn

If further proof were still needed of the fact that one swallow does not make a summer, try comparing the performance of the Labour Party in the UK’s June 2017 general election with that of the French Socialist Party in the elections for the National Assembly, the first round of which occurred just three days after the UK election. In both cases, centre-left parties went down to expected defeat: but whereas in the British election, the Labour Party’s unexpectedly strong performance cost the Conservative Government its majority, in the French one the Socialist Party and its allies, in government as recently as the previous month, lost all but 44 of their 284 seats. Given that the French performance was by far the more typical of the two, given recent results in both American and European elections, it remains the case, therefore, that – the results of the 2017 UK general election notwithstanding – these are not great days for centre-left parties in developed capitalisms. And a hundred years out from the Russian Revolution, they are even worse days for the revolutionary Left. Indeed, it is quite difficult to think of a recent time in which left-wing prospects of either a moderate or a more radical kind have looked so problematic. Which means, among other things, that reflecting on the future of the Left against such a background is likely to be neither an easy nor a pleasing affair; but then, precisely because it is not, the need for such a reflection has arguably never been greater.