Is Europe edging left?

François Valentin and Jorge González-Gallarza | 4th February 2022 | Uncategorised

A stunning socialist victory at Portugal’s snap election on Sunday is a boost for the centre-left in Western Europe

"Ó mar salgado, quanto do teu sal São lágrimas de Portugal!” (Oh salty sea, so much of whose salt is Portugal’s tears!) Verses like this one by the acclaimed 20th century poet, translator and critic Fernando Pessoa were somberly recited in Portugal throughout the early 2010s. In these years the country battled through a bruising cycle of financial insolvency, economic downturn and fiscal austerity. In the midst of the gloomiest outlook of the state’s democracy (established in 1974), Pessoa’s melancholic poetry mirrored the mood of the crisis-stricken nation. The country’s deficit grew dire, panicking the government at the time, Portugal’s largest centre-right party the Social Democratic Party (PSD). To prevent an insolvency on its debt, in 2011 the Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho secured a bailout worth €78 billion from the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). At the same time, he introduced a draconian austerity package of steep tax hikes and salary cuts ...

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