UnHerd: Can Corbyn learn from the Greek tragedy?

For me, however, there are positives to take away that have implications for the entire project of the global Left. First, Tsipras showed that with a clear narrative, a message of hope and some competent advisers, the far-Left’s project can work in government. The oligarchy, whose two-party system (Pasok and New Democracy) collapsed, expected Syriza to be amateurs: in fact they brought professionalism and openness to an endemically corrupt and chaotic state.

Second, by being radical in opposition, and refusing to give up radicalism even when forced into retreat, Syriza and the wider Greek Left defeated one of the most violent and open fascist threats in the European continent. Its conservative predecessors had tolerated Golden Dawn’s infiltration of the police, and murderous violence on the streets. Without a Left prepared to risk taking power, Greece would have degenerated into a battleground of populisms. [...]

But the political forces emerging out of the 20thcentury Left face two new challenges: the so-called Green Wave, which has swelled the electoral support of Green parties everywhere; and a growing electoral threat from far right or overtly racist parties, some of which are building support among the working class communities where the Left used to be strong. [...]

In future, Left-wing parties will need to look and sound like they care about the planet more than anything else – and the truth is, our tradition has not always done so. The closer you remain to the traditional working class communities which prospered during the carbon era, the harder it is to walk the walk when it comes to zero carbon.

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Jacobin Magazine: Syriza’s Failure Has Hurt Us All

Added to this, a closer analysis shows that the Syriza electorate in 2019 in fact bears little relation with the voters who first put it in government in 2015. Admittedly, given the lack of any credible alternative on the Left (in the broadest sense) of the political spectrum, it has not collapsed entirely. That’s the big difference with what happened to Pasok in 2012, after its own implementation of austerity measures. [...]

In generational terms, it has lost nearly half its support among younger voters (17 to 24 year-olds) but has shed only 4 percent backing among the over 65s. From an electorate polarized around wage-earners and the youth, it is now a party with a nearly uniform average score among most social strata and age classes (around 20 percent) and is ahead of New Democracy only among the unemployed. The “qualitative” profile of its electorate has undergone an even more dramatic change. A look at the choice Syriza voters made among its candidates for the European Parliament is instructive in this regard. [...]

Syriza’s electorate today looks less like the popular base of a left-wing party than the “de-ideologized” clientelist support of a party of government. It is moreover obvious that it is in part the heir to the “social-liberal” Pasok of the 2000s. Syriza came first in just four constituencies nationally, and of these, three were among PASOK’s historic symbolic bastions: two in Crete and one in the northwestern Peloponnese, around the city of Patras, cradle of that party’s long-dominant Papandreou family.

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Social Europe: Parti Socialiste: Squeezed Between Macron And Mélenchon

The unions and parties of the left, were never historically, if you like, working together. There was always a clear separation. There’s even a charter, the Charter of Amiens, signed in 1906, an old text which really sets up this dramatic separation between the two sides, because simply, the unions did not trust the Socialist Party, which they considered far too parliamentarian, bourgeois, etc. [...]

Well, the strengths of the Socialist Party, and that’s not very original because that’s something you will find across the board in Europe with all social democratic parties is that, if you like, the Socialist Party, at least when it was electorally winning elections, was a party which was able to appeal to different constituencies, in terms of class, in terms of gender, in terms of age and generations, in terms of ethnicity. [...]

Any scholar, any student, of populism should look at France very carefully, because it’s really become the new battleground for all forms of populism, left-wing, right-wing, far right-wing, and you might argue to some extent, a centrist type of populism with Macron. In the end, all the ingredients, all the characteristics of populism are met by Macron.

One leader, fairly charismatic, trying to establish a direct relationship with people, with the nation, talk about recapturing sovereignty, or national, or popular democracy in some cases. All that is part of the usual populist narrative. It’s very strong, very buoyant in French politics. [...]

Now, it seems that the debate on Europe, it’s not a straightforward one. You have people still supporting Europe, but you also have, and I’m not talking here about extremes, left and right, you have a fairly mainstream opposition to Europe, not the idea or the concept of Europe. I think still the majority of the French people are attached to it, but to the institutions and the policies implemented on behalf of the EU. There’s a rising opposition to that. It’s becoming mainstream.

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Social Europe: Pasok: New Leadership, New Discourse To Revive Greek Social Democracy

Even worse, in the 2015 elections when Syriza, the leftist party, won power there were two elections in six months. PASOK did very badly: 4.6% in the first and 6.28% in the latest elections. There we had the really downward route. From 44% we came back first to 13%, which incidentally is the start of the rot.

Now PASOK scores in single digits. It even went down to less than 5%. At that point, it was the seventh party in the Greek Parliament after always being the first or the second. Now it’s the fourth party in the Greek Parliament with 6.28%. It’s been a steep decline electorally since 2012.

I think that the main reasons for the decline have to do with two linked factors. The first is that PASOK has been for 30 years almost continuously in power or in a position to be the first or second party, so very much involved in decision making in Greece. This has taken its toll. But most importantly, this has taken the biggest psychological toll. Then it got translated into electoral terms with the advent of the crisis because for good or less good reasons it was perceived as responsible. Not immediately because it must be noted that the crisis in Greece only really began in 2009. [...]

It’s not only the personalities that are going to change. The main thing is that in light of the crisis, in light of the more general problem also of the European social democracy, there’s a big effort to change the propositions, the discourse, the main attributes of these parties. That’s the way the reconnection is perceived. Also through, as you know, the classical social democratic way of winning mayoralities in some towns, by using local connections, by trying to be more vocal in parliament etc. But the main thing is the new leadership, the new image of rejuvenation of the party and the new political discourse of this party.

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