A European version of the "Southern Strategy"?

What I'm looking for is a major party realignment in terms of regional or possibly class allegiance, like the switch of the American South from a Democrat to a Republican stronghold, in one of the bigger European countries.

In Europe, there are regions which would still in majority vote for a respective party even if a fox was their leading candidate: for instance, the industrial North-Western regions of England have been voting Labour for about 100 years, the South German states are Christian Democrat core territory. How could a major realignment be done? An interesting development would also to make descendants of immigrants - so far, considered a vote bank for centre-left/social democratic party voters - switch to conservative centre-right parties.

One could argue that Marine Le Pen's Front National is pursuing such a shift right now, as she's making inroads in former working-class Socialist areas.
 
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"Well, you see, it's not that hard to achieve..."
 

Archibald

Banned
Sarkozy with the FN vote since, what, 2002, and his return to politics (look at the news tonight and you'll how see how this stupid game has conspired against the French Right (counter productive) and also against France as a whole.)

Now excuse me but I have to vomit :mad:
 
Sarkozy with the FN vote since, what, 2002, and his return to politics (look at the news tonight and you'll how see how this stupid game has conspired against the French Right (counter productive) and also against France as a whole.)

Now excuse me but I have to vomit :mad:

Although traditionally, the centre-right parties and the far-right have often been fishing in the same waters. In Germany, CSU leader Franz-Josef Strauß once said that there should never be a democratic party to the right of the CSU, his successor Stoiber said "to the right of us, there should only be a wall". So Sarkozy did a similar thing with the UMP: pandering to the far-right and adopting their policies in order to get their votes.

I think the Front National under Jean-Marie Le Pen targeted the "old" middle-classes and also expressed open antisemitism and Vichy nostalgia. His daugher is trying out new things and takes the FN on a more populist route: more emphasis on the dangers of Islam, more focus on the working class and Hollande's supposed "neoliberalism". The latter seems like a strategy to score brownie points among traditional Socialist voters.
 
The "southern strategy" also relied on the Democrats angering the south, so our hypothetical "stratégie du sud" would need the socialists to do something that will really piss off a section of voters. Though if you want descendants of immigrants, the FN is out; you want Les Républicains. That's going to take LR changing some of the old UPM policies as well.

Off the top of my head: the Socialists attempt to improve the poorer suburbs and their drive has a toxic blend of incompetence and patronising paternalism, while Les Républicains promise they'd leave you alone because you know what's better for you than Big Government.
 

New Labour is of a different breed, though. They tried to win back the floating voter in the middle, a similar strategy later adopted by Gerhard Schröder in Germany with the reforms initiated by a Social Democrat-Green coalition. In the end, the "Third Way" approach led to both of them appealing to the centre, but losing some of their core constituencies to more left-wing parties: Labour lost Scotland to the SNP, the SPD many areas of East Germany to PDS/The Left. However, Labour is still going strong in north-West England, so is the SPD in the urban areas of North Rhine Westphalia. I'd say that both Scotland and East Germany could be considered as "swing states" with a centre-left recent history, and we don't know yet whether the SNP / Left surge will continue and what will follow. With Corbyn, Labour now seems to go for a "back to basics" approach.


The "southern strategy" also relied on the Democrats angering the south, so our hypothetical "stratégie du sud" would need the socialists to do something that will really piss off a section of voters. Though if you want descendants of immigrants, the FN is out; you want Les Républicains. That's going to take LR changing some of the old UPM policies as well.

Off the top of my head: the Socialists attempt to improve the poorer suburbs and their drive has a toxic blend of incompetence and patronising paternalism, while Les Républicains promise they'd leave you alone because you know what's better for you than Big Government.

I think the Tories tried that in the UK with their "right to buy" scheme, which also tried to attract better-off working-class and immigrant families. They even had this campaign ad with a black man on it and the slogan "Labour says he black. Conservatives say he's British". This didn't work for several reasons, one of them being that they were still the party of Enoch "Rivers of Blood" Powell. So if the UMP/Les Républicains would propose a "road to success and wealth" roadmap to the kids in the banlieues, people still would remember Sarkozy's "Kärcher" verdict.
 
What I'm looking for is a major party realignment in terms of regional or possibly class allegiance, like the switch of the American South from a Democrat to a Republican stronghold, in one of the bigger European countries.

In Europe, there are regions which would still in majority vote for a respective party even if a fox was their leading candidate: for instance, the industrial North-Western regions of England have been voting Labour for about 100 years, the South German states are Christian Democrat core territory. How could a major realignment be done? An interesting development would also to make descendants of immigrants - so far, considered a vote bank for centre-left/social democratic party voters - switch to conservative centre-right parties.

One could argue that Marine Le Pen's Front National is pursuing such a shift right now, as she's making inroads in former working-class Socialist areas.

They used to say the same things about large parts of scotland that they now say about the nw.

It is possible that if Labour is perceived as lacking a certain patriotism under Corbyn, they may lose parts of their Northern base: ukip are slowly building up under an ossified labour political machine, and the Tories are also planning to compete in these areas- this is what the plans for the northern powerhouse and northern city devolution would result in politically, if the economic and social goals of these programmes are achieved.
 
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