The problems ailing Western Europe’s left are not just cyclical

De Balie, aD cosily chic cultural venue on Amsterdam’s Leidseplein, is the epicentre of Dutch liberal intellectual life. On May 3rd it played host to two thinkers representing ideas that are pulling the European left apart. Gloria Wekker is a black Dutch academic who argues that the Netherlands suffers from structural racism. Susan Neiman, an American-born German-Jewish philosopher, recently published a book (“Left Is Not Woke”) that calls for dropping identity politics and re-embracing universal values. The left, Ms Neiman says, must “come up with things that we’re moving towards”, rather than simply denouncing taxonomies of oppression.Like many debates on the left, this one took place inside a bubble. Amsterdam is a multicultural city of cycling lanes and tolerant drug policies, run by a coalition of liberal (66) and left-wing parties (Labour and GreenLeft). But in the rest of the Netherlands, politics has been transformed by anti-immigrant populism. In provincial elections on March 15th, populist parties on the right combined for more than a third of the national vote. The BoerBurgerBeweging (Farmer-Citizen Movement), a four-year-old outfit mainly devoted to fighting environmental regulations, drew 19%. On the left, Labour got just 8% and GreenLeft 9%.