Europe: a primer

An unintended side-effect of the European project is that it's become a lot easier to compare national politics across between different countries. So, I got on Wikipedia and did that.

Because political parties have to work together in the European Parliament, they gather together in groups or alliances with similar goals.

First, to explain what I did: I looked at the parties in each parliament. Although Europe has slightly more bicameral parliaments that unicameral, it's normally the case that the Upper House is either not elected (as in the UK), or has only ceremonial powers, or is basically the cabinet. In the few examples of equal power, I took the sum of both houses.

Then, I lined them up left to right and colour-coded them according to which group they are part of in the European Parliament. Let's take a look at the picture, then go through the groups.

Click through for a full-sized version

Incidentally, I've used bright colours and bolding for parties in government, and paler colours and italics for parties in Opposition. It has not been a good few years for the Left in Europe.

The PES is the Party of European Socialists. This is where you'll find people like Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Zapatero of Spain, and Papandreou of Greece. I like to think that most centre and left-wing Democrats, had they been born in Europe instead of America, would probably be in one of these parties.

In Europe, most people take Socialism to mean Social Democracy or Social Capitalism or some other hyphenated form and thus, unlike in America, it is not normally spelled in block capitals with three exclamation marks.

People who do still think of socialism in terms of class-warfare and public ownership of the means of production tend to be part if the United European Left. The "United" is generally a minsnomer (except generally in Cyprus). I've been told that the People's Front of Judea sketch is a satire on the fractious left. That seems plausible- even after the Labour consolidation of the late 90s we in Britain still have the Socialist Party, Socialist Alliance, Socialist Alternative, Socialist Workers Party, Socialist resistance and the Communist Party of Great Britain, not even counting Respect or the various people who just put their trade union down as their party on the application form. This is where you'd find Arthur Scargill and George Galloway. I can;t think of any American examples more recent than Eugene Debs.

The European mainstream centre-Right is represented by the European People's Party. Their background is Christian Democracy. They're actually not that opposed to redistribution of wealth, though they come from a background where the support network means Family and Church, rather than Union and State. They're opposed to things like state recognition of same-sex marriages, and still use phrases like "born out of wedlock". I'd say Americans would call these people family-values conservatives, along with some law-and-order and Patriotic conservatives.

The EPP is where you'll find people like Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Silvio Berlusconi. However, there are no British parties that really fit into it.

The Conservatives left the EPP because a defining feature of the group is that everyone in it is very much in favour of European integration. But then, they don't want to go all the way over into the Freedom and Democracy Group. Why? because the EFD consists of parties whose portfolios are pasted-together articles from the Daily Express (that is, anti-europe conspiracy theories, regular conspiracy theories, and 1950s-style racism).

Incidentally, if the EFD are the people in the pub who you don't really like because you know at some point they're going to say "I'm not racist, but..." then the Non-Iscrits are the people who have already been barred. They are literally the people who no other MEPs are willing to make eye contact with in the corridors.)

So, the Conservatives have got together with parties from Poland the Czech Republic to form the Conservatives and Reformists group. The ECR is basically like the EPP, but wants the EU to be an alliance rather than a federation. You could also draw a distinction that they're more economically right-wing, favouring smaller government. Like the EPP, they're traditional conservatives, though possibly more law-and-order than god-and-family.

The third main group after the PES and the EPP/ECR conservatives is the Liberal group. Like our own Lib Dems, there's actually quite a range within this group. Some members of the group are economically left-wing, but find the Socialists too authoritarian; others are free-marketeers who find the Conservative flag-waving annoying; some are out-and-out Libertarians. In short, it contains Europe's Denis Kuchinich, it's Ron Paul, and it's Michael Bloomberg (though to be fair, it's mostly Bloombergs). Being in the middle, they tend to get into government a lot.

At various points in the political spectrum, you get the Green-European Free Alliance. Annoyingly, they combine Green parties (which is why it's the extreme left box on the UK bar) and regional parties, like the Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru (both closer, in everything but their desire for independence, to the PES group). I've tried to place those as best I can relative to the other parties in their country.

I'll probably take a few more posts to look at this chart again over the next few days, but for now I'm off to enjoy the bank holiday.