Is Europe’s radical left in permanent decline?

Once-ascendant parties across the continent face an existential crisis amid internal divisions and the rise of the far-right

Illustration of a left hand tied down, a right hand floating upward on balloons
Radical parties of the left are facing an existential crisis amid a wave of election defeats
(Image credit: Illustrated / Getty Images)

Radical parties of the left are facing an existential crisis amid a wave of election defeats that has seen populist nationalists sweep to power across Europe.

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Elliott Goat is a freelance writer at The Week Digital. A winner of The Independent's Wyn Harness Award, he has been a journalist for over a decade with a focus on human rights, disinformation and elections. He is co-founder and director of Brussels-based investigative NGO Unhack Democracy, which works to support electoral integrity across Europe. A Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Fellow focusing on unions and the Future of Work, Elliott is a founding member of the RSA's Good Work Guild and a contributor to the International State Crime Initiative, an interdisciplinary forum for research, reportage and training on state violence and corruption.