The existential angst of Europe’s left Largely bereft of leadership and new ideas, it’s easy to conclude that Europe’s left has been in a near comatose slumber for at least a decade. Nor are there many strong signs of a reawakening. Some hoped that Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s social democrat-led coalition in Germany would change that. But polling suggests that Scholz’s party is already toxically unpopular and stands little chance of winning a second term. The broader picture is not entirely gloomy. Polling suggests that the Socialist group will again finish second to the European People’s Party in next June’s European Parliament elections, but that the margin between the two could be the smallest for nearly 20 years. Those who thought that Europe’s green parties would progressively replace social democrats as the leading party of the centre-left have, in most cases, been disappointed. In Germany, Spain and elsewhere, when progressive coalitions form, they are typically led by social democrats. But the left still faces a more existential question: what are they for? The economic crisis of 2008-2012 wrought huge damage on social democrats across Europe. Whether willingly or by force they adopted austerity budgets that made them, on economic policy at least, more conservative than the conservatives. The so-called ‘social model’ has still not recovered. Centre-left parties are now leading the campaign to reform the EU’s fiscal rules to make them more accommodating of infrastructure spending, particularly on the green energy transition. One of the big ideological shifts on the left has been the focus on climate change and energy policy. Climate policy is one of the most important issues for people thinking about voting social democrat. At an event launching a policy programme drafted by the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, the social democratic thinktank in Germany, speakers stressed how the just energy transition most combine prosperity, along with high quality, unionised jobs, and laws that encourage the green industrial transformation. However, that often leaves social democrats and greens dipping in the same vote share. In any case, imagining that the left can be revived by putting the word ‘green’ with ‘social’ looks like wishful thinking. The problem for the centre-left is that they don’t appear to offer much more. On asylum and migration policy, meanwhile, there is a dwindling number of progressive parties that take a human-rights based approach. Most have aped the tough rhetoric of Giorgia Meloni and others, while others have introduced new border checks. The Danish government was the first to explore the idea of outsourcing asylum processing to Rwanda. Similar campaign language has emerged in Germany in recent weeks, where former Die Linke rebel Sahra Wagenknecht’s new party is offering a diet of big state socialism and social conservatism on LGBTQ rights and migration. It adds up to a confused and confusing picture. European socialists have developed a tendency to define themselves by what they are not, such Viktor Orban and Marine Le Pen. On its own, that’s not enough. | 
