Centre-left has lost its appeal to workers

The populist Left, like Corbyn, or populist Right are more attuned to fears about jobs and migrants

Across Europe social democracy is in freefall. The German SPD has slumped to 16 per cent in the polls – only three points above the Greens and the populist Right Alternative for Germany (AFD). In the general election last September, the centre-left managed 21 per cent, far below the 41 per cent that it used to poll in its heyday in the late 1990s.

The collapse of western social democracy is one of the most remarkable developments of modern politics. Its adherents face not a strategic but an existential question: can they survive as an electorally competitive mainstream project?

An ideological project founded to represent and advance the interests of workers has suffered humiliating losses. In Austria last year the social democrats were turfed out of power and reduced to their lowest number of seats in the post-war era.

In France, the socialists were almost completely wiped off the map, while in the Netherlands the Labour Party tumbled to just six per cent of the vote. Next month in Italy the centre-left looks set to lose power – it has consistently trailed the openly populist Five Star movement, founded a few years ago by a former comedian.

Why is this happening? First, since the late 1990s social democrats have been squeezed by the rise of the populist Right, which has won over large numbers of blue-collar manual workers and low-skilled service sector employees who could once be relied upon to vote for the Left. This is largely because of immigration, rapid ethnic change and the shift toward European integration. Workers feel under threat from these wider shifts but social democrats have had virtually nothing to say about them.

This began long before the financial crisis. In France by the mid-1990s, Jean-marie Le Pen, a Right-wing populist, had become the most successful politician among the working-class – a feat his daughter, Marine, emulated last year when the only group to give her majority support in the second round against Emmanuel Macron were workers. A decade later in the UK, Nigel Farage’s Ukip found the same welcome in historic Labour areas. Indeed, many scholars in Europe now refer to the populist Right as the ‘‘new workingclass revolt’’.

Second, against the backdrop of the financial crisis, austerity and the intervention into national democratic life of non-elected ‘‘foreign’’ institutions like the International Monetary Fund, social democrats have also lost voters to the populist Left, like Jeremy Corbyn in Britain or Podemos in Spain. While the populist Right argues that social democracy presided over mass immigration, the populist Left argues that it failed to tackle rampant inequality and economic injustice.

While the former won over large numbers of workers with socially conservative views on immigration, the latter has reached out to both workers and the middle-class who prioritise their worries about economic injustice and generally feel at ease with immigration and European integration. This has opened up a second line of attack against social democrats, who many on the radical Left view as having a signed a pact with the capitalist devil.

Third, social democrats are being hurt by former non-voters coming back into the political arena, fuelling political volatility and fragmentation. One reason why people did not see Brexit coming was because around two million mainly working-class people who did not usually vote turned up at the polling stations, and most backed Brexit.

The breakthrough of the AFD in Germany last year was mainly the result of support from previous non-voters. They are chiefly worried about identity issues and for the first time in a long time they feel they have a voice in the political conversation, one that comes through populist rebellions, not social democrats.

Social democracy is now fighting for its very survival. There is no guarantee that ideological traditions must endure forever. But what is clear is that unless the centre-left can find its way back we are in for a period of politics that looks set to become more volatile, fragmented and chaotic.