Once upon a time, almost every party dreamed of being the next great people’s party and cast its electoral net as wide as possible. The model was that of the CVP, the house with many rooms, where you could encounter every opinion and the opposite. Sometimes you needed a magnifying glass to see fundamental differences between parties.
That magnifying glass can now go into the cupboard. Anyone who cannot see the gaping gaps between the parties should urgently visit an ophthalmologist. In a democracy, where we don’t all think the same about anything, that is a godsend. It’s best to have enough parties that represent the differences.
The election manifestos calculated by the Planning Bureau make it clear how quickly the party positions have drifted apart in recent years. Barely five years ago, most programs were still trying to convince voters that there would be some winners, but hardly any losers. They wanted to please Pol, Pier and Jean-Baptiste-Emmanuel, albeit to different degrees. This time you will find out for most parties who they want to hurt and who they want to reward.
It is sufficient to pit opposites Green and N-VA against each other. Both parties are now “classic” parties, outspoken, but at the same time part of the broad center.
Mirror images
While Groen panicked five years ago at the thought that hitting the company cars also meant hitting the middle class, that is completely different today. Like other left-wing parties, Groen wants the richest Flemish people to pay heavily and the upper middle class with company cars, rental income or profit sharing is also not spared. Groen wants to lift the lowest incomes, often from benefits, out of an uncertain existence with a risk of poverty in one fell swoop. In no program do subsistence earners and the unemployed improve as quickly as in Groen.
The graph at N-VA is the perfect mirror image. N-VA generally keeps its finger on the money the most of all parties, but you had better belong to the highest income classes if N-VA gets its way. The benefits found at the lowest income levels pay the bill. Some unemployed people would lose up to 900 euros at N-VA, in cash and social benefits. The inactive people are also in free fall at Open VLD. Who said that the opposition between left and right had become irrelevant somewhere along the twentieth century?
Strangely enough, there is a shift to the left and to the right at the same time, at least as far as socio-economic policy is concerned
The strange thing is that two opposing movements intersect at the same time. On the one hand, there is a clear shift to the left: Vooruit and CD&V embrace the economically left-wing label without many complexes and even Vlaams Belang is at least trying to give the impression of moving in that direction. But even the centre-right parties are finding it increasingly difficult to immediately and decisively reject every capital (profit) tax.
Inactive people as scapegoats
At the same time, it has been a long time since there has been such undisguised accusatory talk about inactive people. It helps, of course, that there are hardly any unemployed people left in Flanders today and that living wages have become something of asylum seekers in many minds, but the army of long-term sick people may also be starting to worry.
Is that always unjustified? There are certainly anomalies, where cumulative benefits and benefits gouge the eyes of those who have to work for modest wages. Even at the PS it is sometimes discreetly heard that not everything can be defended. The social contract of rights and obligations sometimes runs on crutches. Justified concerns about the derailing budget are also an important reason why this discourse is gaining ground. N-VA has been seeing in internal polls for some time that the budget is hitting a nerve and in the apocalyptic opposition rhetoric that Bart De Wever is so good at, the we-are-on-the-edge-of-the-abyss argument has a prominent spot.
It has been a long time since there was such undisguised accusatory talk about anyone who, for whatever reason, does not work
The irony is that the budget has been derailed for many reasons. The lowest pensions increased, including for the self-employed. These are not the inactive people who are the profiteers in many minds. And Vivaldi gave out a lot of money to people who didn’t need it. During corona and the energy crisis, the fear of all parties was that limited, targeted support for those who were in danger of going under would encounter too much resistance among the middle class who had to fend for themselves. And so everyone had to get something. Now that corrections need to be made, those who are struggling to make ends meet are in danger of having to pay the bill again.
In light of that clash, Pierre Wunsch’s speech at Rerum Novarum was remarkable. Wunsch is governor of the National Bank and has an MR signature. Not exactly the speaker you would expect at redactie.net. Wunsch warned about the budget deficit: simply letting things continue is the shortest path to social breakdown. But he also pointed out the fear reflexes in an uncertain world. Wunsch’s conclusion is that there must be more reasonableness in public debates and also more empathy with others. “But I’ll leave it at that, otherwise I’ll start talking about Christian charity… And that is your area, not mine,” he concluded. These are indeed strange times.
