LONDON -- For the past five years, the center-left has held the whip hand in Western Europe. Whether in the shape of Prime Minister Tony Blair's New Labour administration in Britain or the more traditionally leftwing Socialist-led government in France, social democracy has ruled in the major countries -- with the re-election of the Spanish right standing as the exception to the rule.
Now this is changing. The right has come back to power in Italy. The neo-Gaullist president of France, who was written off when the Socialists took over the government in 1997, is favored by the polls to win the presidential election in April. The right has made gains recently in Scandinavia while, in Europe's biggest economy, the German opposition has a new spring in its step as it shapes up against the Social Democratic chancellor, Gerhard Schroeder, ahead of national elections in the fall.
The main reason is simple: After years of strong economic growth around the turn of the century, governments of the center-left are now facing harsher times, with economic expansion stalled and unemployment rising -- to almost 4 million in Germany. At the same time, the model of private sector-state cooperation advocated notably by Blair is seen not to have lived up to its promises.