Shuffling Right?

As we look back on an ending decade, a couple of commentators make the case that overall, it was a story of the left is dying, and the right rising. Witness the recent historic election in the UK. Following Brexit, following the surprise election of Trump.

And in Europe. When I was young, the contest was always between the right and the socialists or even communists. The communists were a significant factor in Italy and France. Europe was seen as well to the left of the US, and leftists generally saw America as simply lagging behind the parade.

This no longer seems to be clearly so. The social democrats are slipping to third-party status or worse in Germany, the socialists are down to sixth in France. The contest now is often between the centre or centre-right and a party farther right. This means that policies in general are being pulled rightward rather than leftward in the civic debate.

Back in America, Trump’s breakthrough into the upper Midwest last election, like the Tories’ success in the north of England, seems portentous. The old industrial working class is moving over to the right.

There is less movement visible in Canada; but it seems significant that a right-wing party recently won in Quebec, where all major parties had been left-wing for the past fifty years. It all speaks well in strategic terms for Maxime Bernier’s notion of launching a new right-wing alternative. If Canada has not been following the same trajectory as the UK, US, and Europe recently, it may be for lack of electoral alternatives.

Michael Knowles makes the case that in the last ten years, the right in the US has won elections pretty consistently. If you track the number of seats changing hands at the federal and state level combined, there seems to be a definite and strong shift right. What look like continuing major defeats in the culture wars have come, he points out, at the hands of judges. They have been imposed by courts; even if, after the fact, the rest of the country seems to have accepted them. If we are seeing a revolt of the general population against the views of the elites, the courts are going to be a lagging indicator: here we get the views of a small professional elite.

And even this is likely to change, as Trump gets to appoint more judges.