NEITHER CHRISTIAN NOR DEMOCRATIC

Daniel Hannan says the collapse of Christian

Democracy leaves a vacuum in Europe that the Conservatives can fill

EUROPE is witnessing the strange death of Christian Democracy. Having dominated Continental politics for most of the postwar era, the traditional parties of the centre- right are waning fast. Throughout the 1990s they were in steady, if genteel, decline. Now, as the extent of their .financial impropriety is revealed, decline is turning to collapse.

In retrospect, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall that did for them. During the Cold War, Christian Democracy was regarded as a useful tool for keeping the masses away from communism. By stressing their belief in strong trade unions and the mixed econ- omy, its proponents sought to erect an anti- Marxist big tent. And, as European federalists, they tended also to be keen on Nato. But the disbandment of the Warsaw Pact has removed much of their raison d'être. Right-wing voters no longer feel obliged to overlook illicit funding scandals simply for the sake of anti-Soviet solidarity.

Christian Democrats across the Continent are feeling the effect. In Italy, Democrazia Cristiana emerged as the largest party at every postwar election until 1993, when it was shattered by a series of corruption cases. Three shards of the old movement remain today, commanding perhaps 12 per cent of the vote among them. In Austria, the OVP stood at 43 per cent in the polls when the Berlin Wall came down; today it stands at 25 per cent. In the Netherlands, the CDA has fallen from 35 per cent to 18 per cent over the same period. In Belgium, the Flem- ish and Walloon Christian Democrats won 20 per cent of the vote between them last year. In 1990 that figure was 25 per cent; in 1960, it was 40 per cent.

For a while, Germany seemed to be the one impregnable citadel of the old creed. But the CDU has been brought crashing down by Karlheinz Schreiber and his suit- cases full of deutschmarks. The outgoing Christian Democrat leader, Wolfgang Schauble, a man not given to hyperbole, has spoken grimly of 'the worst crisis in the history of the Christian Democrats'. His countrymen evidently agree: the latest poll has the CDU on 29 per cent, its lowest rat- ing ever.

Let us be clear about one thing: this is a crisis of Christian Democracy specifically, not of the centre-right generally. Conserva- tives in Scandinavia, Eastern Europe and the Iberian Peninsula are bearing up pretty well. The Dutch and Nordic Protestant par- ties have also been largely unaffected. In Continental parlance, it is the 'blacks' who are suffering, not the 'blues'. Voters have 'I told you he'd soon get bored with his mouse.' not rejected the free market, but the corpo- ratism and stagnation of the social market.

In Brussels, spiritual home of the Chris- tian Democrats, the gloom is tangible. As each day brings new sleaze allegations, depression is giving way to rattiness. Many Christian Democrats are taking out their mood on their Austrian colleagues, who have gone into coalition with JOrg Haider. There are even moves to expel the Austri- ans from the European People's party, the Christian Democratic club. Almost no one in Brussels sees Haider as an internal Aus- trian matter. When I asked one Belgian MEP whether it was sensible for the EU to challenge the result of national elections, he snapped back, 'When will you English start looking beyond your own shores?' The Christian Democrats have long since ceased to be Christian; now, it seems, they are ceasing to be democrats.

Their tetchiness is, to be fair, quite understandable. Many of them feel vulnera- ble to their own versions of Haiderism. The conditions which turned Austrian voters away from their old parties exist across much of the EU. Austrians had grown heartily sick of a governing class made arro- gant by semi-permanent office. They were fed up with politicians who seemed to have no beliefs beyond a vague attachment to European integration. And they had had enough of the nepotism implicit in a system where public-sector jobs were handed out on the basis of party affiliation.

In Belgium, Italy and Germany, as in Aus- tria, Christian Democrats have been impli- cated in major scandals. Even Luxemburg's Jacques Santer got in on the act by his pig- headed refusal to accept that his European Commission should resign. What most both- ers Europe's voters is not the sleaze qua the sleaze, but their politicians' insistence that it does not much matter. This insouciance reached a new high with Giulio Andreotti's recent claim that financial wrong-doing was justified provided it was carried out in the name of European unity — a sentiment heartily endorsed in Brussels. This belief that the ends justify the means has always been central to the Christian Democratic Weltanschauung. The wonder is that voters put up with it for so long.

For, in truth, the hegemony of the Chris- tian Democrats was always rather artificial. Their dominant position on the centre- right came about almost accidentally, aris- ing from the peculiar circumstances of the second world war. By 1944 much of the European Right was tainted by its associa- tion in the public mind with fascism and collaboration. Opposition to Hitler had come from two main sources: the Left and the Churches. So it was natural, following the liberation, that the parties most associ- ated with the Churches should evolve into the main opposition to socialism. Only in Britain, which had come through the war undefeated, and in France, which somehow convinced itself that it had too, did unapologetic conservative parties survive. In the aftermath of the war, Christian Democrats expanded rightward by default. But there was nothing especially conserva- tive about their creed. They were the lineal descendants of the old centre parties brought into politics at the behest of the papacy towards the end of the 19th centu- ry. (Even in the Netherlands, the Christian Democrats grew mainly out of the old Catholic People's party.) Their economic doctrines were informed by the principles laid down in the 1893 encyclical Rerum novarurn: high wages, dialogue between employers and workers and so on. True to their confessional roots, they were attract- ed by the idea of a united European Chris- tendom, and comfortable with the idea that there was a higher authority than the national government.

But as Christian Democracy dissolves, the European Right is separating into its two elemental forms: conservatism and classical liberalism. Both these doctrines tend naturally towards Euroscepticism, the first because of its attachment to estab- lished institutions, the second because of its opposition to state regulation. This ten- dency is reinforced when the two ideo- logies co-exist in a single party, such as the British Conservative party.

The question facing the European Right in the coming decade may be summarised as 'Hague or Haider?' In other words, will the space left by Christian Democracy be filled by respectable conservatives, such as the British Tories, the Bavarian CSU and the Portuguese Popular party, or will it instead be occupied by demotic rabble- rousers playing on a generalised dislike of 'the system'? The Christian Democrats have unconsciously done a great deal to push voters towards Haiderism. It is for the Tories to offer them a legitimate alternative.

Conservatives, perhaps because of the essentially national nature of their ideo- logy, have often been lazy about promot- ing their beliefs abroad. Not so the Christian Democrats. In Eastern and Central Europe particularly, many parties of naturally Tory inclination are being subverted by state-funded Christian Democratic institutes. But, as the credi- bility of the Christian Democrats fades, conservatives have a unique opportunity to recast the European Right. The Mar- garet Thatcher Foundation can step in where the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung leaves off.

This is not just an opportunity for the Tories; it is a duty. For, as the Christian Democrats cease to occupy the Right of the political spectrum, something else must take their place. There is a growing demand on the Continent for patriotic right-wing politics. If decent conservatives do not meet that demand, someone alto- gether less savoury will.

Daniel Hannan is Conservative MEP for South-East England.