Europe’s Left has suffered a calamitous six months. Socialist governments have met historic defeats in Portugal and Spain. Greece’s Pasok party was toppled by an EU technocrat Putsch. Ireland’s soft-Left Fianna Foil lost every seat in Dublin. Almost 97pc of the European Union’s population is now governed by conservative or Right-leaning coalitions, or EU-imposed mandarins. All that is left to social democrats is Austria (8.4m), Denmark (5.5m), and Slovenia (2.1m). The whole machinery of the European Union (EU) system is under the control of the Right, with variants of Rheinish corporatism in the Council, and pre-modern Hayekians at the European Central Bank (ECB). Whether you regard this Hegelian ascendancy as good or bad, it certainly has profound consequences… The question for today’s Left is whether it is in their interests to keep apologising for an EU monetary regime that has pushed the jobless rate for youth to 49pc in Spain, 45pc in Greece, 30pc in Portugal and Ireland, 29pc in Italy and 24pc in France – yet 8.9pc in undervalued Germany – and that offers no credible way out of the slump for the Southern half. Comrades across Europe, come over to the eurosceptic side. You have only your euro chains to lose.

(Dr. Benny Peiser)