Social democrats need a new understanding of the historic compromises that are necessary for the practice of power.

The German election defeat followed on from losses for social democratic parties in the European Parliament elections. To be sure, socialists kept power in Portugal and Norway, but without a majority of votes. And PASOK’s win in Greece was based on a new politics, of criticising state bureaucracy and pledging support for small businesses, in place of old-style statist clientilism.

At a regional or city level the left can win power. But this is less and less the case at state government level. The democratic left is challenged by other parties that claim to represent its values or its electorate. The national-populists in the anti-European parties of the xenophobic right attract many of their voters from the white working class. The anti-capitalist parties of the populist left attract some of the proletariat, and workers protected in public service unions. The anti-industry parties of the greens also steal many progressive votes.

So why is social democracy currently in crisis? Firstly, it has always been an error to assume that economic crisis is good for the left. When citizens are scared for their jobs and salaries, or the future of their children, they vote defensively and stay with conservatives. So the left must have a more sophisticated analysis of the new economy. Denunciation of neoliberalism or the rich or capitalism sounds good on a platform but does not offer a way forward. Without a deep understanding of the new materiality which people experience in many different ways, the left simply repeats the slogans of the last century, which are not relevant today.

Secondly, social democracy talks global but behaves nationally. While capital and culture and communications are now transnational, the organisation of left politics is unable to escape the prison of the nation. The democratic left must have a theory of the nation and its relation to geo-economic, geo-ecological and geo-political upheavals. The European Union, for example, must be the servant of the national citizens of Europe, not the replacement or grave-digger of the nation.

Third, social democracy must decide if it likes protest and propositions or if it desires power. Twentieth-century social democracy has many achievements. But too many of its ideas were put into practice by the right. The statisation of the economy, and the creation of the welfare state during the three decades of mixed economy and social state that were shaped after the war, arose from ideas of the left but were implemented by the right – de Gaulle in France, Adenauer in Germany, the Christian Democrats in Italy, the Conservatives in Britain. Today the left is full of ideas and conferences but seems uninterested in the supreme task of politics – the conquest of power. That requires historic compromises – with market economics, with the nation, and with voters. Instead, the democratic left in Europe preaches protest, while the democratic right has a practice of power.

The democratic left needs policies that connect to people not to metropolitan elites organising endless conferences. As parties of workers they must find an answer to the trade union question. European unions are no longer major players in the capitalist labour market. They operate in the public sector. For the wage of the public sector worker to go up more taxes must be paid. This means the income of the citizen goes down. There are more small businesses in Britain and France than unionised workers in private companies. Reform, indeed the rebirth, of trade unions should be a priority.

One cannot divorce politics and personality. The left lacks convincing leaders, but leaders must be convinced and confident themselves. This is not the case in many countries. There may be some hope in Nordic nations, where a new generation of younger women leaders are shaping a twenty-first century social democracy – in place of twentieth-century statist socialists who are not really convinced by the historic compromises of social democracy in the style of Willy Brandt or Felipe Gonzalez. Good leaders arise from a party ready to change. Labour, for example, has to move beyond the Third Way pieties of the early 1990s. Until the parties of social democracy are ready for change the leaders will not appear. Europe’s social democratic parties, including Labour, need to change for the twenty-first century. But repeating the incantations of the past is so much easier.