ABSTRACT
Given the media’s tendency to stereotype those voters most tempted by radical right-wing populist parties as poorly educated, working-class men, it is easy to see why Europe’s centre-left parties are worried. These, after all, are the people they traditionally relied upon—their core vote, if you like. These are also the people, the narrative runs, who never consented to the immigration, the multiculturalism, the permissive society that political progressives helped usher in, and are now exacting their revenge. As a result, Labour and social democratic parties all over Europe are wondering what they should do (see the various contributions in Policy Network 2011). This chapter looks at three centre-left parties, each operating in a very different institutional environment but each of which has had to consider in recent years the damage or potential damage done to it by the radical right. They are the Dutch Labour Party (working with a pure PR electoral system and facing a very successful radical right opponent), the German SPD (working in a mixed electoral system and facing a radical right that still finds it hard to gain legitimacy), and the British Labour Party (working in a plurality system where the radical right has some localised support and earns plenty of publicity but has virtually no chance of breaking through). Are these parties right to worry or is there any sense in which, either by overreacting or picking the wrong counter-strategy, they might be getting things badly wrong?
