The UK general election result appears to be no big surprise when seen alongside results from across Europe

The number of seats won aside, the UK general election produced a result pretty close to expectation. The big mainstream parties, austere conservatives and austerity-leaning social democrats - in this case the Conservative and Labour parties - saw their stranglehold on voters slipping away, with liberals struggling to avoid obliteration while a new challenge arose in the form of various anti-establishment parties.

While Britain might see itself as a special case, this pattern certainly isn't isolated to those islands. It has been repeated right across the continent.

Spanish Regional Elections

In Spain, where the ruling Partido Popular - the conservative, pro-austerity party - are struggling with 20% unemployment and trying to suppress separatism in Catalonia, the end of last month saw regional and municipal elections (BBC, 2015). Since the last round of regional elections, Partido Popular had recovered a substantial lead in the polls in many of the regions.

But it was a polling lead that looked large mostly through comparison to a divided opposition. The opposition to Popular was split between the traditional social democratic, Left-wing party, Partido Socialista Obrero Espanol (PSOE), and two rising anti-establishment groups, reflecting trends across Europe.

Podemos and Ciudadanos, the Left-leaning radical and Right-leaning populists respectively, represent a growing, organised, mass movement against the politics of the old order. While Ciudadanos has recognisable party appearance - offering a Centre-Right, fiscal conservative, balanced budget, anti-corruption ticket, kind of like UKIP without the intolerant overtones - Podemos has been built by forming alliances with, and offering support to, local campaigners and regional movements, pouring mass support into decentralised, grass roots campaigns.

Yet their rise has helped to divide the response to austerity, and allowed the conservative narrative to hold its own. But it hasn't all been the result of splitting the vote - the Centre-Left response has been weak or uncertain all across Europe, and so has been displaced in many regions and provinces by the new radical and populist parties.

However, despite Partido Popular polling  fairly well, and the opposition being split between at least four parties nationally - plus a number of regional parties strong in their own provinces - the vote share in the Spanish regional election was even more fragmented than in the UK's general election.

Partido Popular took only around 31%, falling from a previous 46% (Buck, 2015), and the PSOE also fell to 25%. The two anti-establishment movements, Podemos and Ciudadanos, took 14% and 11% respectively, and could well find themselves in government in Madrid and Barcelona (Kassam, 2015). The nationalist and regionalist parties took between them a combined 15% of the vote.

With the establishment parties only taking 56% of votes, and the main opposition to Partido Popular taking 65% of the vote divided up between three parties and a range of regionalist and nationalist groups, the results of Spain's election tell us that the political establishment is in disarray (Buck, 2015{2}) - with Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy expressing disappointment at the fragmented result (Kassam, 2015{2}).

Italian Regional Elections

In Italy, the situation was initially balanced a little differently. At the 2013 election Prime Minister Matteo Renzi's Partito Democratico (PD), which represents the Centre and Centre-Left of the spectrum, became the biggest party on just 30% of vote - though Renzi himself only became Prime Minister after months of wrangling over how to form a government saw two Democratic Premiers, Pier Luigi Bersani and Enrico Letta, come and go.

The PD, which groups together some vociferously socially democratic voices, has under Renzi, considered by some to of the same mould as Tony Blair (Day, 2013), nonetheless imposed elements of austerity on Italy, seeking to make the country's economy more 'competitive' (The Economist, 2015). Those moves have damaged their position, with trade unions striking against 'reforms' to the labour market (BBC, 2014).

Yet over the past couple of years the party has benefited from an opposition that has crumbled. The controversies facing Silvio Berlusconi, the long time leader of the country's Centre-Right movement, has split the Right-wing group into two blocks (The Telegraph, 2013). Berlusconi's own return to the political limelight has been rather less than spectacular, with the former Premier turning to up in support of the wrong party's candidate in Lombardia (Johnston, 2015).

These divisions have left the opposition to the Centre-Left Democrats split up between a Berlusconi rump, the broad anti-establishment group Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S) and the Right-wing Northern separatist group Lega Nord. In recent months Lega Nord have moved, from a fringe regionalist party on the Far-Right, to overtake Berlusconi's group in the polls and in local elections, under their controversially popular leader Matteo Salvini (Sanderson & Politi, 2014).

In the regional election Renzi's Democrats took over 40% of the vote in five of the seven regions. Meanwhile Berlusconi's party struggled, falling as low as fourth in some regions behind Lega Nord, who made huge gains (Kirchgaessner, 2015) - even in areas on the fringes of their traditional heartlands. However, despite Renzi's Democrats winning outright in five of seven regions - including two gains in the south - they lost in Liguria and, when the concurrent municipal reforms are accounted for, popular support for the party was 24%, even as it remained the largest party (Ellyat, 2015; BBC, 2015{2}).

German Regional Elections

For those concerned as to what comes next, the results in German over the last two years look like being an interesting guide - appearing almost to be a couple of years ahead of the European trend. Back in 2013 - in what now seems like an indication that the Liberal Democrats in the UK should have expected their poor performance in May - the liberal Frei Democratische Partei (FDP) lost every single one of their seats in the German Bundestag, down from a previous total of 93 seats. However, in the regional elections held over the last two years there have been signs of a recovery.

Having fallen below five percent of vote, the FDP did not meet the threshold to qualify for Bundestag seats. Amongst the problems the party had faced were many that will be familiar to the UK Lib Dems: struggling to recover votes lost to their former Centre-Right coalition partner (who they partnered with for primarily economic reasons), and being squeezed for votes by their antithesis, a popular anti-EU party, plus faith lost due to a failure to deliver promised tax reforms. Two-thirds of votes the party lost went to the CDU, many whom still wanted the FDP to keep the CDU in check but had lost faith in the party after internal party struggles (Wagstyl, 2013).

After the FDP's federal election defeat, the party suffered further losses: just 3% in the 2014 European Parliament election, 7th place with 3% and no seats in Saxony, 7th place with 2% and no seats in Thuringia, and down to 1% and 7th place with no seats in Brandenburg. Yet by February 2015 the party was polling back up at 6% nationally, and then took 7% of the vote to retain all 9 of its seats in Hamburg, and 6.5% with 6 seats, all brand new, in Bremen.

At the present rate they look on course for 6-9%, from down at 3-4%, by the time of the next federal election in 2017, which could mean a recovery to as many as 40-60 seats - reflecting a recovery to their 2005 position. That should at least give liberals hope that when they are gone, they are quickly missed (The Guardian, 2015), and boost their efforts to restore credibility (Wagstyl, 2014).

What the German results also show is that liberals are not alone in the struggle to restore electoral credibility. As has been seen in Spain and Italy, and with Labour in the UK, social democratic parties are struggling to come up with an electorally successful alternative narrative to conservative austerity. In Bremen, Germany, the German Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD) has governed continuously since the end of the second world war and yet even here support for social democrats has weakened (The Economist, 2015).

The conservative ascendancy is not all it appears to be

The struggles of all of the main parties have been largely to the benefit of conservatives everywhere except Italy, which is being governed from the Centre by Democrats struggling for support. But the conservative is not all that it seems to be. The message from voters in Britain seems to be a match for the voices of voters across Europe: austerity has been allowed to limp because the opposition has not yet managed to construct a compelling alternative narrative. In all of these countries all of the establishment parties are teetering on the brink.

Yet, even in the face of the grip of austerity, disillusionment and anti-establishment movements, there is hope for the recovery of lost ground on the Left. But a recovery will require the Left to learn the lessons of the past few years and to adapt to the times by changing its methods. More decentralisation, co-operation, and an end to the mainstream chic of sycophancy towards the established order is essential. Only then can any party on the Centre-Left hope to gain the support of radical movements and find a broad consensus behind a real alternative to austerity.

References

'Spanish elections: Podemos and Ciudadanos make gains'; on the BBC; 25 May 2015.

Tobias Buck's 'Spain’s ruling party suffers heavy regional losses'; in the Financial Times; 24 May 2015.

Ashifa Kassam's 'Spain's indignados could rule Barcelona and Madrid after local election success'; in The Guardian; 25 May 2015.

Tobias Buck's 'Confusion reigns after Spanish elections'; in the Financial Times; 25 May 2015{2}.

Ashifa Kassam's 'Mariano Rajoy disappointed by indignados' election success in Spain'; in The Guardian; 25 May 2015{2}.

Michael Day's 'Is this Italy's Tony Blair? Meet Matteo Renzi, the rising star of Italian politics'; in The Independent; 9 December 2013.

'Renzi's Struggle in the swamp'; from The Economist; 24 January 2015.

'Italy trade unions strike over Renzi's labour reforms'; on the BBC; 12 December 2014.

'Silvio Berlusconi's party splits'; in The Telegraph; 16 November 2013.

Chris Johnston's 'Silvio Berlusconi mistakenly arrives at leftist party rally in Italy local elections'; in The Guardian; 30 May 2015.

Rachel Sanderson & James Politi's 'Italy’s new political star: Northern League leader Matteo Salvini'; in The Financial Times; 2 December 2014.

Stephanie Kirchgaessner's 'Rightwing Northern League makes gains in Italian elections'; in The Guardian; 1 June 2015.

Holly Ellyat's 'Italy's Renzi losing votes left, right and center?'; on CNBC; 1 June 2015.

'Italy local election threatens PM Renzi's reforms'; on the BBC; 1 June 2015{2}.

Stefan Wagstyl's 'German election: FDP takes first painful steps to recovery'; in the Financial Times; 23 September 2013.

'The Guardian view on the Liberal Democrats: missing them already'; in The Guardian; 15 May 2015.

Stefan Wagstyl's 'Germany’s FDP tries to restore credibility with voters'; in the Financial Times; 23 May 2014.

'Germany's Social Democrats: In a sorry state'; in The Economist; 12 May 2015.