{"id":60497,"date":"2016-10-05T06:00:58","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T11:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=60497"},"modified":"2016-10-05T06:08:34","modified_gmt":"2016-10-05T11:08:34","slug":"let-that-cycle-spin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=60497","title":{"rendered":"Let That Cycle Spin"},"content":{"rendered":"

Leftist parties in Europe are facing declining membership<\/a>, electoral routs, and a general malaise:<\/p>\n

\n

The sick list is headed by Britain’s Labour Party, where veteran radical Jeremy Corbyn last week easily won a leadership challenge by centrist MPs angry at his part in the shock Brexit vote.<\/p>\n

But political analysts say the venerable party — founded in 1900 — faces electoral oblivion despite his victory.<\/p>\n

Its dismal standing in the opinion polls is mirrored across Europe.<\/p>\n

As with Labour, Spain’s Socialist Party is in the grip of a fratricidal war over the performance of its leader, Pedro Sanchez, at a time of national crisis.<\/p>\n

In Germany, the Social Democratic Party has lost half its members since 1998.<\/p>\n

In France, President Francois Hollande is the most unpopular president in his country’s modern history and would be routed if he stands in next year’s presidential elections, according to opinion polls.<\/p>\n

Centre-left parties recently lost power in Denmark, a stronghold of social democracy, and registered their worst-ever results in Finland and Poland. In Greece, support for the once dominant Pasok has plunged to just six percent.<\/p>\n

“Social democracy is a shadow of itself,” German political analyst Albrecht von Lucke said on NDR television channel. “We are dealing with decline of historic proportions.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The bad news? \u00a0While the center right and populist parties are benefitting, many\u00a0near-left voters are moving even further left.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Leftist parties in Europe are facing declining membership, electoral routs, and a general malaise: The sick list is headed by Britain’s Labour Party, where veteran radical Jeremy Corbyn last week easily won a leadership challenge by centrist MPs angry at his part in the shock Brexit vote. But political analysts say the venerable party — […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-capitalism-v-socialism","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=60497"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60497\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60519,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60497\/revisions\/60519"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=60497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=60497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=60497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}