Just curious. In addition to the US and the UK a number of advanced nations seem to be tilting conservative these days. I know every nation has it’s own dynamics and issues but this multi-nation conservative tilt is a real thing. Is there some driving force behind the scenes that’s acting on these converging impulses or is it just chance that this inclination seems to be effecting a number of advanced nations at the same time?
Upswing in xenophobia, mostly.
aging populations would be a contributor, I’d think.
The short answer is that globalization has not benefited everyone equally. The Western working classes have experienced zero gains in wealth since 1990. This leads to class and racial resentments, nationalism and populism.
I agree, but would clarify:
The Western working classes have experienced zero gains in wealth since 1990. This led the wealthy and corporate leaders to stoke class and racial resentments, nationalism and populism in order to distract the working classes from the real causes of the zero gains, and their own large gains.
In the U.K., you have the SNP taking all but one seat in Scotland. Labour can’t win without Scotland. The Lib Dems also collapsed due to their disastrous coalition with the Tories. So, hardly a major shift to the right there.
Elections in France, the Netherlands , and Germany later this year will be interesting. But, I don’t expect Le Pen to win in France and no Dutch party will work with Wilders and the PVV.
Also, interspersed between the Conservatives winning in the U.K. and Trump wining in the USA is a solid win by the Liberals in Canada, ousting the Conservative Party.
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- Globalization impact on low-skill jobs. (As noted above)
- Russia could be providing support to groups and information which are isolationist in nature. (Limited evidence of this until recently, but potentially no one was looking before.)
- Low-skill physical labor jobs might be going the way of the dodo, due to advances in technology, leaving only service industry positions - meaning that you are going to have to kiss up to people above you on the income ladder for the rest of your life.
I don’t know. Giving the rest of the world a chance to catch up?
There is a huge difference between ‘US conservative’ and ‘UK conservative’.
David Cameron’s Conservative Government:
- agreed with strict gun control (e.g. no guns for home defence; beat police unarmed)
- agreed with universal health care (see NHS)
- opposed capital punishment
- supported abortion
- legalised gay marriage
- believes in climate change
While true, the fact that globalization hasn’t led to increasing living standards caused a leftward shift in latin america.
However there wasn’t any immigration in latin america (to my knowledge). Western nations are seeing a lot of muslims, middle easterners, africans, etc. immigrating to their nations. So that probably plays a role.
Yes but that is the center right. The far right (who are more conservative than the center right, especially on social issues and immigration) are doing well. The national front in France, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, The law and justice party in Poland, etc.
Concern for secure borders in a time of heightened extreme activity does not equal “far right”, it equals common sense.
Similarly, the scale of uncontrolled immigration - which several member of the EU have - has given rise to economic and cultural concerns.
‘far right’ a bogus extrapolation; the EU has centrally imposed this level of immigration on member states and it is not popular.
You’re oversimplifying and ignoring facts. Limiting immigration and rolling back/modifying some of the open border policies in a time of very visible terrorism is increasingly a stance of parties other than the far right, but that doesn’t change the fact that the far right had that attitude before the Syrian civil war brought the current level of problems, and that they’ve experienced an upswing.
And the EU member states have plenty of power to limit immigration and have done so. Randomly blaming the EU while ignoring its benefits is also a traditionally fra right wing (and left wing) stance.
It’s because liberal approaches and solutions keep failing.
To be specific, moderately liberal parties, the ones referred to as “center-left” in Europe are failing. In the USA, the Democrats have been crushed in Congress and lower levels. But in Europe it’s worse. The center-left parties that traditionally held power about half the time have been collapsing. Labor in Britain has no hopeof retaking power as long as this Corbyn critter is in charge. In France, the Socialist President pulls approval ratings of about 4%. SPD in Germany and PSOE in Spain have seen their membership fall through the floor. The most recent elections in Switzerland, Belgium and Ireland haven’t given center-left parties much to cheer for. The upcoming elections in the Netherlands don’t look promising either.
In some places such as Greece, voters have fled to the extreme left. But in most places, when the center-left party collapses, the conservative party gets the benefits. So this is really one of the major stories in world events right now, and it should be getting more attention.
So why is this happening? You can see some of the answers offered above: xenophobia, globalization, Russian influence, etc… This is what members of the center-left want to tell themselves: it’s the fault of bad people or stuff outside our control. It’s definitely not our fault.
But what do voters actually see when looking at center-left parties?
[ul]
[li]Massive government spending, growing larger all the time. In the USA, Social Security and Medicare will eventually bankrupt the country. Many cities and states government by Democrats are heading there even faster. Many European countries will also soon follow Greece into crisis caused by spending too much.[/li][li]Ever-growing bureaucracy. In Europe they complain about absurd rules on everything from bananas to vacuum cleaners. In the USA, the Democrats give us regulations on dishwashers, truck drivers, salmon, …[/li][li]Labor unions, especially government worker unions. A big problem in American and even bigger in most of Europe. The center-left parties often act like slaves of the unions.[/li][li]Political correctness. Most European countries impose censorship under hate speech laws. In the USA, the government is getting involved in whether people can wear offensive hats.[/li][li]Immigration issues. Certainly among the biggest problems in Europe was that the political mainstream was caught off guard by the millions of refugees flooding in, and had little convincing response to terrorist attacks and crime waves by Muslims. Covering up the truth doesn’t help either. If liberals won’t even mention rising crime caused by immigrants, right-wing parties will be happy to do that for them.[/li][li]“Progressives” against progress. In many places left-leaning politicians try to shut down or restrict new technology like Uber and AirBnb, in order to protect vested interest groups. Or look at the perennial campaigns against genetically modified foods. Don’t fight the future.[/li][li]High taxes. Always unpopular.[/li][/ul]
What liberals don’t seem to realize is that big government bureaucracies and labor unions are lumbering dinosaurs. They may have made sense for dealing with the problems of the 1950’s and 60’s, but now it’s 2017. They have no solutions that actually work in today’s economy. Most things in human life are getting better. Technology is improving. Choices keep multiplying for food, clothing, music, computer games, and everything that we get from capitalism. But big-government liberals keep fighting to deny us choice in many areas. That’s why they’re losing.
Wrong on virtually every point.
SS and Medicare are not going to go bankrupt. What is needed for SS is minor tweaks in taxation, such as removing the cap on annual payroll contributions. Republicans have spent 80 years lying about SS and trying to destroy it, the system is easily made viable for the next 2-3 generations.
Regulations are almost always a good thing. You don’t think about the water you drink, the food you eat, and the safety of your building because of government regulations.
Labor unions built the middle class. You have health insurance because 75 years ago some union guy got his head bashed in by management thugs trying to preserve corporate raping of the working class. The unions persisted, they won, and we have our employee benefits as evidence.
The US isn’t Europe. Hate speech isn’t generally banned, and even the biggest and most offensive bigot can be elected to office.
The right wing exploits fear of “the other” by exaggerating problems that a small minority of immigrants cause. If you lie about Muslims, you might just find yourself elected president.
Some caution is warranted in approaching new business models such as Uber. There are safety requirements and driver screening for taxi companies, for example, while any predator can start up as an Uber driver with no screening.
Taxes are not too high. Somehow we prospered in the Eisenhower years with a 90%+ maximum tax rate. Conservatives can’t stop crowing about business growth in the Reagan years, with taxes higher than they are now.
My point was that Cameron’s Government is centre-right in the UK, but would be far left in the US.
And although there are indeed some worrying signs in mainland Europe, the far right is nowhere in the UK.
I don’t think that’s correct. Sure, that’s the Conservative party line, echoed endlessly on Fox News. But from what I can tell from the actual data, Liberal policies haven’t “failed” in any meaningful sense. In fact, Bush’s presidency with it’s 9/11, 2 wars and financial collapse is far more of a failure than Obamas.
I don’t have time to respond to every one of your points, but most of them are false, or at best highly speculative:
“Choices keep multiplying for food, clothing, music, computer games, and everything that we get from capitalism” is actually not true. Food is increasingly being dominated by large megafarming corporation like Monsanto or Archer Daniels Midland with practices that can be unhealthy, illegal or dangerous. Clothing production is increasingly dominated by cheap, foreign outsourced materials, indie bands on the internet aside, the commercial music industry produces more homogenous music distributed on stations dominated by a few large networks. But at least there’s a new Call of Duty coming out soon.
Your notion that Progressives are against Uber and AirBnB would seem to fly in the face of reason. But the fact is that many communities are struggling to figure out the economic consequences of having thousands of unregulated livery cars and short term rentals flood their marketplaces.
I was watching Fox News the other day and Geraldo Rivera made a statement that immigrants actually commit fewer crimes per capita than non immigrants. But really all your points about immigration and political correctness can be subsumed under a more general umbrella of conservative xenophobia, jingoism and entitlement. I’ve heard all sorts of arguments from a lot of smart people, but to me they are just glossed over versions of “I don’t like people who are different and don’t want anyone to tell me how to treat them.”
Labor unions, government spending and complaints about “bureaucracy” can largely be bucketed under “I want to make as much money as possible”. Now as a businessman, I am generally supportive of the concept. However, the reason we have regulations is to protect customers, employees and the environment from the excesses of corporate greed. Corporations are great at privatizing profits and socializing costs. Particularly when it comes to externalities like pollution. And more and more, American workers are working harder than ever, while income disparity continues to increase. The ultra wealthy have done a great job marking to middle class conservatives that they have the same interests when it comes to free markets and regulation.
But high taxes are always unpopular.
There is a reason that Conservativism tends to skew towards the more rural and less educated. (at least in the USA). Because much of Conservatism is based on an idealized traditional “Norman Rockwell” view of America. I assume other countries have similar romanticized images of their “glory days”.
The reality is that the world is changing. It is becoming more globalized, more integrated and more urbanized. And these changes have been bleeding into the Conservative parts of the country for decades, challenging traditional views on work, marriage, religion, government, war, pretty much everything.
So my WAG is that the sudden shift towards conservativism is a reaction to the rapid pace of change and a desire to “slow things down”.
I have a theory that while liberals and progressive only need a few reasons to want to implement change, conservatives only need a few reasons not to. For example, one immigrant committing a crime is enough to justify preventing all immigrants from coming into the country.
Generally-speaking, this is occurring in countries where voters are still free to vote for the candidates of their choice. It seems that the voters have once again grown tired of the SSDD politics of the usual suspects/party in power. Time to try something new. The political pendulum swings left/right/left/right.
If elected politicians actually respond to what a majority of their constituents are demanding, they get to keep their jobs/power. If they can’t, or won’t, the voters will try someone who might be able to. Out with the old and busted. In with the new hotness. Again.
There’s nothing “common sense” about banning well-vetted refugee families, scientists, academics, and award-winning artists just because of their ethnicity, religion, or nationality, and it doesn’t make the border any more secure. It’s the politics of ignorance, hate, and xenophobia, and that makes it the politics of the far right.
The irony of it is, however, that the immigration example is actually a sweeping change to traditional longstanding immigration policy, and its radicalism is typical of contemporary Republicanism. That’s the irony of so much of what passes for “conservative” policymaking today – from rampant judicial activism in the Roberts court to the appointment of alt-right extremists throughout the current presidential administration, there’s nothing even remotely “conservative” about any of it. “Conservative” used to be the insurance executive in the gray suit with a suburban home and a housewife and two kids inside who supported the socioeconomic status quo. These new guys are far-right radicals and assorted lunatics, about as conservative as Trotsky and Lenin, just on the other side of the spectrum of radical ideology.
Fear.