The 7-year itch: Europe’s elite face judgment in 2015…(Long Rope Futures!!)
Bryan MacDonald
RT.com
January 02, 2015
Seven years after the ‘Great Financial Crash’ destroyed many European economies and left the rest anemic, 2015 will be the year its political ramifications are fully felt.
The continent faces a political earthquake as long standing elites will finally tumble.
Anybody who is married or in a long term relationship will know all about the concept of the ‘7-year itch.’ Hopefully most will find or found it easy to scratch. However, 7 years after the crash of 2008 placed much of Europe under the jackboot of German-led austerity; it’s not so much psoriasis as a rage that engulfs the continent. Forthcoming elections in key states have the potential to change the European project forever and maybe even end it altogether.
Almost all European countries have followed a very similar post-war/post-autocratic rule political pattern. The two main parties are almost uniformly a centre-right and a centre-left grouping that trade governance every 5-10 years. Think Britain’s Conservatives and Labour and Germany’s CDU and SPD. Alongside these, there are usually smaller parties who occasionally hold the balance of power, commit to coalition with a bigger partner and are slowly strangled by having to take unpopular decisions in government. Many don’t even survive the experience and ultimately fade away.
The general rule has been that the smaller bracket in multi-party administrations has suffered more at the next election than the bigger unit. This is obviously due to the weaker grouping having to concede more policy positions. An excellent current example is in London where the Liberal Democrats have, in 4 years, gone from the crest of a wave to struggling for any relevance at all.
This stable governance has been the main pillar of the EU’s rise and expansion. If a member state changes Tweedledee, it’s for Tweedledum and both are pro-Brussels. Stuffed with careerist politicians, who know which side their bread is buttered on, neither the nominally right nor the nominally left side of the divide is likely to upset the ‘European project.’ This is about to change. Radically.
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