The right has gotten a lot smarter, and realises it cannot attack its own base - often retired people - by threatening social expenditures.

It's odd how this has never been true in the US. The radical kooky right has won precisely because it attacked its own base - and the base supported the attacks with a hearty cheer, while sawing its own branch off the tree while sitting on it.

I'm not sure how many people, even in Europe, are able to understand the reality of the link between higher taxation, higher prosperity for the majority, social investment, social support, and public spending.

Instead everything has been boiled down to 'taxes, bad - no taxes, good', with a side order of 'More Jobs™" when public support for an issue is looking a little ragged.

It's poodle politics - mammals trained to salivate on cue when a bell rings.

It's interesting as applied psychology, but depressing as practical policy.

That the left has ceased to exist is a matter of little dispute

And I should really say the "mainstream left" here.

There is still a left, but the fucking fifth column third-wayers are more busy fighting against their left flank than their right flank. And so the wingnuts on the right can spin the centre-left as unserious, irresponsible and outside the mainstream.

Meanwhile, on the right wing, they embrace wingnuts who belong in a padded cell as serious, reality-based analysts who tell people the hard truth and present the unpalatable choices. They don't fight against their right flank - because unlike the third-wayers, the right wing know perfectly well who their enemies are.

Weimar all over again...

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

Also, enrolling supposedly lefties politicians to carry out the dirty deeds, like Blair. In France, Sarkozy has become a master at both the "progressive" rhetoric (to the point where he's alienating his most conservative base) and at luring personalities from the left to carry out the dirty deeds (Besson at immigration, Kouchner at foreign policy,...) and who will ultimately get the blame.

Reminds me of that fellow who argued here that "ideology is dead", that Sarkozy's policies are not right wing but "pragmatic",  and arguing endlessly in 300+ comments threads (Only Jake could keep the distance).

As you pointed out yourself, this is one pretty neat hat trick (tour de passe-passe) whose purpose is two-fold:

• Push the right wing policies without making them look as such.
  
• Neutralize the left opposition: "look: we have progressive policies"

But the Right famously does fuck-you individualism and stupidity, with a side order of venality, opportunism, and sexual perversion. Arguably the biggest difference between the Thatcherite and Reaganite right was that the UK press never properly explored some of the things that Thatcher's cabinet did in their spare time.

Which is one reason why we're left with an idealised image of seriousness, marred by occasional let-the-side-down types like Alan Clark, Jeffrey Archer, and Saint Aitken, who were all tragic and exceptional exiles from the moral high ground held by central office.

People in the 70s still remembered Profumo. Does anyone believe that kind of thing stopped happening in the 80s and 90s?

NuLab are likely much the same, but have somehow never quite managed to appear distinguished about it - more bumbling, small time, and a bit eBay.

Some European right-wing parties do subscribe to solidarity, too. However, only in nationalist terms; and all the same it is a cover for class war from above.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}