At first blush the woes of the mainstream left are surprising. Most of the EU is in deep recession, unemployment is rising and talk is of a crisis of capitalism-fertile ground for centre-left parties that favour higher taxes and more regulated markets. Yet the left's appeal is waning. One reason is a string of unimpressive leaders who have offered little to take the place of globalisation. But it also reflects the ability of some on the centre-right, especially Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy, to steal the left's clothes, with policies such as a bigger state and tougher regulation, and to persuade voters that the economic crisis came from abroad. Voters in Britain, Spain and Ireland, who saw their governments as responsible for their economic problems, punished them.

The worrying antis

The third feature of the elections was a sour and negative mood, shown not merely in a low turnout but also in wide support for a ragbag of far-right, populist, anti-EU or plain nutty parties. These ranged from the eccentric United Kingdom Independence Party and Geert Wilders's Freedom Party in the Netherlands, which both came second in their national polls, to Hungary's anti-gypsy Jobbik party and the Pirate Party in Sweden. Some of this was protest voting. But a chunk reflects views deeply antithetical to all that the EU stands for.

Why should it matter if mavericks give the EU a good kicking from time to time? True, the parliament has powers over EU legislation that will be further increased if the Lisbon treaty is ratified, but for the most part its loonier fringes can be safely ignored by their saner colleagues. Brussels has got around such trifles as negative opinion polls and even lost referendums: witness the unwanted EU constitution, now cross-dressed as the somewhat-less-awful Lisbon treaty. Indeed, from a liberal point of view, the freshly kicked Eurocrats might be less inclined to impose yet more unwanted bureaucracy on a continent already mired in red tape.

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