Has Europe Turned Right?

Of course, it depends what you mean by “Right”. The Tories did very badly at the European Elections, failing to reach even one in 10 eligible voters. Their performance only looked good because Labour and the Lib Dems did abysmally. By contrast, Gaullists and Christian Democrats did well.

Gaullists are ardent patriots. Their inspiration is the General’s fight against all four of German occupation, Soviet infiltration, American domination, and British accession’s unbalancing of the nascent EU against French interests. They used to see the EU as a potential means of exercising French influence. It no longer is, so they now have more and more doubts about it. They also have a streak of moral and social conservatism ultimately derived from Catholicism, although they have to be careful how they express it, since France has a strong strain of fierce secularism, la laïcité. But it is certainly there.

And Christian Democrats are ardent moral and social conservatives, deriving their views explicitly from their countries’ Protestant and, especially, Catholic traditions. There is no laïcité in Germany, where the churches provide so many public services that they are the largest employers after the several tiers of government. What there is, however, is a taboo against anything that smacks of nationalism, for obvious historical reasons. So the Christian Democrats have to muffle their patriotism. However, it, too, is certainly there. And it is becoming louder. After all, the War was a long time ago. The EU is a threat to the position of the Lände, the states. And American hegemony’s appeal has died in Iraq.

Sarkozy may not be much of a Gaullist and Merkel may not be much of Christian Democrat. But their respective parties have not yet signed up to their support for neoliberal economics and neoconservative foreign policy, both of which include European federalism under overall American control and in the service of global capital. Almost no one who votes for those parties feels that they are thus voting for those agenda. Very far from it indeed, in fact. Sarkozy and Merkel alike will yet turn out to have been flashes in the pan, probably very soon.

After all, there is now an American President with both the economic populism (including the economic patriotism) and the foreign policy realism (again, including the economic patriotism) of a Gaullist or a Christian Democrat. He owes his position, and his party owes its majorities in both Houses of Congress, to the votes of those who on the same day voted to reaffirm traditional marriage in Florida and California. Who on the same day voted not to liberalise gambling in Missouri or Ohio. And who keep the black and Catholic churches (especially) going from coast to coast, while also including a large and growing section of the white Evangelicals.

They have now given Democratic America the pro-life majority that Republican America never had. President Obama has called the extremely pro-abortion Freedom of Choice Act “not a high priority”, and we all know what a politician means when he says that. But he also as good as told his Notre Dame audience that his priorities did include the Pregnant Women Support Act, a clear example of the use of government action in the service of moral, social and cultural goods, in this case the sanctity of life from conception. It is a Democratic initiative. Indeed, it is a Christian Democratic initiative.

America and “Old Europe” are converging on this happy, hallowed ground. When will Britain? The movement that promised to do so would reach rather more than one tenth of the eligible electorate.