Personally I put it down to two things. Climate change and the abandonment of social democracy by the formally social democratic parties.

It’s particularly clear in the dutch case where the greens were formed out of unity talks between various leftist organisations including former communist party members – hence the name Green Left.

But likewise elsewhere even when they are fairly moderate green parties they tend to be critical of our current economic system and the political failure of the center in the way social democratic parties would have been thirty years ago. I think that plays well in the current economic situation

I certainly do not believe Europe is swinging to the right – I think that happened in the 2009 Euro election, but not between last year and now – but I do believe that anti-incumbency is a more useful measure of what’s happening.

“Merkel’s parties have gone from 33.8% in the election to 37% now, according to the table. The Netherlands saw the greens and liberals gain seats from Labour, mainly, while the biggest gainer was the centre-right conservative-liberal party and the centre-right Christian Democrats remained the biggest party.”

I am entirely willing to be corrected, but CDU/CSU/FDP are down from 48.4% to 46% in the latest poll (Forsch’gr. Wahlen), with the parties of the left up from 45.6% to 49%. The second most recent poll by Forsa has CDU/CSU/FDP on 41% with the parties of the left on 51% (of course SPD and Linke would find difficulties in forming a , but it does point to Merkel’s govt losing support overall – even if the FDP have been the biggest losers). And Labour topped the poll in the Netherlands in the local elections, ahead of the Christian Democrats.

Agree that the French result is much worse for the Right, but there is little support from any of this for the idea that Europe is swinging to the Right.

But France is certainly a major loss for the centre-right. Far-right candidates aren’t going to step aside for Sarkozy’s UMP in the second round, but greens will step aside to back the socialists. So for the first time, there are no outside groups that will give their support to the UMP when they are out of the election. It’s a top-down leadership style that is really coming back to bite Sarkozy.

I think it’s worth pointing out though that in an election defined by Islamophobia the FN’s fortunes have been revived but there was also a significant resistance to that rather than a simple shift towards racism.

I’d also like to point out that the Greens vote at the previous regional elections was just 2% so their result was an extraordinary leap forwards!