Madrid’s success creates hope for the right-wing European center-right struggle

Isabel Diaz Ayusorena amazing success In the Madrid regional government elections, he doubled the vote of the Popular Party with a campaign of struggle, a lesson for center-right parties across Europe that are struggling to maintain widespread appeal.

The conservative fire brand has revitalized the PP, a party that fell just two years ago in a landslide defeat in the general election, with votes for the Liberal party Ciudadanos and the far-right Vox.

The head of the Madrid region carried out a populist campaign that sparked public frustration over the coronavirus blockade imposed by the Socialist-led national government.

While opponents of the 42-year-old boy tried to name Spanish Donald Trump with the far right, his relationship with voters surprised other European conservatives.

“He speaks in a very straightforward way,” said Tomi Huhtanen, executive director of the Wilfried Martens Center for European Studies, the official think tank of the European People’s Party. “It’s an echo.”

Diaz AyusoThe success of this week’s election was a rare bright spot for Europe’s main right-wing party and major Christian Democrat parties. Their identity crisis will be a major issue in a crucial election year.

“We’ve all talked about the decline of social democracy, but I would say that the crisis of Christian democracy is the biggest consequence,” said Jan-Werner Müller, a policy professor at Princeton University. “If you ask what Christian democracy is, most people won’t know it.”

German Christian Democrats are making green marks in polls ahead of the September federal election, with the CDU’s base seemingly reluctant to lead Armin Laschet, who is vying for a replacement for Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The party has violated whether to collaborate at the regional level with the far-right Germany Alternative Party, increasing pressure on the country’s east sanitary cord against cooperation.

In France, there are center-right Republicans agitation The Provence-Alpes-Côte d’Azur chapter proposed a joint list with President Emmanuel Macron’s party for next month’s regional elections.

Apparently it was an attempt to block the far right. Many Republicans suspect that Macron, who has gone to the right of law and order, is trying to weaken them ahead of next year’s presidential election, with the best chance for an election in a rematch with far-right leader Marine Le Pen.

Republican presidential candidate Xavier Bertrand called Macron a “cold, destructive calculator.” conversation last week with the newspaper Le Figaro.

In Italy, Forza Italia is a shadow of itself, polling only 7 percent. He has been replaced by the Nationalist League as the main party in the right-wing government.

League leader Matteo Salvini has recently moved to the center, softening his Euroscepticism and supporting the government of former European Central Bank chief Mario Draghi.

The league is also at risk flankatu right parties, Italian Brothers. The fate of the Draghi government may be Salvini, who was one of the first European politicians to praise the victory of Díaz Ayuso.

The problems of the center-right, paradoxically, seem to be shifting public sentiment to the right in Europe. A examination For the think-tank Fondation Pour L’Innovation Politique, 39 per cent of voters in France, Germany, Italy and the UK placed themselves on the right of the political spectrum, with 27 per cent on the left and 20 per cent in the center.

But, the British Conservatives had a notable exception significant gains Despite being in power for a decade in this week’s local elections, the main parties are struggling to channel that sentiment, unlike the new far-right contestants.

“Catherine de Vries said,‘ Traditional parties are challenging political activists who are able to mobilize on certain issues that are not neatly placed in the center-right template. Such as immigration, European integration, anti-Islam and saving Christianity. “Bocconi University professor of political science.” It is very difficult for the center-right because these issues often divide their traditional coalition. ”

It will be a recurring theme to what extent Europe’s main parties risk reputation damage by working with “challenging parties” on the far right, said Fabio Wolkenstein, an assistant professor at Aarhus University. “Fewer and fewer countries will be able to sustain it sanitary cord [against the far-right] You see it in Germany, ”he added.

Diaz Ayuso said he is open to governing with Vox – even though in theory his party has ruled him out nationally – but he did well enough to lead Madrid without a formal coalition.

The theme of the “Freedom” campaign to earn a living and enjoy the city’s famous nightlife, he played well against the demands of the main left-wing government with working-class voters as well as well-cured supporters of the PP.

“The elections were fought in bars,” said Camino Mortera-Martinez, of the Center for European Reform, who believes it would be difficult to repeat in other parts of Spain, even less so in Europe. “Díaz Ayuso took the position of the parties that were completely destroyed. He was a frontier populist, if not a complete populist. ”

José Ignacio Torreblanca, head of the Madrid office of the European Council on Foreign Affairs, said that although the left has tried to paint Díaz Díaz as Trump, “Reaganita is more capable of making trivial statements, but also of deepening people’s emotions. Tired of the crisis.”

“He knows that there is an ideologically deep chasm between the PP and Vox,” he said, citing climate change and gay marriage as an example.

Torreblanca also noted that although remote-right voters like it, election gains have come mostly from the fall of Ciudadanos. The Spanish right is now divided into two ways rather than two ways.

“His success has been to start uniting the right. But he did not destroy Vox. So the problem continues, ”he said.