When everything is passed, the future does not happen
How long has we not heard something new and mobilizing from the democratic left in Europe? The moderate left crisis is a reality: in many countries, socialist parties have lost strength, ideas, and in some cases disappeared. France is an example of this. Germany too. And even in the alleged “successful cases”, such as Spain, economic growth does not result from government policies, but from the country’s intrinsic capacity-which, it is noted, has lived for three years without approved budget.
The left was crystallized in a response to the financial crises of the past. He was attached to an ideological narrative that does not dialogue with the real needs of societies. In Portugal, this rigidity is visible. The ‘geringonça’ had a profound impact: ideologized the PS, dragging it to the radical left and driving it away from the reformist political center, where most of the Portuguese are.
The result? A repetitive and exhausted agenda: to tax wealth, combat precariousness, defend the social state, promote minority equality, and accept global circulation without recognizing the huge challenges of migration. All this without giving priority to the creation of wealth, the investment in added value sectors and the valorization of qualified work.
Left responses to citizens’ problems are fragile. In health, education, the living conditions of young people, solutions are lacking and ideology left. An educational system was created at two speeds and imposed an identity agenda, disconnected from the reality of the majority. The environment has become a flag of impoverishment, forgetting the enormous potential of green technologies and renewable energy to relaunch European economy and industry.
António Costa’s phrase – « The government falls on the day you need the PSD votes to approve a budget, » he says: the left has given up dialogue. He closed in his world, convinced that the moderate right would eventually give in to the far right, when, in fact, it is at the center that democracies are built.
Today, more than ever, we need dialogue, practical solutions and structural reforms. Citizens want political stability, economic growth, quality public services and a future with opportunities. They don’t want to radicalism. Radicalization can cheer up militants, but it removes voters.
Paradoxically, the moderate right needs an equally moderate left, open to dialogue and a modern view of society. But when reading the PS program, in the middle of pre-campaign, we did not find this ambition. Lack vision, lack present and, above all, future lack.
At a time when Europe needs confidence, growth, defense of democracy, appreciation of work and people, the PS presents us with a backward agenda. And when everything is passed, the future does not happen.
