If the British Conservative party is feeling stunned, having calamitously misread the public mood in a general election, then it is in good company. Across Europe, right-wing parties are struggling to find messages that resonate. It’s not that voters have turned away from conservative ideas: polls show a huge number interested in individual liberty, lower taxes and the nation state. The problem is that conservative parties have given up on those ideas — and, as a result, voters are giving up on them.
Take Fredrik Reinfeldt, prime minister of my native Sweden between 2006 and 2014. He started off well, reforming welfare and cutting taxes. But then it all went downhill. He lost his taste for economic freedom and, with it, his edge. He started to adopt his opponent’s policies, and was defeated after a campaign that mixed a tax-and-spend message with clichés about (you’ve heard this before) ‘strong and stable’ leadership. His party is still reeling, not far from political oblivion.
Italy’s centre right has yet to rid itself of Silvio Berlusconi, and Forza Italia is seen as the natural party of bunga bunga rather than of government. Finnish conservatives are now on their third leader in three years, and their showing in parliament is the weakest for four decades. Their sister party in Denmark, famous for its piously wet conservatism, has been shrinking in political relevance for quarter of a century and won just 3 per cent of the vote in the last election.
Conservatives in Austria have been in coalition with the Social Democrats for so long now that they have also forgotten their purpose — sending many despairing conservative voters to support the nationalistic Freedom party. And French conservatives are, like their socialist rivals, being crushed by a political machine invented just a year ago by Emmanuel Macron.
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