Exactly 20 years after the velvet revolutions of 1989, the shape of post–Cold War European politics finally began to assume clear form in the election results for the European Assembly (alias, the European Parliament). For this to happen, much that was familiar had to be swept away. Domestic political structures that reflected the Cold War — for instance, the dominance of an Italian Christian Democratic party that was a shambles economically and socially but a firm anti-Soviet bulwark in foreign and defense policy — had to decay and disappear. New social forces, such as the ethnic loyalties previously held in check by the overriding need for anti-Communist unity, had to coalesce into political organizations. Myths had to be disproved — for instance, the New Labour fiction that the Left could administer free markets both more compassionately and more efficiently than the capitalist Right. These things needed time and a period of flux to evolve. They have emerged in the European election results.

For once, conventional wisdom on European elections limped halfway to sensible conclusions. The Economist summed them up: “The center-left failed to capitalize on an economic crisis tailor-made for critics of the free market. Support for mainstream center-right parties held steady or fell slightly. Incumbents were not uniformly punished, but those caught in scandals involving power, privileges, and perks were. And a chunky protest vote went to populist and far-right outfits vowing to close borders, expel immigrants, or dismantle the European Union.” This is a pastel version of a picture painted in primary colors by the voters. It has been given a light overwash with The Economist’s breezy, liberalish moderation. What follows is the Technicolor version.

Consider, first, the performance of the Left. Center-left parties did not merely fail to capitalize on the economic crisis; they did disastrously. In Britain the incumbent Labour government, already reeling from its worst local-election results since the 1920s, got just under 16 percent of the vote. It came in third, not only behind its main opposition, the Tories, but even behind the Euroskeptic United Kingdom Independence Party, which has not a single member of Parliament to its credit. Germany’s Social Democrats won a mere 21 percent of the vote — their worst result since before World War II. Votes for France’s Socialists also fell sharply. With only 16.5 percent, they barely escaped falling into third place. Italy’s Socialists won a quarter of the vote — a terrible result compared with the past but pretty good by comparison with their fellow parties in Western Europe.

As for Central and Eastern Europe, the rout of socialism continued there too. Poland’s Left has all but disappeared. The governing center-right Civic Platform won 28 seats of Poland’s 50, but the runner-up was the center-slightly-more-right (think of Whigs and Tories) Law and Justice party, which won 15 seats. Poland’s once-mighty Left, in government only five years ago, ended up with a mere seven seats. The Czech Socialists fell to 24 percent of the vote, and Hungary’s governing Socialists imploded with a mere 4 seats, versus 15 for the center-right Fidesz party. Almost the only success story for the Left in the region was that of the center-left Smer party in Slovakia, which won 5 out of 13 seats. As The Economist pointed out, that result was obtained with less than 20 percent of the total vote against a conservative opposition divided into several parties.

Some of these results can be explained as the effects of local factors — scandals, weak leaders, poor performance in government, etc. But when the Left’s performance sinks to between 16 and 25 percent across an entire continent, then there surely has to be a general explanation. That failure looks even worse against the background of a massive economic crisis that only a few weeks ago was being described as “the collapse of capitalism.” We would not expect Jehovah’s Witnesses to lose credibility the week after Gabriel’s trumpet sounded and the Heavens parted. So why did the Left collapse instead of capitalism?

In much of Eastern and Central Europe (and also in Germany) the center-left parties have to compete with the purer socialism of simple Left parties or frankly named “unreconstructed” Communists. That siphons off potential center-left voters and presents their mainstream parties with a version of the post-war French Socialist dilemma: They can’t win with the Communists and they can’t win without them. A variation on this problem afflicts the Western European center-left parties. They face competition from single-issue parties on the environment, war, Third World development, etc., such as Europe Ecologie in France. These parties are essentially left-wing or at least anti-capitalist. They too siphon off votes.

Both of these problems can be traced to something more cataclysmic — something that happened 20 years ago in intellectual debate but is only now shaking up practical politics: namely, the death of socialism as a Big Idea. After all the veils and subterfuges have been torn away, the idea of socialism is the achievement of equality through state bureaucracy. Socialists still believe in achieving equality, but most no longer have faith in statism and some have become actively hostile to bureaucracy. True believers — at best about 10 to 12 percent of the population — vote for unreconstructed Communists. Those who are skeptical of the state and bureaucracy support the Greens and other single-issue Left parties. And those who want power (or, to be charitable, want to use state power to “nudge” society toward equality) support a center-left whose policies are diluted to win moderate votes. But the net effect of these divisions is that there is no longer a single party monopolizing the center-left vote that can reconcile conflicting policies and budgetary priorities in order to present a coherent program able to attract support from 40 percent or more of the voters. And with every passing year, such a party seems less likely.

Given the collapse of the center-left, surely the center-right must have done well? The Economist certainly thought so, arguing that support for center-right parties “held steady or fell slightly.” But that is an unexacting standard. If the Left’s vote collapses, then surely the parties of the Right should improve their standing, if not proportionately, then substantially.

In Western Europe that simply did not happen. Britain’s Tories won only 29 percent of the popular vote in the European elections — and were relieved that it was a small increase of 2 percent on four years ago rather than a deeper fall. Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats fell slightly from their vote four years ago. The Spanish conservative Popular Party managed to score a modest lead of 4 percent over the Socialist government — but since the Socialists have presided over the worst economic and financial collapse in Western Europe, that almost counts as a draw. In Denmark the center-right came fifth; in Holland its vote fell by 4 percent; and in Portugal and Belgium its vote fell very slightly — just either side of 1 percent.

Only in France and Italy did conservative parties do well, partly because of divided oppositions but also because of the personal styles of their leaders, understandably in the case of Pres. Nicolas Sarkozy, less so in the case of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. In both cases, the boldness and dash of the party leaders compensated somewhat for the timidity and inadequacy of their policies. The center-right’s story was also better in Eastern and Central Europe, though for different reasons.

What explains the failure of the center-right parties to capitalize more effectively on the collapse of their opponents? One possible explanation is that many of them had to take the blame for the financial crisis and economic recession. But that is hard to square with the fact that center-right parties out of power, such as the Tories, often did worse than those in power, such as Sarkozy’s. Besides, the recession almost certainly helped the center-right. Conservative parties are seen by the voters as the “daddy” party better able to impose discipline and overcome crises than the soft-hearted “mommy” parties of the center-left. Chancellor Angela Merkel’s tough unwillingness to follow the U.S. and Britain in spending and borrowing their way out of recession seems to have been popular. Responsibility, competence, and firmness are currently and understandably valued, and that helps to explain why the center-right has merely declined instead of plunging like the center-left. Still the question remains: Why hasn’t it risen?

The answer probably lies in The Economist’s fourth observation: “A chunky protest vote went to populist and far-right outfits vowing to close borders, expel immigrants, or dismantle the European Union.” But that explanation lumps together two quite different phenomena: (a) the wild-and-crazy guys, elected mainly in Eastern Europe, who stand for everything from anti-Semitism to a return to Stalinism, and (b) the more serious and lasting conservative parties in Holland, Denmark, Italy, Britain, and other countries, which represent voters’ deep-seated resistance to uncontrolled immigration, the loss of national sovereignty, and other elite enthusiasms on Europe’s center-left and center-right. Lumping the two together is a way of ensuring that neither is taken seriously, thus ignoring the legitimate issues that sustain the second group.

Taking these distinct groups together makes little sense on two grounds. First, it is a false picture of political — and moral — reality. That can be seen most clearly in Britain, where the British National Party is offering the cinema-going voter a trailer for Triumph of the Will while the U.K. Independence Party is performing in one of the Ealing comedies about a decent and more traditional Britain. That kind of difference should not be blurred. Second, it conceals from the center-right’s leaders the truth that these parties are poaching their own natural supporters. Until recently, center-right leaders have comforted themselves with the illusion that immigration, sovereignty, and the like were the issues of the past, and that the small parties raising them would soon disappear. Today it is increasingly clear that these are the issues of the future. A center-right that fails to champion them will soon create a divided conservative electorate and slowly imitate the decline of the center-left.