A Wildly Uninformed Comment on the EU Elections

So, the main losers in the EU elections were traditional center-right and center-left parties and far-left parties.  The biggest winners were right-wing anti-EU parties, green parties and "liberal" (which I take to mean semi-libertarian) parties.  There have been countless analyses on what this means and whether it is encouraging or discouraging. 

My own uninformed opinion is that this clear vindicates Daniel Zimblatt, author of Conservative Parties and the Birth of Democracy and How Democracies Die.  Zimblatt's thesis is that the key to the survival of democracy is a strong democratic conservative party -- a conservative party that respects individual rights and the rule of law, that accepts democratic norms and has a vested interest in preserving them.  (I mean to write about Zimblatt some day).

Another way of putting it is that Zimblatt agrees with me -- the danger lies on the right.  A fair definition of center-right or center-left parties is political parties, to the right or left of center, that respect individual rights, rule of law, and democratic norms, that respect the rights of opponents when they win and step down without protest when they lose.  Hard right or left refers to parties that do not. 

Zimblatt's hypothesis is that when traditional center-right parties break up, they leave a vacuum that is occupied by hard right parties.  When traditional center-left parties break up, they leave a vacuum that is filled by new center-left parties.  Thus the breakup of the French center-right leads to Marine LePen; the breakup of the French center-left leads to Emmanuel Macron. The breakup (less far along) of Germany's conservative Christian Democratic Union leads to the rise of the far-right Alternatives for Germany.  The breakup of Germany's Social Democrats is leading to the rise of the Greens.  In Britain the Conservative Party is shrinking and the Brexit Party is rising.  Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn's attempts to turn the Labour Party into a hard left party is leading it to break up with widespread defections to the Liberal Democratic Party.

And in EU elections, center-right parties are shrinking and being displaced by anti-EU parties.  Center-left parties are shrinking and being replaced by liberal and green parties.  The pattern is clear.