FRANCE: Restless voters await a hero

To make their point that France’s mainstream parties are both as inept as each other, the Front National has taken to calling its rivals the UMPS, an amalgam of the acronyms for the opposition centre-right Union pour un Mouvement Populaire and the ruling Parti Socialiste.

The FN’s populist anti-immigration message is broadly similar to that of Nigel Farage’s Ukip. And as with Ukip in Britain, the FN is benefiting not just from disillusionment caused by the economic crisis but from profound disillusion with the two principal parties, which have formerly had a monopoly on power.

On the left, President François Hollande and his governing Socialist party are facing criticism from without and within. Economic liberals believe the administration has not and will not carry out necessary structural reforms to create jobs, boost growth and cut public spending. It comes as a surprise to no one that France’s deficit is in contravention of European commission rules. This was the case even under the centre-right Nicolas Sarkozy, who did little to reduce it.

The commission has now lost patience and Hollande, the man currently in charge, is being held responsible. The president appears to be floundering. At one point France thought it wanted a monsieur normal, and Hollande fitted the bill. Now the country is giving the impression it wants a hero and a saviour and that Hollande is too ordinary. There is also a feeling among many PS supporters that Hollande won the presidency by paying lip service to a socialist programme, only to turn into a social democrat in office. Some suspect this was a deliberate and less than honest move.

On the right, the opposition UMP has been meandering from disaster to disaster. The party has been without a clear leader since shortly after Sarkozy lost his 2012 re-election battle. His prime minister, the anglophile François Fillon, and the young rightwing UMP leader Jean-François Copé went head to head over who should run the party, the political heir to the movement founded by Charles de Gaulle after the second world war. The subsequent election was indecisive, and accusations of vote-rigging turned into a wider slanging match. Sarkozy stepped back into the frame a few weeks ago, but he has several rivals in a party primary for new leader and candidate in 2017.

On top of this the UMP – and Sarkozy – are mired in various scandals involving campaign expenses.

In this turbulent context, the rise of the FN smacks of the adage about the one-eyed man being king in the land of the blind. FN leader Marine le Pen is appealing to what Saïd Mahrane in Le Point magazine describes as “globalisation’s losers” – a large tranche of the population.

Madani Cheurfa, a researcher at the respected university thinktank Cevipof, likens the current party political situation in France to that of the twilight years of the Conservative party’s 18-year reign in Britain – the seven years between 1990 and 1997 under John Major, when the Labour party was simultaneously struggling to find its way.

“It is like France is looking back to the 1980s and 1990s and not to the future,” Cheurfa says, adding that scandals, inaction and in-party squabbling are adding to the French public’s perception – and the FN’s central argument – that the traditional politicians, many of them graduates from a small group of Grandes Ecoles, are “all the same”.

Kim Willsher Paris

Protesters from the Five Star Movement wave portraits of Beppe Grillo at a demonstration in Rome. Photograph: Simona Granati/Simona Granati/Demotix/Corbis

ITALY: Grillo waits in the wings

Ever since Matteo Renzi became Italy’s youngest prime minister at 39 in February, styling himself as a political outsider and promising to prise open Italy’s closed-shop economy, commentators have been writing off Italy’s other great anti-establishment figure, Beppe Grillo.

The former standup comedian, who rose to fame with rants at the establishment and a wildly popular blog, won a staggering 8.7 million votes in the 2013 elections to Italy’s lower house, running the centre-left Democratic Party a close second. But since then, the MPs and senators who flooded into parliament to represent him have been criticised for refusing to team up with other parties on key legislation. The few that did risked expulsion from his Five Star Movement.

“There are continual divisions within Grillo’s parliamentary group – it’s pretty chaotic,” says Roberto D’Alimonte, a professor of politics at LUISS university in Rome. “They are still waiting for Renzi to fail so they can inherit whatever’s left after the disaster.”

Furthermore, Grillo’s anti-Europe rhetoric is now being matched by a resurgence of the rightwing Northern League. After being decimated by scandals, this party has dropped its focus on autonomy for northern Italy, and charismatic new leader Matteo Salvini is now picking up votes nationally with attacks on immigration.

So why, despite the setbacks, are Grillo’s poll ratings still healthy? A survey of voting intentions this month put his movement at 19.9%, more than double the Northern League’s, albeit trailing Renzi’s 38.9%.

“Until the economy turns around, Grillo will win votes – there is so much frustration in Italy,” says D’Alimonte, who adds that Grillo’s raging against corruption continues to strike a chord. “We still read every day about scandalous misuses of public funds.”

Silvio Berlusconi’s decline is also helping the tousle-haired comedian, says D’Alimonte. “Grillo cuts across the political spectrum, taking votes from the left and the right, just like Ukip.”

Tom Kington Rome

Syriza posters protesting about austerity on a wall in Athens. Photograph: Dimitris Messinis/AP

GREECE: Even the wealthy turn to the left

Greece, perhaps more than any country in Europe, epitomises the rise of insurgents on the left and right.

The nation on the frontline of the euro crisis was the first to dispense with mainstream politicians, its electorate rejecting parties associated with the corrupt practices blamed for Athens’s near economic death. In place of centre-left Pasok and centre-right New Democracy, the parties that had alternated in power for 40 years, came Syriza, a cohort of radical leftists, and the menacing face of neofascism in the form of Golden Dawn.

“We can change the course of Europe, stop catastrophic austerity, and bring back democracy and social justice,” Syriza’s leader, Alexis Tsipras, told attendees at the foundation ceremony in Madrid on Saturday of Spain’s Podemos party (see below). “Every day that passes, the people’s movement in our countries [of the south] is becoming the terrifying enemy of neoliberal German hegemony.”

Opinion polls would support that view. Before the crash, Pasok and New Democracy represented 83% of the popular vote. Last month, support for Syriza, which accounted for less than 5% before the crisis, had soared to 35%, more than the combined total of the conservatives and socialists.

In recent weeks, surveys have shown the group with a lead of up to 12 points over New Democracy, although whether the party would win enough votes to muster a parliamentary majority is still debatable.

Like Golden Dawn (which did surprisingly well in May’s European elections but whose ratings have since dropped), Syriza has made a concerted effort to moderate its rhetoric in an attempt to broaden its support base. Instead of tearing up Greece’s onerous EU-IMF sponsored bailout programme, the party now speaks of “renegotiating” the deal.

In September the telegenic Tsipras, an avowed atheist, made a trip to Rome to hold talks with Pope Francis. This month, he will be calling in on the European Commission’s new president, Jean-Claude Juncker, in what some believe will be a bid to mend fences despite threatening to revoke most of the unpopular reforms implemented since the outbreak of the crisis. He has already held “constructive discussions” with the president of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi.

The failed bid by prime minister Antonis Samaras to throw off the yoke of international supervision by prematurely exiting the bailout programme has also vitiated his fragile government’s appeal.

Euphoria over EU figures showing Greece finally emerging from its record recession (albeit with low growth rates) was dented on Friday by the decision of a prominent conservative MP to resign in what was seen as the start of an abandonment of the ruling coalition by pro-business circles. Instead, leading members of Greece’s elite (starting with Gianna Angelopoulous, who organised the 2004 Athens Olympics and is married to a billionaire shipowner) are embracing the populist, anti-establishment Syriza.

With the loss of more than a quarter of national output, 1.5 million people out of work and a population ever more exhausted by relentless cuts and tax rises, many in Greece feel they have nothing to lose by giving the left a chance in power. That prospect looks increasingly likely if the government fails to gather the 180 votes required to elect a new head of state in February.

Tsipras, 40, last week stepped up calls for snap polls, saying “elections of deliverance and change” were crucial not only to enable Greeks to decide “for themselves”, but to rid the country of the international powers that oversaw its impoverishment.

Helena Smith Athens

Bodo Ramelow: Die Linke’s prospective premier for Thuringia in the ex-Communist east of the country. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters/Corbis

GERMANY: Still steady – but turnout is falling

The news that Germany may get its first socialist state premier has led some foreign commentators to conclude that, in a similar way to other countries in Europe, Germany is seeing the rise of populist parties on left and right. But things aren’t quite so simple.

While Die Linke (the Left party) looks likely to provide the next state premier of the Thuringia region, this has less to do with a surge in support for the far left (in Thuringia, it gained only 0.8% in the last election, in 2009) than with centre-left parties such as the Social Democrats and Greens overcoming old qualms about entering into coalition with the successor to communist East Germany’s ruling party, the SED. Die Linke may for the first time have come third in last year’s general elections, but it has made no noteworthy gains in regional elections in its notional eastern heartland since then. In Brandenburg, the party even lost 9% on the previous election.

One party that may have picked up their votes lies at the other end of the political spectrum. Anti-euro party Alternative for Germany (AfD) has undeniably gained momentum since narrowly failing to win any Bundestag seats last year. One September poll had it reaching 10%, making it the third-largest party in the country. But pollsters such as Forsa’s Manfred Güllner point out that seeming gains may be a “trick of the light”: while the percentage of the vote for the AfD may have risen, the actual numbers of people voting for them has stayed relatively stable.

For now, at least, Germany is still bucking a trend noticeable elsewhere in Europe, says Güllner. “The decreasing pulling power of the two big parties registers less in rising support for small parties than in a decline of people turning out to vote at all.” At some recent regional elections, turnout has been as low as 52%.

Philip Oltermann Berlin

Jimmie Akesson, leader of the rightwing Sweden Democrats party, and his girlfriend Louise Erixson, dressed in national traditional costume. Photograph: Scanpix Sweden/Reuters

SWEDEN: Anti-immigrant party gains ground

Sweden’s Social Democratic party, long the country’s natural party of government, got back into power this September after eight difficult years in opposition. But the Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigration party with neo-Nazi roots, were the true election winners. The party won 13% of the vote, up from 6% in the 2010 election and enough to overtake the Greens as the third-largest party.

The Social Democrats, who from the 1930s built Sweden’s welfare capitalist system during an unbroken 40-year rule, are in decline. The 31% of the vote the party won in September was just 0.3 percentage points higher than it scored in 2010, its worst election result since universal suffrage.

The prospects for the Social Democrats in neighbouring Denmark in next year’s election look more desperate still. According to a November Gallup poll, the anti-immigration Danish People’s Party have narrowly overtaken them, winning the support of a 20.8% of voters, compared to the Social Democrats’ 20.4%. And it’s not only on the right that insurgent parties are making inroads. By moving to the centre, the Social Democrats in both countrieshave left space for other idealisms.

In September’s election, Sweden’s Feminist Initiative party managed to get 3.1% of the vote, just short of the threshold needed to enter parliament. In Denmark, the Red-Green Alliance, fronted by the 30-year-old Johanne Schmidt-Nielsen, has seen its support quadruple from 2.2% in Gallup’s January 2010 poll to 9.2% this November.

Nicholas Aylott, associate professor in politics at Stockholm’s Södertörn University, argues that the reason the far right has gained ground in Sweden is that, unlike in Denmark and Norway, the established political parties refuse to allow immigration to become a mainstream political issue. “Sweden is peculiar,” he says. “It’s remarkable that such an extreme party as the Sweden Democrats could make such headway. I suspect part of the explanation is the very restricted debate.”

Fredrik Reinfeldt, leader of the Moderate party, opened the election campaign with a call for Swedes to “open your hearts” and accept a surge in asylum seekers. His party’s share of the vote collapsed from 30.1% to 23.1%.

Supporters of Sweden’s approach argue that allowing immigration questions into mainstream politics in Denmark and Norway has only empowered the populists. For a decade between 2001 and 2011, Denmark’s ruling coalition relied on the Danish People’s party for support, giving the party leverage to push through one of Europe’s strictest immigration regimes.

In Norway, the Progress party, a libertarian anti-immigration party which once had terrorist Anders Breivik as a member, has been the junior partner in the country’s two-party coalition government for over a year, with party leader Siv Jensen, who once warned of “stealth-Islamisation”, serving as finance minister.

It’s for now unclear whether the Sweden Democrats can also enter the mainstream. Sweden’s seven other parties have so far pledged not to cooperate with them, even though the party’s 49 seats would be enough to bring a left- or rightwing coalition a majority. Immigration is too toxic an issue for Anna Kinberg Batra, the Moderates’ new leader, to reverse Reinfeldt’s pro-refugee stance.

But the political editor of Svenska Dagbladet, the country’s most serious conservative newspaper, argued in last Sunday’s edition that the question of how many asylum seekers Sweden can realistically absorb needs to be discussed. That’s a sign that the debate may be about to change.

Richard Orange Stockholm

Protesters make their way through Dublin to demonstrate against the water tax. Photograph: Peter Morrison/AP

IRELAND: Rebellion over a tax rise too far

Public anger against the introduction of water charges for the first time in Ireland’s history has finally seen the country’s population rebel against the politics of austerity. More than 100,000 people turned out for a mass demonstration against the charges in Dublin this autumn, with even greater numbers expected to march again to the Dáil next month.

After six years of enduring additional taxes and huge spending cuts to placate the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank, which rescued Ireland from bankruptcy, even the middle classes say enough is enough.

Of late, among the main parties Sinn Féin has benefited most in terms of polling – it even became the largest in the state according to a survey last month in the Sunday Independent, which is traditionally hostile to the republican movement. In an Irish Times poll earlier in October, Sinn Féin was neck and neck on 24% with the senior coalition party, Fine Gael.

The most recent ballot-box revolt returned leftist Paul Murphy to the Dáil. In a tight race, Murphy – from the Socialist party, the heirs to the Irish branch of Militant Tendency – triumphed over Sinn Féin. Again water was the key issue and Murphy came through because he had a clear, unambiguous message. While Sinn Féin sent out mixed signals about whether it would advise voters to break the law and not pay, Murphy announced that he himself would not pay.

There has always been a tradition in Irish politics of independents, but usually they are elected on local issues. However, the latest batch of small-party candidates to the Dáil are more ideological in nature, and mainly come from the far left, such as the Socialists or People Before Profit. Whether they can morph into a coherent parliamentary bloc after the 2016 general election – which falls in the poignant centenary year of the Easter Rising – will be a key question for the next Dáil.

While the Fine Gael-Labour coalition government can point to a recovering economy and falling unemployment, as well as the achievement of exiting the IMF-ECB bailout programme a year ago, the rising tide of anger over water may yet prove fatal to both big parties at the election. And if byelections and opinion poll results are replicated in 2016, the net result could be chaotic and unpredictable.

Sinn Féin could try to cobble together a new coalition with a host of independent, mainly leftwing deputies, many of whom are deeply suspicious of the republican party. Another alternative might be an equally unprecedented one: the once-unthinkable grand coalition of Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil.

The latter outcome would mark the healing of another great wound in Ireland’s history – the short but vicious civil war of 1921-22 that gave birth to the two rival parties.

Henry McDonald Dublin

Mariano Rajoy: under pressure. Photograph: Daniel Ochoa de Olza/AP

SPAIN: Indignados take centre stage

As the spectre of corruption loomed over his party last year, Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy stood firm. He flatly denied the accusations that had threatened to topple his government – allegations that the People’s party (PP) had a slush fund stocked with payments from big business and that payments had been doled out to senior politicians, including himself.

Rajoy instead deflected the blame, arguing that his error lay in trusting Luis Bárcenas, the party’s former treasurer. “I was wrong to maintain confidence in someone we now know did not deserve it. I was cheated,” Rajoy told members of parliament.

The embarrassing spectacle of venality at the highest levels of the establishment was meat and drink to the ponytailed academic at the helm of Podemos, an upstart party that has grabbed headlines around the world.

Led by 36-year-old Pablo Iglesias, Podemos (meaning “We Can”) has built on the five seats it captured in the European elections and soared to the top of opinion polls in Spain in its first year of existence. Highly organised, and media-savvy, the party poses a viable threat to the two-party politics that have characterised the past three decades in Spain.

Iglesias delights in taking aim at what he calls “the caste,” referring to the regime that has governed Spain since 1978. His strong condemnation of the ruling class has struck a chord with Spaniards, particularly the one in four unemployed who have yet to see any tangible effects of the economic recovery touted by PP leaders. “Their discourse is framed as not a question of right or left, but rather one of above and below,” says José Pablo Ferrándiz of polling group Metroscopia. “The underlying question – are you suffering the crisis the same way as the rest of us? – really resonates with people.”

With promises to nationalise important industries, raise taxes on businesses and reduce the retirement age to 60 to increase job turnover, Podemos offers Spaniards a political vehicle to channel their anger at the powers widely blamed for driving the country into the economic crisis.

This month saw the party double its support, from 14% in October to 28%, according to a poll for El País, beating the opposition Socialists on 26% and the governing PP on 21%.

The results are impossible to untangle from the spate of corruption scandals that have dominated headlines in Spain of late. October saw roughly five Spaniards a day implicated in corruption cases, including 86 politicians and bankers under investigation for misusing company credit cards from Caja Madrid, racking up more than €15m in charges for everything from groceries to safaris.

Last week 32 bureaucrats in provinces across the country were arrested for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for contracts, while two formerly high-ranking Socialists in Andalucía were summoned to court to answer questions in an ongoing investigation into hundreds of millions of euros in public money handed out in fake redundancy payments.

While Podemos vows to expunge corruption, the governing PP has sought to downplay its existence. Rajoy told parliament last month: “Let’s not give the impression – because it is not the reality – of a country immersed in corruption. It’s not true.”

Within these differing responses lies one of Podemos’s greatest strengths, says Ferrándiz. Pointing to themes such as transparency and citizen participation, he says, “They’ve forced other political parties to start seriously considering measures that they never had in mind before.”

Meanwhile, in Catalonia, where talk of independence has dominated the political scene, another insurgent party looks poised to gain ground. Polls show pro-independence party Republican Left of Catalonia would win elections, ousting Artur Mas’s Convergence and Union coalition and leaving Madrid facing off against a government more fiercely committed to independence.

Ashifa Kassam Madrid