I would not pee on Orban if he was on fire, don't get me wrong. This is not an Orban-apologist or a sock puppet far-right account speaking. But from an international relations point of view, what is suggested is basically utilizing unicorns to solve world hunger.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Templat...

At the end of the day, who decides Article 50 is the solution and presses the button? And what is the sensible "limit" for it?

Wouldn't this undermine all the notions of IR as in trust and collaboration, etc.? It's a nuclear option in terms of diplomacy. Wyatt argues that Hungary can join back if they like, but you are also removing %45+ people who are against Orban. What if Le Pen gets elected in France?

Millions of unemployed people, facing economic hardship. Of course, it's not "whoever is best for me" type of an utilitarianism play a role in voting, but social democrats' extreme failure should not be absolved. Which is what this downgrading no direct link between sd to far-right argument does.

If the parties do not provide solutions, they will express their frustration. Hence, exactly my point. Social democrats failed to engage with their core points and lost them. This is not just four or ten years, it's decades in the making. But I find this approach a bit reductionist, if I may.

While Weber's suggestion is superficial, it is not wrong. Aggregate data, fine. How about unemployed and workers voting in excess for the far-right? How does that fit? If we turn the question on its head and ask, who the voters that should be attracted by social democrats are voting for? Et voilà.

in fact, get voters from far-right. In Germany's case, non-voters sound very nice but who are they? Simply, rather than congesting ourselves on fun and neat tricks, let's look at the reality. Unemployed and workers vote for far-right. These people should be the bread and butter of social democracy.

The research brief, for example, looks at UK (no real far-right party until recently), Switzerland (an exception if there can be one). The rest, parties lost working class long time ago, but at the same time, for Scandinavian countries there is plenty of research showing that social democrats do...

Thanks a lot but I am already familiar with Abou-Chadi's body of work. Falls into the similar trap of saying voters do not move between social democrats and far-right, while those voters should be with soc.dems in the first place.

I mean, yes, maybe, centre-left does not directly lose votes to far-right as much as centre-right (they still do). But far-right is gaining on centre-left's core. Not engaging with this or downgrading it to "let's follow far-right, is that it?!?" is so superficial.

I cannot for the life of me, understand, why are academia is tiptoeing around this topic? Yes, it doesn't mean that they directly lost them, but SPD is completely losing its grip on working class, while AfD is gaining. I hardly think Arbeiter went to Merz, Habeck or Die Linke either.

Well, according to this, the working class and unemployed heavily voted for AfD. I am a little bewildered by Prof Hix overlooking this. However one defines it, workers and unemployed went to AfD, where they are ideologically should be the bread and butter of SPD.

www.tagesschau.de/wahl/archiv/...

Uh, yes?

...in the first place is the problem. Saying "oh look but the amount of moved from SPD to AfD is not as high as CDU and non-voters" is simply absolving SPD from its political sins, if you will.

I am not sure what real social democratic voters mean. What I am saying is that AfD is the highest party amongst (blue collar) workers and unemployed, arguably, quite vulnerable parts of the German society. SPD's complete failure to engage with those people and not being able get them on board...

But they are winning voters that centre left should be able to attract, workers, unemployed, the lower strata. And even beyond that, they still got 700k voters from social democrats. The real question should be why can't SPD talk to these people. Otherwise it is question-begging at best.