Acropolis Now

Devoutly Orthodox farmers three hours into the hills from Athens will be voting for SYRIZA. And why not? What is New Democracy, the only other party with any chance of winning, offering them? The creation of the coalition necessary to win will in any case change SYRIZA or define whatever succeeds it.

Where does anyone think that the popular constituency for an anti-Marxist French Socialist Party first came from, or very largely still does come from? Mitterrand could never decide whether he wanted to be Louis XIV or Napoleon. But he certainly wanted to be one or the other. Deep down, at least, one or the other was what huge numbers of his voters wanted him to be, too. Otherwise, he would never have won. And when he did win, he gave a job to Poujade, in whom the Legitimist and Bonapartist populisms of the Right met, who had endorsed him and who did so again. François Hollande was endorsed both by François Bayrou and by Jacques Chirac.

Most of the Italian Left has been subsumed into the Democratic Party, which has elected as its President Rosy Bindi, late of Azione Cattolica and Democrazia Cristiana. Her election, together with that of her preferred candidate for Leader, is an immensely positive sign, and she herself deserves much credit for having reached out in this way, when we consider that she lost at least one close friend to the Red Brigades. Their erstwhile supporters exist on the fringes of her major new party. But its internal electoral results leave no doubt as to where its centre of gravity lies, as to what is its mainstream.

The Italian Democrats sit with the British Labour Party in the European Parliament, in a Group which has changed its name in order to accommodate, especially, those Democrats with Christian Democratic backgrounds. Let us hope that this fraternity will have a significant impact on the party famously "owing more to Methodism than to Marx", the historic British vehicle of Social Catholicism, and still the preferred electoral choice of the clear majority of British Catholics.

Many post-War Italian Christian Democrats identified strongly with the Attlee Government's domestic programme, although they also wished to see an Italy outside both NATO and the Soviet Bloc, a bridge between East and West. Domestically and internationally, and complete with the strong admiration for British Labour at home, such was also Jacob Kaiser's post-War vision for a reunited Germany. A vision, sadly, never realised. Not yet, anyway. It was not by chance that the New Deal was so strongly supported by very devoutly Catholic Americans of German, Irish, Italian, Polish and other extraction. The witness of Bob Santamaria in Australia is also of the utmost importance, even if, sometimes, as a warning. His Wikipedia entry is surprisingly good. Do take a look at it. 

Scott McConnell used the pages of The American Conservative to endorse John Kerry in 2004. In 2008, on the same day as Obama received their Electoral College votes, California and Florida voted to re-affirm traditional marriage. Missouri and Ohio voted not to liberalise gambling. Colorado voted to end legal discrimination against white men. From coast to coast, the people who voted for Obama were the mainstays of, especially, the black and Catholic churches. Obama supporters included Bob Casey, Ben Nelson, Jim Webb, Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Bart Stupak and others of like mind. Obama supporters included Jim Jones, Dick Lugar, Chuck Hagel, Christopher Buckley, the conservative Catholic constitutional scholar Douglas Kmiec, and Donnie McClurkin, the ex-gay gospel singer whose presence on the Obama team infuriated the Clinton camp. And Obama supporters included the recently deceased Squire Lance, Saul Alinsky’s chosen successor and a stalwart of Opus Dei.

Obama has signed healthcare into law after having promised not to do so if there were any provision for federally funded abortion, which there is not; would that there were a public option or a single-payer system alongside that ban, so as to make abortion practically impossible, but one thing at a time. (The Hyde Amendment, banning federal funding of abortion, was proposed by a Republican who was not merely a conservative but almost a sort of European Catholic monarchist, but it was passed by a Democratic Congress, signed into law by Jimmy Carter, and subject to an annual renewal which it has never been denied no matter how large the Democratic majority in either House. Likewise, both of George McGovern's running mates were pro-life Catholics, in stark contrast to the record of his party's supposed "centrists".) He has kicked the Freedom of Choice Act into the long grass, and instead endorsed Casey's Pregnant Women Support Act as well as concentrating on the Employee Free Choice Act supported by pro-life stalwarts such as Stupak and Marcy Kaptur, which latter declined to endorse either him or Clinton because neither was offering enough to the victims of the "free" trade agreements that she and Stupak are now prominent in seeking to repeal.

Democratic Governor Steve Beshear has been re-elected by a margin of 20 points. In Kentucky. Meanwhile, in Iowa, the Democrats have just won a special election to retain control of the State Senate. In New Jersey, the land of Chris Christie, they have increased their majority in the State Assembly and retained control of the Senate. Ohio voters have rejected by 61 per cent to 39 a proposal drastically to reduce the collective bargaining rights of public employees. And in Mississippi, the constitutional recognition of personhood from conception, while opposed by the outgoing Republican Governor, was supported not only by the Republican nominee to succeed him, but also by the (black) Democrat. So, joining the Rust Belt Catholics, the Southern Democrats are on the way back. Only this time, they come in both colours. The Democratic Party is winning back its old Northern base of "ethnic Catholics" to add to the blacks whom it picked up as they moved North and as Johnson backed Civil Rights, all the while slowly but steadily re-conquering the South on something not far short of a miraculous biracial basis.

Here in Britain, only Labour now represents the Union as a first principle, any concept of English identity, a universal postal service bound up with the monarchy, the Queen's Highways rather than toll roads owned by faraway petrostates, Her Majesty's Constabulary rather than the British KGB that is the impending "National Crime Agency", the National Health Service rather than piecemeal privatised provision by the American healthcare companies that pay Andrew Lansley, keeping Sunday special, no Falkland Islands oil to Argentina, a free vote on the redefinition of marriage, a referendum on continued membership of the EU, the historic regimental system, aircraft carriers with aircraft on them, the State action necessary in order to maintain the work of charities and of churches, and the State action necessary in order to maintain a large and thriving middle class. The only way to save Tory Britain is to vote Labour. Though only because Labour really is now Labour again. And, clearly, Tory Britain knows it.

Clearly, Tory Greece has come to a very similar conclusion. Yes, one would rather that it were PASOK. But what is PASOK doing about that? What will Tory Greece be doing to make PASOK acceptable to the most anti-"free" market section of its society, or to keep SYRIZA that way, or both?