Europeans Are Rejecting Left-Right Ideology

Germany's Social Democratic Party, which has headed its governing coalition for six years, has always been the party of the country's working class. That is why when the leader of the country's biggest trade union called the government a failure the other day, it seemed as if something was fundamentally out of kilter in German politics.

Things seem to get worse and worse for the Social Democrats and for Germany's beleaguered chancellor, Gerhard Schröder. He is widely regarded as one of Europe's canniest politicians, but he is not only setting record lows in German public opinion polls but also seems in danger now of losing his core constituency, the labor unions.

His one consolation, however, is that he has good company in Europe. Whatever their ideology or position on the spectrum, the governing parties of many countries, certainly the biggest ones, are experiencing troubles similar to his.

In France and Italy, governed by conservative parties, and in Britain and here in Germany, governed from the traditional left, the governing parties have been soundly defeated in recent local or European elections, as their rankings in the polls have continued to decline.

The fact that both leftist and rightist governing parties are in such trouble suggests that something deep is at work in Europe, a general distrust of traditional parties that transcends ideology and bespeaks a pessimism about the ability of the standard politics of either the left or the right to work in the future.

"There's a tremendous amount of disillusionment with politics altogether," said Timothy Garton Ash, the Oxford University historian and commentator."People feel that the mainstream parties don't represent them, and this is strong right across Europe, old and new, and that's why you get these extraordinary protest votes, which was dramatic in Britain."

"We live in a slightly paradoxical time," he continued,"when people are disillusioned with politics, but they also don't think that politics matter that much anyway. They feel they're going to live comfortably anyway, so they can afford a protest vote."

The situation, not surprisingly, is different in each of the biggest European countries. In Spain, the Socialist Party took power in March when voters turned out the conservative government after it appeared to have withheld information about the Madrid terror bombings that killed 191 people. In Britain, Prime Minister Tony Blair's political troubles have a great deal to do with his support for the war in Iraq.

In other words, while in Germany and France the governing parties are getting no reward for their opposition to the Iraq war, in Britain Mr. Blair has clearly been punished because of his firm support of it, with the failure of the occupying forces to find illicit weapons hurting his standing perhaps more than any other issue. The irritation at Mr. Blair is well summed up by his widespread portrayal as President Bush's poodle, a lapdog who is viewed as having deceived the public to justify Britain's participation....