Socialist parties threatened by high tide of unpopularity

The summer holidays hit their stride across Western Europe this week, and for left-wing leaders the vacation cannot come soon enough.

Left-of-centre parties in government in Britain, Germany and Spain are battling a wave of unpopularity over their handling of - or responsibility for - the economic crisis. Their counterparts in opposition in France and Italy are ripping themselves apart.

The most spectacular civil war is in France's Socialist Party, where Segolene Royal, the defeated candidate in the 2007 presidential elections, is battling Martine Aubry, a former labour minister during the party's glory years.

Animosity between these women exploded into the open last November when they competed for the party leadership. Royal declared herself the winner only for the party to give the outcome to Aubry. The cannibalism is providing a useful distraction from the problems besetting President Nicolas Sarkozy, whose popularity is at low ebb.

Some younger cadres are clamouring for the "pachyderms" - the elite that ruled France in the 1980s and 1990s - to go and for the party to overhaul its doctrinal resistance to market forces.

One of the rising stars, Manuel Valls, Mayor of the Paris suburb of Evry who says he will run in the 2012 presidential elections, has even proposed dropping the word "Socialist" from the party's name. That idea causes shudders among older members.

France's best-known philosopher, Bernard-Henri Levy, has declared the party "dead."

"No one, or almost no one, dares to say it. But everyone, or almost everyone, knows it's true," he said.

In Italy, the centre-left Democratic Party has been rudderless since Walter Veltroni quit in February. A four-horse race has been declared for his succession, which will be decided in October. In the opinion polls, the party has just 33 per cent, only one point more than the xenophobic Northern League, and 16 points behind scandal-hit Premier Silvio Berlusconi.

Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a former leftist who became a leader of Europe's Greens movement, says that European social democracy is stuck in an intellectual rut. "The crisis is very deep, but the left, ultra or socialist-type reformist, has clung on to the same software. I think this is the great problem for social-democracy," he told Liberation.

Anke Hassel of Germany's Friedich Ebert Foundation thinktank agrees. "The far-reaching political, social and economic transformation of liberal societies means that social democracy is faced with a great challenge - how to redefine the relationship between politics today and market economics. The financial crisis is sharpening the challenge."

The doctrinal dilemma is especially acute for leftwing parties which are in government, and thus have to shoulder some of the blame for the breakdown of capitalism.

In Britain, Labour has been in power since 1997. Its Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was Chancellor of the Exchequer for 10 years, during which time he encouraged hands-off financial regulation.

In the past nine months, Brown has intervened in the economy as if it were the 1970s, yet his U-turn has failed to convince the electorate. At a byelection last week in Norfolk, a 5000-vote Labour majority was transformed into a 7000 majority by the Conservatives, whose 27-year-old rookie candidate, Chloe Smith, will be the youngest member of the House of Commons.

Spain's Socialist Party also has signs of fatigue. It has been in power since 2004 and is struggling with an unemployment rate that at nearly 18 per cent is twice that of the European Union's average. The party presided over a boom in the construction industry that burst in 2008.

In Germany, the Social Democrats have been smothered in their alliance with Angela Merkel, a Christian Democrat. Merkel has shrewdly run the "grand coalition" that has been in power since 2005, steering Germany through the economic crisis, preaching prudence and common sense.

The Social Democrats cannot cast themselves in the traditional leftwing role as the defender of jobs, as it earlier backed reforms to liberalise the labour market.

With a general election two months away, the SPD is credited with 21 per cent compared with 37 per cent for the conservative bloc - a gap that would enable Merkel to team up with the pro-business Free Democrats and consign her leftwing coalition partners to years in opposition.