GÜNTER GRASS, an enthusiast for the centre-left ideas of Willy Brandt, chronicled the slow post-war rise of social democracy in an elegant memoir called “From the Diary of a Snail”. The creature struck the writer as an apt metaphor for that school of thought. It was unhurried but purposeful: a “politics of small progressions”, defying setbacks and promising moderation. It avoided both the reactionary tendencies of many conservative movements, and the revolutionary posturing of the far left.

But the snail is stuck. In recent years, governments of the centre-right have eclipsed their rivals in elections across Europe. Strikingly, parties of the centre-left have failed to capitalise on the most profound crisis in capitalism brought by the financial crash of 2007-08. Far from seizing the opportunity to win an argument for greater state regulation and a less intense embrace of free-markets, the left has been swept out of power in many places and found it hard to return.

In Germany Angela Merkel, the Christian Democratic chancellor, has been in office since 2005. In Britain a Tory-led government has held power since 2010, and the twice-defeated Labour Party is preoccupied by infighting about its future, with the most dynamic candidate for its leadership coming from the far left. In France the Socialist president, François Hollande, has dismal ratings and little chance of re-election.

Even Scandinavia, a byword for the moderate left in the 1970s and 1980s, has lost the habit. True, Sweden reverted to Social Democrat-led government in late 2014, after eight years of centre-right rule. But the new administration is following a budget plan drawn up by its predecessors. Norway’s conservatives put an end to 12 years of left-wing coalitions in 2013, and Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s centre-left leader, lost power in June. The former eastern bloc hosts some moderately successful parties with state-socialist leanings (in the Czech Republic, notably), but elsewhere, nationalists and conservatives have benefited from a post-crash mood of uncertainty.

Of course, personalities matter, and just now there are few commanding ones on the centre-left. Europe’s memorable leaders of a social-democratic hue, from Brandt and Helmut Schmidt in Germany, to Bruno Kreisky in Austria, Gro Harlem Bruntland in Norway and even Tony Blair, have been confident sorts, not just purveyors of consensus. In today’s rather dull landscape, Sigmar Gabriel, leader of Germany’s Social Democrats and vice-chancellor in a grand coalition with Mrs Merkel, stands out as a lively character but this has yet to boost his party’s chances of taking power in Germany.

Human factors aside, some deeper problems have afflicted the social democrats. One is an anti-incumbent backlash. The centre-left was widely in power when the crisis struck: in Britain, Greece, Portugal and Spain. Voters lashed out at those in charge, in no mood for excuses. This impatience helps explain a couple of exceptions. Italians, tolerant of Silvio Berlusconi’s whimsical ways, turned left when the Democratic Party found a plausible leader in Matteo Renzi. He now cuts a lonely figure on a European stage where economic dramas have their endings scripted by Germans of the centre-right. And Mrs Merkel, incumbent during the crisis, survived because the German recession was short, and then established herself as Europe’s foremost leader: tough on euro-zone debtors yet able to hold the European project together.

For all the rows about austerity, preaching it sounded more reasonable to voters than Keynesian wizardry. Electorates may also have concluded that, if cuts had to be made, they were better entrusted to parties in favour of a less bloated state sector to start with. Social democrats’ reliance on high public spending to bring about social transformations lacked credibility at a time when markets were dumping the bonds of highly indebted states. More galling has been the propensity of some centre-right governments to steal the left’s policies, like boosting minimum wages in Germany and Britain, or the British Tories’ embrace of gay marriage. Since the fall of Soviet Communism, mainstream parties of left and right have been threatened with fragmentation. But the centre-left has suffered more, afflicted by the shrinking of the industrial working class and falling trade-union membership.

Old dogs, new tricks

A newer problem, aggravated by the crisis, has been the rise of populist, anti-establishment challengers. Greece’s once-mighty PASOK was nearly flattened by flamboyant Syriza; Spain’s Socialists have lost some ground to anti-austerity Podemos. Even UKIP, Britain’s anti-EU party, originally home to discontented Tories, now draws support from former Labour voters. Matthew Taylor, a former aide to Tony Blair, the last centre-left leader elected in Britain, says insurgent movements can claim to be more in touch with ordinary folk—marginalising older parties that once thrived on representing the masses. The newcomers, Mr Taylor reckons, are more organisationally inventive, whereas traditional parties on the left are tethered to conventions and hierarchies.

Anti-immigration sentiment has proved invidious for parties caught between the embrace of diversity and the protectionist instincts of many workers. The self-image of social democrats as generous and open-hearted sorts has turned into a liability.

Fortunes shift: a decade ago, people were reading a tract on the “Strange Death of Tory England”. This proved a trifle premature. But social democrats face a long road back. Franz Walter, a political historian at Göttingen University, notes that Germany’s Social Democrats have been an influential force for over 150 years, but have held power for just over 30. With their gradualist ethos and pursuit of distant goals, they may be happier winding a trail to power than wielding it. Social democrats, Mr Walter sighs, “are never happier than when dreaming of a better future”. And rather often these days, someone else is busy forging it.