Western countries where progressive politics has bright future

[morgieb]

Tough to say.

In the short term out of Western countries Ireland looks quite promising for the left. Sinn Fein has to be a good shot of winning government and they haven't really moderated that much (OK, they don't support killing their political opponents now but they still feel like a left-wing nationalist party) as there's no real baggage of losses because of the perception that they moved too far left. It seems that the system there is rigged against the youth/the people and unlike other parts of the EU the populist right hasn't been able to manipulate it.

Medium-term, while the systems in Australia and the UK feels galling for people with harder left sympathies right now the age gap in support for right-wing parties and left-wing parties feels really notable. Even amongst uneducated voters Labour support in the UK is still very strong, and in Australia I think the Greens were at least on par with the Liberals for under 30's. In both countries you have a notionally center-left party which tries to avoid culture wars, a center-right party which has embraced culture war weirdness but still seem the party of capital unlike a lot of the continential European populist right/post-fascist parties and a third party for the wokites. Australia in particular is really centralised for such a large country which means that the base for right-wing populism isn't all that strong. If their Labo(u)r parties can play their cards right (which I have my doubts) they could be set to be the natural party of government.

I will admit I'm not an expert of everywhere in the West, so I might be missing some key points.