The center-left has been collapsing across the western world for about a decade now. In many European nation, the center-left has largely ceased to exist. It even has a name: Pasokification.





Until now this collapse has been to the advantage of the center-right, although it has increasingly helped both the far-right and far-left. In the short-run, centrists that often voted for the neoliberal center-left simply moved to the neoliberal center-right.

This trend may be about to end.



After the center left suffered a working-class revolt against globalization and austerity, the mainstream pro-European center right is being shredded by voters demanding tougher action against migration. Battered by a growing assault from the Euroskeptic populist right, moderate conservatives from Berlin to Paris and Rome are torn between trying to outbid their tormentors with anti-immigration rhetoric or sticking to a more liberal, pro-European message.

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In Italy, veteran center-right billionaire Silvio Berlusconi thought he could tame the extreme right by forging an electoral alliance with Matteo Salvini’s anti-immigrant League and the post-fascist Brothers of Italy. Instead, his Forza Italia party was outpolled, then sidelined as Salvini joined forces with the anti-establishment 5Star Movement to form a government of populists. In Germany, Merkel’s Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), fears losing its absolute majority in Bavaria in October due to the rise of the far-right, anti-immigration Alternative for Germany. German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, the CSU’s leader, is demanding that border police refuse entry to asylum seekers registered in another EU country.

Much of the focus has been on Merkel's increasingly fragile coalition in Germany.

However, it is happening in all the major nations of Europe.

In France, Macron's neoliberal austerity policies have gotten so unpopular that after France won the World Cup, Macron's ratings actually fell.

Now the mainstream conservatives are pushing for a no-confidence vote, which could trigger a new election.



France’s conservative Les Républicains party on Tuesday announced plans for a motion of no confidence in Emmanuel Macron’s government, which has been under pressure since footage emerged of the president’s top bodyguard assaulting a protester. “The government has failed,” Christian Jacob, leader of the Les Républicains’ lawmakers in the lower house of parliament, told reporters. “There is a real drift at the highest levels of the government and the government allowed this [to happen], even though it was responsible for stopping it — and we want an explanation.”

The leftist France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party is best positioned to take on Macron.

In Britain, the center-right Tories are threatening to implode over the failure to properly handle Brexit. In response, PM Theresa May will be taking personal charge of the Brexit negotiations herself.

This in no way inspires confidence.



Prime Minister Theresa May’s plans to leave the European Union are overwhelmingly opposed by the British public and more than a third of voters would support a new right-wing political party committed to quitting the bloc, according to a new poll.

If/When the Tory government collapses, the newly socialist UK Labour Party is well positioned to sweep to victory.



Labour has opened up its biggest lead over the Tories since the general election, according to polls carried out after the prime minister unveiled her Brexit plans. The fallout from the controversial Chequers summit appears to have caused a drop in support for the Conservatives and a revival of fortunes for UKIP. A poll carried out for the Observer by Opinium on 10 July puts the Tories on 36 per cent, a fall of six points since June, while Labour remained on 40 per cent. UKIP rose by five points to eight per cent. If the results were repeated at a general election, the Tories would lose around 50 seats and Labour would be the largest party, albeit 26 seats short of a majority.

For now the GOP is holding together, but I expect the right to turn on each other the moment the economy goes south. Their implosion might be even more spectacular than the Democrats implosion under Obama.