Fear and hate on the rise - 07/06/2009

Europe revives its old monsters

Europe has elected its angriest, most eurosceptic and xenophobic parliament ever - with a battalion of hard-right parties breaking through for the first time on a wave of anti-immigrant feeling and an unholy cocktail of both Islamophobia and anti-Semitism.

But while there is no denying the fury of the "angry middle-aged men" apparently responsible for electing the violent anti-Roma Jobbik party in Hungary, the BNP in Britain, Heinz-Christian Strache's Third Reich nostalgics in Austria and Geert Wilders Freedom Party in Holland - who alone on the extreme right is proud to call himself a Zionist - the new parliament will also have a caucus of new and surprising progressive voices.

Sweden's Pirate Party, who have campaigned for freer internet downloading and a loosening of copyright restrictions, have struck a chord among the young everywhere, and France's crusading anti-corruption magistrate Eva Joly - elected on the Green ticket - and her Italian opposite number Antonio Di Pietro are likely to hold many in Brussels and beyond it to account.

This is also a much more colourful and controversial parliament than the one that went before. If half of the parliament's accountability problem is its lack of visibility, a bit of personality surely has to be a good thing - granted, of course, that it does not turn into a theatre of hate. But even that unedifying prospect may prompt the majority of Europeans who did not bother to vote to do so the next time.

While the Greens have made significant gains in Sweden and France, there is no disguising that socialists and social democrats across Europe have taken a terribly drubbing - and this at a time when the liberal economic model they constantly warn against is in freefall. With the exception of Malta, Portugal and Greece, where Pasok made moderate gains against a right-wing government mired in corruption scandals, they are in retreat everywhere. Such are the ironies of politics. With around 180 seats in the new parliament, the once-dominant Socialist bloc is a shadow of its former self. Another election like this and they will be knocking on the doors of oblivion.

Overall, this is another huge victory for the right, with the European People's Party further strengthened its grip on the Brussels and Strasbourg assemblies. Almost everywhere, even where it is in government like France, it is on the rise, with a definite eurosceptic tinge emerging now in Austria as well as its traditional bastions of Denmark, the Czech Republic and Britain, where the UK Independence Party overtook Labour. But even here, the picture is much more nuanced than it seems at first glance. Poland's terrible twins Lech and Jaroslaw Kaczynski and their Law and Justice Party failed to win votes for the first time in their careers from blatant anti-German rabble rousing, and Declan Ganley, the millionaire leader of Libertas, the Europe-wide eurosceptic party, will wake up significantly poorer and without a seat to his name. He spent particularly heavily in Ireland, the Czech Republic and Poland - where he backed an openly anti-Semitic party with wall-to-wall TV advertising - but has nothing to show for it. Early this morning, facing a humiliating defeat, he claimed 10,000 votes had "gone missing" in the Irish constituency he was standing in, and demanded a recount. A recount, which by all accounts, will only delay the inevitable.

Europe's mood is uglier than it has been for many decades. Hardline nationalists are now a force in Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Malta. Britain has just elected its first fascist to any parliament since the 1930s, even if his party has rebranded itself as the defender of a Christian Europe against a Muslim menace - a message that several mainstream parties have made dangerous play of to ward off their own hard right. Last night people began to take to the streets of Manchester and Leeds to protest (pictured) as it became clear the the British National Party's leader Nick Griffin, a Holocaust denier, would take a second seat. How many of them had actually voted earlier in the day is a moot point.