Is the left really in meltdown across Europe?

There has been a lot of talk amongst political commentators this week about whether or not Europe (and the developed world more broadly) is seeing a lurch towards the right and a lurch away from the left.  This has been sparked by two election victories in which conservative parties ousted social democratic ones from power (Australia and Norway).  In the FT, Janan Ganesh says this is part of a wider context in which the left ‘called the crisis’ wrong in the eyes of voters.  Today, Toby Young tweeted that 'the left is in meltdown all over Europe’. 

But how true is this?  Are voters really turning away from the left, en masse?

Division of power in the EU

Centre-left	Centre-right
Austria	Czech Republic
Belgium	Estonia
Bulgaria	Finland
Croatia	Germany
Cyprus	Greece
Denmark	Hungary
France	Ireland
Italy	Latvia
Lithuania	Luxembourg
Malta	Netherlands
Slovakia	Poland
	Portugal
	Romania
	Slovenia
	Spain
	Sweden
	UK

All in all, the centre-right has power (either governing alone or as the largest party in a coalition) in six more EU countries than the centre-left.  So there is undoubtedly a momentum with conservatives, although not as much momentum as celebratory journos might have you believe.  Further, in places like Ireland and the Netherlands relatively strong social democratic parties share power with the right.  And by 2015, it is likely that the left will regain power in Sweden and the UK.

So why is there a general air of defeatism amongst the left in Europe?  And triumphalism amongst the right?  One reason is surely the nature of where the centre-right has been successful.  In all the countries where the crisis hit hardest (Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Greece) voters have put their faith in conservatives.  In Germany and Sweden, there has been an unparalleled dominance of the centre-right in countries with important social democratic traditions.

So the left needn’t been too downhearted: it is still in power across much of Europe.  Of course, the facts on who is in power tell us only so much about the policies they are implementing and the grounds on which elections have been won.  If the left is in power and largely implementing centre-right economic policies as a response to the crisis – as Francois Hollande has been accused of - the conservative commentariat might, after all, have a valid point.