Extract from Andy Beckett's article in The Guardian

in Britain and most comparable countries the left is not thriving. Quite the opposite. The Brown government's mild tilt to the left has made it no more popular. At the European elections in June, left-leaning parties, whether in office or opposition, cautious or militant, were trounced across the continent. Votes went instead to mainstream conservative parties or far right and anti- immigration groups. Over the summer the broader political debate, particularly in Britain, has shifted in the same direction: "The crisis of the financial markets has become a crisis of public spending – it's incredible!" says Hilary Wainwright, editor of leftwing magazine Red Pepper. "Public servants are going to be scrutinised down to the last paperclip, while bankers are not going to be scrutinised down to the last million they have received from the government."

Has the left missed its moment? The radical American writer Rebecca Solnit fears so. "It felt like last October [the peak of the banking panic] was the golden moment to put forward an alternative vision," she says. "What's been dismaying is that there has been so little coherent response from the left since." Lawson wonders whether the sheer size of the political opportunity presented by the financial crisis has induced paralysis: "All our Christmases have come at once, but we don't know what to do about it."

via guardian.co.uk

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