Speaking in Zurich earlier this year about economic nationalism, America’s right-wing populist ideologue Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s former chief strategist, assured supporters, “The populist wave in Europe is not over: it’s just getting started. History is on our side.”
But the West's ethno-nationalists aren't the only ones convinced that as the center in politics dislocates they can reap the benefits. Despite recent electoral setbacks — from the U.S. to Germany — their left-wing counterparts have a new-found swagger, too.
And, like their ideological foes, they believe they are the ones moving with the grain of history. Tracking polls on both sides of the Atlantic suggest they have as much cause for optimism as their right-wing opponents.
A , suggests Americans of all age groups have a less jaundiced opinion of socialism than at any time since 1949, with an increasing number viewing it in non-derogatory ways. “Almost 70 years later, Americans' views of socialism have broadened. While many still view socialism as government control of the economy, as modified communism and as embodying restrictions on freedoms in several ways, an increased percentage see it as representing equality and government provision of benefits,” according to Frank Newport, Gallup's editor-in-chief.
In Britain, support for higher taxes to fund more public spending has hit a 15-year high, according to a survey by the National Center for Social Research. Its survey showed 60 percent of respondents want to see a hike in income taxes to pay for increases in public spending, up from 49 percent in 2016 and 31 percent in 2010.
“Since 2010 the proportion of people who want more tax and spend has nearly doubled and shows the country is clearly tiring of austerity,” according to the NatCen’s Roger Harding. The apparent shift in British public opinion favoring an increased role for the state goes some way to explain, say analysts, the current confidence of the country’s Labor Party and its expanded radical ambitions.
Last year, the party came close to a surprise unseating of the ruling Conservatives in a snap general election. Its manifesto then was far less radical than what it is now proposing.
At a fringe event at the party’s annual conference, held last week in the northwestern city of Liverpool, John McDonnell, the party’s de facto deputy leader, once dismissed as a maverick Marxist even by his own Labor colleagues, appeared to relish the Brexit difficulties ensnaring Britain.
He declared to cheers: “The greater the mess we inherit, the more radical we have to be.” McDonnell and party leader Jeremy Corbyn unveiled in Liverpool arguably the most leftwing policies seen in Britain in 50 years. Labor believes the British want a leftward turn.
The party’s economic policies now include: nationalizing 10 percent of any business employing more than 250 people to create an inclusive ownership fund for workers, requiring worker representatives to make up a third of all company boards, and re-nationalizing public utilities. In private, Labor leaders have talked about introducing capital controls and imposing curbs on the media, according to party insiders.
At this week’s Conservative Party annual conference, Britain’s beleaguered prime minister, Theresa May, launched a scathing attack on Corbyn. But at the same time she indirectly acknowledged there has been a shift in public opinion by announcing that once Britain has exited the European Union, she will end austerity policies and increase government spending on the health service and social care.
“Corbynomics is actually popular,” laments commentator Allister Heath, a fervent free-market advocate and editor of the Conservative-leaning newspaper. “It’s not that the electorate has suddenly caught Marxism: the vast majority of voters still support a mixed economy, want to earn and own more, and distrust Jeremy Corbyn himself. Yet many of his policies resonate, appealing even to some Tory voters and across acquisitive Middle England,” he wrote last week.
In August, Britain’s magazine, which advocates editorially for free trade, globalization, open borders and cultural liberalism, and is considered by many as the ‘house journal’ of classical liberalism, warned the political consequences of the 2008 financial crash are still playing out — to the detriment of the center ground of Western politics.
“Staring in the early 1980s, free markets, globalization and individual freedoms flourished. Liberalism — in this broad classical sense, rather than the narrow American left-of-center one — saw off communism as well as social conservatism. Then, in the crash of 2008, it all fell apart.”