> The reality is that the left parties actually did better than in the last
> election, but the vote was so splintered that they allowed a conservative
> and a fascist to go to the run-off. The far Right is taking power across
> Europe and the US over the splintered factions to their left.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/22/international/europe/22JOSP.html
April 22, 2002
Jospin's Loss Reveals a Left That Is Losing Its Platform By ALAN RIDING
[ . . . ]
But while Mr. Jospin assumed responsibility for his defeat by announcing his retirement from politics, the setback represented more than the electorate's tepid reaction to his unexciting campaigning style. It also reflected how Europe's parties of the left are constrained by the market rules of the European Union from pleasing their traditional constituencies.
One of the loudest complaints in the recent campaign here was that Mr. Jospin, on the left, and Mr. Chirac, on the Gaullist right, were offering similar centrist programs.
[ . . . ]
What was still more damaging to Mr. Jospin, however, was disenchantment with what were perceived as his pro-market policies. That apparently led many traditional socialist voters to look further to the left, giving two Trotskyite candidates 10.3 percent of votes between them and fragmenting the rest of the leftist votes among candidates of other small leftist and Green parties.
Tonight, Arlette Laguiller, the perennial Trotskyite candidate of the Workers' Struggle party, who won 6.3 percent, blamed Mr. Jospin for betraying the left. She denied he was defeated by fragmentation of the leftist vote; rather, she said, the fragmentation was in reaction to Mr. Jospin's abandonment of socialist policies.
[ . . . ]
mark