Long Read: Mainstream right in Western Europe: challenging times; trouble ahead?

Now, one might have assumed that the corollary of the decline of social democracy would be the rise of parties belonging to the mainstream right – in other words, the conservative, Christian democratic and (market) liberal parties that have always sold themselves as strong supporters of capitalist economies and, certainly in the first two cases, of ‘traditional’ values. [...] Now that she has departed and the SPD is the largest force in the new ruling coalition, what is to stop the Christian Democrats going the way of their much diminished counterparts in other countries across the continent? One response, of course, is to follow their Austrian sister-party in its willingness to partner up in government with the far right. [...] Some, however, would argue that the strategy was taken too far in response to the rise of the populist radical right party, UKIP, and its successor, the Brexit Page 9/18 Party, resulting in the UK leaving the EU – not something that the majority of employers (or indeed employees) wanted. [...] In fact, under the leadership of Mark Rutte, the VVD in the Netherlands has, at least for the moment, succeeded in picking up votes and holding on to office, but at the cost of supporting ideas and policies that are at odds with key aspects of the silent revolution and therefore the agenda that, in theory at least, one would expect from a liberal party. [...] This involves the acceptance and even endorsement of some of the values of the silent counter-revolution, to the point that we should seriously question the extent to which, going forward, these parties can safely be categorised as mainstream right – in much the same way as the various parties formed by Silvio Berlusconi in Italy cannot, even if they were never far right outfits in the mould of hi.