Trudeau, Biden and Ardern are done. What’s eating the global left?

When Justin Trudeau announced he was stepping down as prime minister of Canada this week, a career that had loomed large suddenly appeared shrunken and slight. After coming to power in 2015 as a progressive prince – a champion of multiculturalism, feminism and action on climate change – Trudeau was departing as a widely loathed, and even ridiculed, figure. With elections due next year, Trudeau was trailing his conservative rival Pierre Poilievre by up to 20 points and facing almost certain defeat.

In itself, Trudeau’s departure was not remarkable. He had been in power for almost a decade, and it was hardly surprising that Canadians would grow tired of him and seek out someone new. Through a global lens, however, the struggles of Trudeau and his centre-left Liberal Party look far from a specifically Canadian phenomenon. Across the Western world, left-wing parties are struggling for relevance as the populist right surges in popularity.

South of the Canadian border, Democrats are still coming to terms with the fact that Donald Trump won not just the electoral college but more votes than Kamala Harris. As well as the presidency, Republicans control both houses of Congress. In Britain, Labour leader Keir Starmer should be enjoying a honeymoon with voters after the departure of his shambolic Tory predecessors six months ago. Instead, a YouGov poll this week found 63 per cent of voters disapprove of Starmer’s government while just 16 per cent approve. Nigel Farage’s anti-immigrant right-wing Reform party is now polling close to Labour and the Conservatives, a reminder that the rise of populism is disrupting the traditional centre-right as well as the centre-left.

Across the European Union, centre-left governments are in power in only a handful of nations. In Germany, Chancellor Olaf Scholz of the Social Democratic Party looks set to be swept from power in February, with the far-right Alternative for Deutschland (AfD) party expected to make historic gains. The far-right is poised to take power in Austria for the first time since World War II after winning more votes than any other party in last year’s elections. The centre-left social democratic grouping now holds 136 out of 720 seats in the European Parliament, down from 185 a decade ago.

A conservative coalition is in power in New Zealand after Labour leader Jacinda Ardern stepped down, her once heady levels of popularity having evaporated.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will be hoping to swim against the tide when he faces voters in an election due by May. But his personal popularity has plummeted since his first year in office and Labor’s primary vote is at historically low levels. Australia may be an island, but is not immune to the systemic forces sweeping global politics.

“Social democratic parties across the world are in disarray and I think there is a reluctance among many on the left to look at the real reasons for that,” says Emma Dawson, head of the progressive Per Capita think tank.

Public intellectual Clive Hamilton, who founded the left-wing Australia Institute but has broken with some on that side over identity politics, argues “there is clearly something profound going on” in global politics.

“There’s no doubt that social democratic parties are struggling to sustain their votes,” Hamilton says. “They are definitely on the nose for large parts of the electorate.”

The fundamental reason, he argues, is that we live in an “age of anger” – and the populist right is doing a far better job harnessing that anger for political gain. Hamilton says the French word ressentiment, a term popularised by philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century, embodies the era we live in.

“Ressentiment describes feelings of hostility and resentment and even vengefulness against those seen to be the source of one’s frustrations,” he says. “I think that very well describes the surge of support for the right – especially the far-right – in Europe and the United States.”

Voters around the world, he says, are fed up with the destabilising effects of globalisation and the rise of inequality and are looking for radical solutions. Having embraced free market economics in the 1980s, he says centre-left parties are struggling to sell themselves as the answer.

Tom Switzer, executive director of the right-wing Centre for Independent Studies think tank, identifies four key factors behind the “conservative wave” that is crashing across the developed world.

First, he points to the economy: specifically, high inflation and declining living standards. Surging prices after the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine have made life difficult for incumbents around the world, regardless of their disposition. But some right-wing leaders – like Giorgia Meloni in Italy and Javier Milei in Argentina – stand out for achieving political success in this environment.

Second, Switzer lists rising hostility to mass migration. Anger at unauthorised arrivals across the US southern border helped Trump return to the White House and a backlash to migration has driven support for populist parties in Europe. This includes Germany, which is still grappling with former chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to allow 1 million asylum seekers to enter Germany a decade ago.

Hamilton agrees, saying “migration is a profoundly important fracture within the polities of all Western countries”.

He points to the contrasting fortunes of the main centre-left parties in neighbouring Sweden and Denmark. Danish social democratic leader Mette Frederiksen, who has been in power since 2019, has prospered by coupling progressive economic policies with a strict approach to migration, including saying that Denmark should have “zero spontaneous asylum seekers”. Meanwhile, the more pro-immigration Swedish Social Democrats lost power in 2022 to a coalition of populist and centre-right parties.

In Australia, the debate about asylum seekers arriving by boat no longer dominates politics, but both major parties are competing for who can slash net overseas migration numbers – including by reducing the number of foreign students in the country. “I think the debate over the impact of migration on the housing crisis, whilst a significant problem, is really a proxy for broader anxieties about the rate of change of Australia,” Hamilton says.

Third, Switzer argues there is a brewing backlash to ambitious climate change policies favoured by progressive governments. As well as cutting migration, the German far-right AfD is campaigning against renewable energy and Canadian Conservative Party leader Poilievre has vowed to scrap Trudeau’s carbon tax.

Finally, Switzer identifies resistance to left-wing identity politics – including on issues such as race and transgender rights. “People are over the victimhood mentality that has been part of progressive politics,” he argues. One of the most impactful advertisements of the US election campaign ran with the tagline “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you”. Democrats are now having a lively debate about whether the use of terms such as “people of colour”, “latinx” and “systemic racism” have alienated working-class voters.

Albanese, for his part, has tried to avoid culture war debates and focus on the economy, including by ruling out new census questions on intersex status.

Hamilton links Albanese’s decline in popularity to the failure of the Indigenous Voice to parliament referendum, which suburban and regional voters decisively rejected. “He did it for the right moral reasons, but people saw it as a woke barrow he was trying to push on them.” Declaring that “the tide is turning on woke ideology”, Hamilton says the modern left too often comes across as priggish and censorious. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg this week announced that he would scrap fact-checking on his platform and loosen limits on hate speech, calling November’s presidential election a “cultural tipping point” for free expression. Meanwhile, Trump ally Elon Musk has turned X, formerly known as Twitter, into a platform he uses to promote right-wing causes and intervene in elections abroad.

Former Victorian Labor strategist Kos Samaras, who now runs polling firm Redbridge, says: “The problem with the progressive side of politics is it’s taken on the mantra of the establishment in an era when the establishment is blamed for a lot of the woes in society. It lacks the sort of firebrand, aggressive leaders of the 20th century who would speak their minds and were not worried about upsetting certain vested interests. The left has effectively become the establishment.”

Samaras echoes American journalist George Packer, who argued in The Atlantic last month that “Democrats have become the party of institutionalists” and that much of the party’s base is “metropolitan, credentialled, economically comfortable, and pro-government”.

Trump, Packer argued, went to voters offering “disruption, chaos, and contempt; [Harris] offered a tax break for small businesses. He spoke for the alienated; she spoke for the status quo”.

Dawson, a self-described “policy nerd”, says there is much to admire about Albanese and Joe Biden’s policies, including on investments in green energy and Albanese’s overhaul of the stage 3 tax cuts. But, in a fractious and fragmented communications environment, she says progressive incrementalism is not cutting it. “They are presenting a technocratic list of small changes that people aren’t yet feeling in their daily life,” she says.

She argues a far more muscular approach to politics is needed, including picking fights on issues such as inheritance taxes and housing affordability. “It’s pretty clear to me that if left or progressive parties want to win they have to stop tinkering with a system that is clearly engineered against the people they are supposed to represent,” Dawson says.

Samaras, who grew up in working-class Broadmeadows in Melbourne’s northern suburbs, says recent polling by his firm shows a third of voters identify themselves in the political centre, another third right of centre, almost a quarter left of centre. He warns that progressive parties are increasingly dominated by university-educated activists from the inner city, which leaves them culturally disconnected from much of the electorate.

While Dutton has yet to present a detailed economic plan, Samaras says he scored points by harnessing community disgruntlement at big business. Dutton last year attacked Woolworths for no longer stocking special Australia Day-themed merchandise, leading Labor to accuse him of being divisive and stoking a culture war. A year later, Woolworths announced it would again sell Australia Day-themed products. Meanwhile, Albanese has resisted calls to break up the two major supermarket chains while pursuing less dramatic reform, such as changes to the grocery code of conduct.

Samaras says the left needs to refashion itself as a force for populist disruption rather than as a defender of the status quo. “The left in general has taken its eye off its number-one priority in the 20th century, which was the economic empowerment of low-income constituencies,” he says. “Progressive centre-left parties, including in Australia, need to become more radical on the economic front, otherwise they will suffer the consequences we are seeing around the world.”

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