The future problem facing the left: young people are turning away from its parties and values
https://elpais.com/espana/2026-02-22/el-problema-de-futuro-de-la-izquierda-los-chicos-jovenes-se-alejan-de-sus-partidos-y-valores.html?ssm=TW_CM&utm_source=tw&utm_medium=social
Posted by mods4mods
27 Comments
Maybe the reason is, that “the left” is still advocating open borders, eventhough anyone with a brain can see the current state of Europe and results of mass migration.
The left needs to get back to what actually made people vote for them in the first place. Promote workers rights, higher standards of living, fight the inequality. These issues are MASSIVE but the right is getting away with shifting the focus towards “the left only wants open borders and more regulation” as if the right wants anything more than “lower taxes for the rich”…
Immigration. All they have to do is deal with that and everyone will vote for them again (myself included).
the left has forgotten that the point of teaching history is to not repeat the mistakes of our ancestors, not to make us responsible and take the burden for their mistakes. maybe they never understood that lesson in the first place.
Welp people are fed up with ppl not sharing their values and refuse to integrate. Yet “the left” insists on their ideology and steers straight into the abyss. Denmark shwed that both left poltitics but strict immigration rules work. In times of crisis sadly nobody gives a fuck about climate change so they’ll lose whats left of their voters
I just want to point out that the left has governed Spain for 7 years by now so the argument of “but the left hasn’t been the government for ages” is moot.
I wonder why. Maybe left movements who represented exclusively by far left is a bad thing. I’m sure many people who turned away from left parties and values did it because were personally attacked by far-left upon trying to have reasonable discussion with them.
After all modern far-left operate under motto “Either you agree with us about everything or you’re our mortal enemy” . Even if person agrees with them on 90% , they will be labeled as worst person Earth ever known.
IMO
Lots of left main proposals about immigration, integration, work, family, social structure.
Were just a lot more fringe than they understood. The left top politicians and thinkers were very elitistic and actually didn’t have a clue about what their intended voters really wanted.
All in all, they are flabbergasted that the population is indeed much more conservative than what they thought.
Most of their voters agree on their economic proposals though. But they spend the last 20 years expanding in topics people don’t want them to get into IMHO.
The answer is splitting cultural and economic left.
The moment we generalise about the left right centre is when we stop understanding the problems.
Both aides have positive things to offer and negative ones as well.
Let’s talk about problems for what they are not the way we feel about them or if it is right or left.
People is not turning their back on the left. The left is turning its back on the people.
Asylum seekers in Ireland sued the Irish state for damages cause they were homeless, because of a really bad housing crisis, because so many people are arriving here…meanwhile young Irish people have no hope of renting their own place let alone buying a house…absolute insanity.
https://www.rte.ie/news/courts/2026/0219/1559372-high-court-damages/
And they’ll wonder then why people turned to the right…
If only we could have more leaders like Denmarks Mette Frederiksen. She’s leading a left-wing bloc of political parties, but still has a very firm stand on immigration.
Right now alot of countries are stuck between woke idealists who refuse to see mass immigration as anything but a strength and right wing Russian puppets only interested in self gain.
One major issue is that liberal policies are seen as left policies by young ppl, they do not even know anymore what “left” actually means. which is just another US import.
The Left used to be pro-worker, pro blue-collar. Now it’s pro mass immigration and just general Thirld Worldism, post-modern revisionist nonsense.
I don’t understand why anyone in their right might would support the mass importation of cheap labor – and whether it’s even “labor” at all is a dubious claim to begin with – while watching their living standards and safety decline.
Sure sure. Xenophobic. Racist. Colonial past.
That works – you can scare people into submission – for a while. Until it doesn’t. And they elect whoever promises to destroy all that nonsense, to burn it down, no matter the cost.
You think Americans are uniquely stupid and inferior to you and only they can elect an outright fascist like Trump? Good luck in the coming decades, guys.
This is what happens when the left cares more about Palestine & immigrants than about their own country & nation. The left is truly out of touch with society these days, and unfortunately, the far right has filled the gap, and now we are seeing the consequences.
IMO, some gender politics and ideas have played a role, especially in driving away young men
The left needs to start selling a better future. It needs to propose us a future to dream for.
All the left can promise nowadays is for things to not get worse. Which is good, I don’t want things to get worse. But mostly I want them to get a whole lot better.
“The left” You mean the green neolibs guilt tripping their voters into tightening their belts to “save the environment”, while housing prices keep growing astronomically?
And even if they are focusing on economic issues, they think “being right” is enough, they don’t need to explain anything to the voter.
And having a likeable charismatic leader? Blasphemy.
The left turned me into a newt.
Yes, because “the left” got hijacked by neoliberals. It’s the same thing but with and LGBTQ flag. It’s just the flag btw they aren’t particularly good for queer people either, they just wear the mask and wave the flag to signal it.
I want wealth taxes. I want a party that will eat the Epstein class. Everybody likes to talk about the budget. Nobody ever mentions the biggest burden on the budget, the taxes not paid by the wealthy.
TAX WEALTH NOT WORK.
American here:
The left really has a problem with what it’s trying to fight for and what it’s messaging is. It feels like the left is always trying to fight everything everywhere all at once, instead of focusing on fighting the things it’s meant to fight: power and capital.
The left needs to retrench in working people and really take an interest in working people’s lives, the left cannot be run by a PMC establishment who is only interested in its own esoteric fights.
I do also think that just going back to working people is not enough. The left has a huge problem with not being able to address what it is to be a citizen or who gets to be one. I know what you may say that this sounds kind of nationalist in a way, but the problem is that when the left doesn’t define this, we leave it to the right which will always tie to the story of the nation, its ethnic core, which always constructs a more powerful narrative. It is not enough to just point at them and say that their version is bad, but also the left needs to construct its own narrative of what it means to be a citizen.
The left now seems detached from what got them elected: working class. Instead they’re focused on minorites’ rights and some weird philosophical mind exercises renaming reality.
The right seized the opportunity immediately and presented voters with instant enemy in order to draw people’s attention from their agenda.
What we need most now is common sense, a happy middle and politicians that are not detached from real life. I’ve always believed that the longer you are in politics, the less you know about what people need. Politicians should be elected for no more than 2 terms. Or, better yet, they should represent the society statistically.
Or, be called for office like juror duty. And there should be more scrutiny and accountability for their actions
The left in power in Europe is pushing mass surveillance and censorship, no wonder people are against them.
No one cares about left or right. People just want to have a better economy and less unemployment. No one is presenting an economic boosting plan.
Maybe european left wing parties should distance themselves from all this woke bullshit, open borders, etc. and should focus on workers rights again instead?
You mean to say that focusing everything on immigration and pretending that they are all doctors and engineers desperate to work for slave wages didn’t work?