As we find ourselves now in the midst of 2016, with the political situation here in Europe looking as dire as it did in the last days of 2015 (and some may say even worse), I think we can safely review the past year, and conclude that it was a watershed moment. What do I mean by this? Well, last year, I think, was the year during which politics in Europe were clearly shaken up. And that’s putting it mildly. They were shaken to the point where the assumptions we took for granted began to seem less certain; they began to crumble, and fade. Four governments under the rule of the European Peoples’ Party, and fully indoctrinated into the Sparpolitik (austerity) economic programme fell, and in their place is a mix of the radical left, the far-right, or simply fragmentation. In February another government was added to that list. Along with this came the crushing of a democratic government in the name of a ‘European consensus’ that only elites had agreed upon, the aftermath of which highlighted two major problems in Europe – at the very top, it was utterly undemocratic, and worse still, that undemocratic leadership was not even pursuing effective policies. By the end of the year we were left with a battered Union which was now looking totally incapable of settling upon a course of action going forward, and was being questioned from all sides. In my analysis, 2015 truly was the year that undemocratic and elitist consensus, after being beaten, battered and tested for the past few years, finally broke.

We first turn to the four elections which proved disastrous to the establishment party of establishment parties (the EPP). It began in January, with what Yanis Varoufakis terms “the Athens Spring”. For anyone paying attention they may perhaps have caught a glimpse of what was in store for Europe in the coming year. The Greek EPP government under Antonis Samaras’ Νέα Δημοκρατία (ND) was toppled, and not just by anyone, but by a party whose name in English translates to the ‘Coalition of the Radical Left’ who were given a mandate at the centre of which was the rejection of any bailout package which maintained the status quo in Greece. And so began the challenging of the neoliberal Sparpolitik-consensus which had prevailed in Europe for so long. In October we saw two more EPP governments fall; in Portugal, the Partido Social Democrata (PSD) lost its majority and was again replaced by the left, including elements of the radical left, and in Poland, Platforma Obywatelska (PO) lost its position to the right-wing national conservatives of Jarosław Kaczyński’s Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS). Finally, in December we saw Spain under the Partido Popular (PP) fall into a pit of fragmentation and political deadlock from which it still has not emerged. In all four cases, the ‘European’ consensus, drawn up and settled by elites in 2010 which has been held to religiously at all costs since, was rejected. In some places more decisively than others, and yet all of them came upon the same conclusion – we need more radicalism in our politics. Even Poland, which was not under Troika rule, or even in the eurozone, felt itself no longer contented with the establishment politics of the centre.

However, it is to Greece we turn once again, to that Athens Spring I mentioned earlier, and the latest episode in the Greek Debt Crisis which captured our attention in the summer. Here the consensus of the eurozone elite was most directly challenged and we all witnessed the result. The Carthaginian Peace that was the ‘Memorandum of Understanding’, which Alexis Tsipras’ government finally consented to signing, was the crushing of a democratically elected government, who dared challenge – in fact simply question – the Sparpolitik Diktat it had been forced to implement over the previous 5 years. It was that crushing of democracy – both the elected government, and the referendum – which resonated across Europe; here was the true fact about Europe’s political situation. If the powerful could no longer rely on the ballot box to validate their actions, then they would use technocratic, Orwellian turns of phrase such as “internal devaluation”, “inter-generational justice” and “memorandum of understanding” in order to completely invalidate the wishes, the instructions of the Greek people. As Mr Varoufakis has recounted time and again, the contempt for democracy in the corridors of power in Brussels is rampant. And I think for the first time, we all saw it. That is the definition of watershed. Not only was the democratic deficit at the heart of the EU demonstrated for all, but the crushing was accompanied by the Diktat of a programme of even harsher austerity in Greece, which had already proved to be a failure in policy-making.

And as Europe managed to stumble out of one crisis where the wrong choices were made for the wrong reasons, it fell into another in the last months of the year. The Refugee Crisis has perhaps been the most clear example of the Union’s inability in its current form to come to effective decisions and implement them. From the rejection of the mandatory quota system, to the deaths in the Mediterranean and the Aegean, to the border fences and controls that operate in 8 Schengen states, to that absolutely painful number that of the 160,000 refugees ‘agreed’ to be redistributed (out of now over 1 million arriving in 2015), as of January only 272 had actually been moved. The crisis has been less of a challenge to the established consensus, although in line with the rest of the year’s developments, Chancellor Merkel and the Commission have been unable to build any kind of European consensus on the issue, but more importantly it underlined a crucial point. When it comes down to it, the EU, even under the pressure it is now, cannot come to the crucial decisions it must do to deal with the challenges it faces. Worse than that, the discussion on what we need to do has broken down, with Greece being hermetically sealed, and Europe now relying on the whims of an authoritarian country to rescue it from this crisis, in doing so completely giving up the whip-hand. It is a travesty. Could you imagine a country like the China, or Russia, or the US finding itself in the position that we are? It is supposed to be a crisis like this where the EU proves itself to be the only way to deal with such a problem, and we have proved so incompetent that some national politicians have decided that they can do a better job alone.

The first months of 2016 have followed the same pattern; the Irish elections saw Fine Gael defeated and the Oireachtas fall into fragmentation. They were joined by Slovakia in March. The German state elections saw their eurosceptic right-wing party, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), gain over 10% of the vote in all three states, over 20% in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt. This is reminiscent of the French regional elections in December last year where Marine Le Pen’s Front National (FN) managed to win half of the regions in the first round, leading her to describe her party as “the first party of France”. In Poland, despite warnings from the Commission, PiS has still not backed down from challenging democracy in Poland and thus European authority there. Finally, in April we saw the result of the Dutch referendum on an association agreement between the EU and Ukraine, which proved astonishing to all observers. Those who voted weighed decisively against the agreement, with 64% of the vote. However, those who voted only made up 32% of the total electorate. Commentators have framed this result as a rejection of the EU more than a rejection of Ukraine. Nevertheless, the apathy of the electorate, and the message that apparently those who are still willing to vote are on the right, or at least anti-Europe, wing of the electorate, is the final spit in the face of the EU by the citizens of Europe. The consensus which at the start of the year seemed unchallengeable, was utterly rejected in election after election, vote after vote in 2015. Not a single democratic contest has gone well for the EU establishment. In addition to this, the Memorandum of Understanding has been widely seen as the forced implementation of a failed economic programme and the crushing of a democratic government by technocrats, the Refugee Crisis and Polish Constitutional challenge demonstrating the inability of the EU to enforce and enact its will as an entity.

In the midst of all this, we had just one other election; the British general elections in May last year. This perhaps can be seen as the only outlier, considering the British establishment and its politics were vindicated with the success of the Conservative Party, and with it of austerity Sparpolitik in Britain. Looking closer however at the election and its aftermath, we see some other messages. Firstly, in continuing the anti-EU spirit, the UK Independence Party (UKIP) one 4 million votes, giving their far-right platform 12.7% of the vote and making them the third largest party, despite winning only a single seat. Secondly, whilst not conclusive, the fact the Conservative Party ran on a manifesto which explicitly included a referendum on EU-membership cannot be ignored. If they had not, how many more votes would UKIP have received? How many more MPs would have defected? The splits we are seeing in the Tories over the issue are becoming deeper and deeper by the week and it is clear that anti-EU sentiment has been far more than simply bubbling under the surface for a while now. Finally, there was the Scottish Revolt which saw the Scottish National Party (SNP) take all but 3 seats in Scotland, making them the third largest party in terms of seats in Westminster. On the other hand, the SNP is thoroughly pro-Europe, and thus a revolt against the British establishment but not the European one.

What is the upshot of this review of the events of last year? Well in particular, if any of the democratic contests of 2015 are anything to go by, then the results of the EU referendum in Britain do not look promising. Admittedly the polls told much of the story in the elections last year, that things would not go well for the EU establishment. By contrast the latest ICM poll out yesterday suggested that at best the Remain side was leading with 54% (phone polling, not including those undecided). On the other hand, if the trends from the continent hold, then anything that’s pro-EU is not going to fare well in a democratic contest. Can the British referendum turn the tide against anti-EU sentiment? It almost seems to be a joke that the EU is relying on Britain to validate itself democratically and retain some degree of legitimacy. It also seems tragic; if Britons do vote in favour of the EU, from the sounds coming from the campaign, it will be grudgingly at best, and based on a strictly analytical cost-benefit analysis – without passion or emotion. As far as democratic victories go in modern times, perhaps this is the best we can hope for.

Sources: ICM Polling, FT, POLITICO Europe