Europe's shift to the right

Why conservatives, far-right fringe parties, and Swedish pirates won big in EU elections

These are happy days for "populist, fringe, and hard-right politicians" in Europe, said The Economist. Four days of European Parliament elections in 27 nations ended late Sunday with center-right parties holding steady and the far right—including the "avowedly racist" British National Party—gaining ground. But the big surprise was the "appalling results" for leftists, who somehow failed to "take advantage of a financial crisis that might have been tailor-made for critics of free market excesses."

"Capitalism triumphed, at least in its mushy European form," said Anne Applebaum in Slate, in part because European conservatives—unlike their counterparts in the U.S.—"don't spend like drunken sailors." It's risky to infer too much from EU elections, because relatively few people vote (that's why "fringe" and protest parties do "unusually well"), but the broad failure of the left, and strong results for a center-right at least "trying to keep some semblance of budget sanity," tells an "unusually consistent story."

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