Here you can read the report of a roundtable, organised by the Fabian Society in partnership with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies, which examined the electoral challenge facing centre-left parties across Europe.

You can read the full document here, or download the PDF.

The roundtable speaking panel featured: John Denham, MP for Southampton Itchen; Alfred Gusenbauer, former SPO Chancellor of Austria; and Nick Johnson, a public policy analyst who recently published a Fabian pamphlet called ‘Separate And Unequal’. The session was chaired by Sunder Katwala, General Secretary of the Fabian Society.

The document outlines the key questions that the seminar sought to address:

• Why have modern social democrats struggled to develop a sufficient response to economic insecurity, and what policy and political agenda do we need to do this?
• Can a values-based approach generate a distinctively social democratic ‘fairness case’ which effectively engages public anxieties about tough issues of crime, immigration and welfare dependency?
• Why has the left struggled to articulate its own public argument for a fairer and more equal society: how can a new social democracy do so in a way which resonates publicly? How should this be captured in Europe-wide and national party accounts of the defining mission of social democrats?

This project was run in partnership with the Foundation for European Progressive Studies. You can learn more about FEPS at www.feps-europe.eu.