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Isabel Díaz Ayuso s impressive success in the Madrid regional government elections, in which he doubled the Popular Party’s share of the vote with a combative campaign, it is a lesson for center-right parties across Europe struggling to maintain its broad appeal.
The conservative brand has invigorated the PP, a party that just two years ago fell into a humiliating defeat in the general election, dropping votes to the liberal party Ciudadanos and the far-right Vox.
The head of the Madrid region carried out a populist campaign that provoked public frustration with the coronavirus blocking restrictions imposed by the socialist national government.
While opponents of the 42-year-old tried to label her as a Spanish Donald Trump plummeting with the far right, her ability to reach voters has impressed other European conservatives.
“He speaks very directly in an understandable 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 resonant.”
Díaz AyusoThis week’s electoral success was a low point for Europe’s major center-right and Christian Democrat parties, whose identity crisis will be the dominant theme in a crucial election year.
“Everyone has talked about the decline of social democracy, but I would say the crisis of Christian democracy is the most important,” said Jan-Werner Müller, a professor of politics at Princeton University. “If you ask yourself what Christian democracy means most people won’t know.”
Germany’s Christian Democrats are following the Greens in opinion polls ahead of the September federal election, with the CDU bases seemingly unenthusiastic about the leadership of Armin Laschet, who is running to succeed Angela Merkel as chancellor.
The party is far-fetched for collaborating with the far-right Alternative for Germany party at the regional level, with growing pressure in the east to abandon its sanitary cord against cooperation.
In France, there are center-right Republicans confusion after its 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. But many Republicans suspect Macron, who has shifted to the right over law and order, has tried to undermine them ahead of next year’s presidential contest, where his best chance of re-election lies in a revenge with far-right leader Marine Le Pen.
Xavier Bertrand, the main Republican presidential candidate, described Macron as a “cold calculator, a destroyer,” in a interview last week with the newspaper Le Figaro.
In Italy, Forza Italia is a shadow of its old self, and only 7% voted for it. It has been replaced as the main party of the right-wing government by the Nationalist League.
League leader Matteo Salvini has recently moved to the center, softening his Euroscepticism and supporting the government of Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank.
The League also risks being so flanked for a party to his right, the Brothers of Italy. The fate of Draghi’s government may depend on Salvini, who was one of the first senior European politicians to praise Diaz Ayuso’s victory.
Paradoxically, center-right problems come as public sentiment in Europe seems to be moving to the right. A to study by the thought group Fondation Pour L’Innovation Politique found that 39% of voters in France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom were on the right of the political spectrum, compared to 27% on the left and 20% in the center.
But with the notable exception of the British Conservatives, they did significant gains in this week’s local elections, despite a decade in power, major parties are struggling to channel that sentiment, unlike their new far-right competitors.
“All traditional parties are being challenged by political businessmen capable of mobilizing on certain issues that are not well-ordered in the center-right staff, such as immigration, European integration, anti-Islamism and saving Christianity,” he said. say Catherine de Vries, professor of political science at Bocconi University. “It’s very difficult for the center-right because these issues often divide their traditional coalition.”
A recurring theme will be the extent to which major European parties risk damage to reputation by working with far-right “challenging parties,” said Fabio Wolkenstein, an assistant professor at Aarhus University. “Fewer and fewer countries will be able to sustain the sanitary cord [against the far-right] you see Germany, ”he added.
Diaz Ayuso has said she is open to governing with Vox – although her party has in theory ruled it out nationally – but she has done well enough to lead Madrid without a formal coalition.
The theme of his “Freedom” campaign to make a living and enjoy the city’s famous nightlife against the demands of a arrogant, left-wing government played well with working-class voters, as well as with the cured supporters of the PP.
“It was an election that was fought in the bars,” said Camino Mortera-Martinez, of the Center for European Reform, who believes it would be difficult to replicate elsewhere in Spain, let alone in Europe. “The position of Díaz Ayuso adopted completely destroyed party lines. It was borderline populist if not completely populist.
José Ignacio Torreblanca, head of the Madrid office of the European Foreign Relations Council, said that although the left tried to paint Díaz Ayuso as Trump “he is more of a Reaganite, capable of producing banal statements but also to exploit the emotions of people tired of the crisis ”.
“He is aware of the fact that ideologically there is a deep trench between the PP and Vox,” he said, citing climate change and gay marriage as examples.
Torreblanca also noted that while he likes far-right voters, his election gains came mainly from the collapse of Ciudadanos. The Spanish right is now divided in two ways instead of three.
“Its success has been to begin to unite law. But he did not annihilate Vox. So the problem remains, ”he said.
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