...What is happening? The short answer is "austerity". Mass dissatisfaction with the major parties is tied to pessimism about the economy, and a view that the country is headed in the wrong direction. Living standards are sliding in all of the core capitalist economies, but most of all in those countries where austerity has been most advanced – Greece and Ireland. There is a bipartisan consensus in most of these nations' parliaments in favour of some form of austerity politics, despite its unpopularity.

One might expect social democratic parties to take a different approach, to mobilise their constituencies around a defence of public services and social security. But their long years of complicity in managing neoliberalism means they are unable to think of an alternative to spending cuts. In opposition, they offer gradual and responsible austerity, but they still mean to cut, and cut deep. In government, the emphasis shifts from gradual to deep. This inability to pose the alternative is what leaves Miliband and his shadow cabinet floundering....