TWO socialist governments that have long been part of the world political equation disappeared last weekend. In Australia on Saturday, Paul Keating’s Labour administration was swept away after 13 years in office. Then on Sunday Felipe Gonzlez’s socialist coalition lost power after a 14-year reign in Spain.
Both Keating and Gonzlez had been lucky to survive the last time their countries went to the polls in 1993. Both have now been firmly ejected three years later.
Australian Labour Party’s (ALP) success under Bob Hawke and Keating has been seen as a model for the reinvention of left-wing parties in the mid-1990s. The ALP’s key achievement was to know what it wanted and to take the long view about achieving it. It balanced liberal economics with equitable social policies when global orthodoxy said this was impossible. It recognised the need for partnership with trade unions when that was out of fashion too. It put itself at the forefront of modern thinking in many fields, supporting native Australian rights and setting Australia on a course that could still make the nation a republic, in spite of Labour’s defeat.
Just as in Australia, the left in Spain has been the modernising force in that country’s politics. That has been particularly true of the Gonzlez era, which has comprised 14 of the 19 years of Spain’s post-Franco democracy. The socialists have presided over the economic transformation of Spain, its reintegration into European and world structures, the devolution of power to the provinces and, above all, the transition from fascism to democracy.
Many will conclude that the defeats of two of the world’s more resilient left-wing governments underline a wider crisis for socialism elsewhere. A more obvious explanation for the defeats is that voters were ready for a change. It is difficult to win re-election after being in power for more than a decade. Parties like the British Tories should remember that before they crow.