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Over a year after the vote that delivered Donald Trump a decisive return victory, the Democratic Party has still not released its election autopsy. However, last week, an influential progressive lobby group released its own. Kamala Harris's campaign, its writers contended, did not resonate with core constituencies because it failed to concentrate enough on addressing everyday financial worries. By prioritising the threat to democracy that Trumpist populism represented, liberals neglected the kitchen-table concerns that were uppermost in many people’s minds.

A Lesson for Europe

As the EU braces for a turbulent era of politics from now until the end of the decade, that is a lesson that must be fully absorbed in Brussels, Paris and Berlin. The White House, as its recently published national security strategy makes clear, is hopeful that “patriotic” parties in Europe will quickly mirror Mr Trump’s success. In the EU’s Franco-German engine room, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) top the polls, backed by large swaths of working-class voters. Yet among establishment politicians and parties, it is hard to discern a response that is adequate to troubling times.

Era-Defining Problems and Costly Solutions

The issues Europe faces are costly and historic. They encompass the war in Ukraine, sustaining the momentum of the green transition, addressing demographic change and developing economies that are more resilient to pressure by Mr Trump and China. According to a Brussels-based thinktank, the new age of global instability could necessitate an additional €250bn in annual EU defence spending. A significant report last year on European economic competitiveness called for massive investment in shared infrastructure, to be partly funded by jointly held EU debt.

Such a economic transformation would stimulate growth figures that have stagnated for years.

However, at both the pan-European and national levels, there remains a deficit of courage when it comes to revenue raising. The EU’s so-called “frugal” nations resist the idea of collective borrowing, and Brussels’ budget proposals for the next seven years are profoundly unambitious. In France, the idea of a tax on the super-rich is widely supported with voters. Yet the beleaguered centrist government – while desperate to cut its budget deficit – will not consider such a move.

The Price of Political Paralysis

The truth is that without such measures, the less affluent will pay the price of fiscal tightening through spending cuts and greater inequality. Acrimonious recent disputes over retirement reforms in both France and Germany highlight a growing battle over the future of the European social model – a trend that the RN and the AfD have happily exploited to promote a politics of nativist social policy. Ms Le Pen’s party, for example, has resisted moves to raise the retirement age and has stated that it would focus any benefit cuts at foreign residents.

Preventing a Political Gift for Nationalists

In the US, Mr Trump’s promises to protect working-class interests were deeply disingenuous, as subsequent healthcare reductions and tax breaks for the wealthy underlined. But in the absence of a compelling progressive alternative from the Harris campaign, they worked on the campaign trail. Absent a fundamental change in economic approach, social contracts across the continent risk being ripped up. Policymakers must steer clear of handing this political gift to the Trumpian forces already on the rise in Europe.