Politics is in crisis

Across Europe, the decline of the old centreleft and centre-right parties continues apace. Social democracy and conservatism, the twin pillars of the post-war European political settlement, are in retreat. In Spain, the hard-right Vox party won 10 per cent of the vote in Sunday’s elections, taking 24 seats in the lower house.

Support for Vox came mainly from voters deserting the traditional centre-right Popular Party, which has seen its backing almost halved from 33 per cent in 2016 to just 17 per cent. This has left the socialists as the largest party and likely to form a coalition with Podemos, a populist movement on the Left.

Each EU country that has staged elections in the past few years has seen the centre under pressure, whether the battering inflicted on the Social Democrats in Germany; or the rise of the antiimmigration nationalists in Sweden; or the coalition government formed by La Liga and Five Star in Italy; or even Emmanuel Macron’s En Marche party in France: they all testify to a seismic shift in European politics. Here, a Brexit party that has sprung out of nowhere threatens to supplant the Conservatives at the European parliament elections if they are contested next month.

In the meantime, the Tories are braced for a disaster at the local elections in England on Thursday. The hard Left has already captured the Labour Party and is dismantling the residual social democratic legacy left by Tony Blair. By the end of next month we could be without a functioning mainstream conservative party as well. This is a potential crisis without precedent, but our politicians have not woken up to how serious it is.