It should have been a great decade for the European left – what happened? | Cédric Durand

From Syriza's betrayal to the normalisation of austerity across Europe, it's been a series of harsh lessons for progressive forces

The financial crisis defined the European decade. It was the child of neoliberal policies, sketched by economists like Milton Friedman and rolled out by leaders like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. A long wave of deregulation eventually gave rise to a financial tsunami, which put the system on the verge of collapse. In a few weeks during the autumn of 2008, money flows froze, paralysing trade and investment internationally, which trickled down to erode workers' wages and employment conditions. The unfolding of events comforted the left's ideological worldview. But it's clear as day that the left's politics did not prevail.

In the first half of the 2010s, the tide was rising for progressive forces. The victory of Syriza in Greece, the surge of Podemos in Spain and the presidential campaign of Jean-Luc Mi(C)lenchon in France made it possible to believe that the future belonged to the left.

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