Still in office, but out of power: Detested on all sides, western politicians can offer nothing but wishful thinking, argues Jonathan Eyal

THE FALL of Japan's prime minister, Kiichi Miyazawa, thrown out by his own supporters, is an indication that the wider trend now transforming Europe's traditional arrangements is spreading to the world's other major democracies.

Regardless of their length of tenure, leaders are rejected almost everywhere. Germany's Chancellor Helmut Kohl, with a decade in government and the historic accomplishment of his country's unification, languishes at the bottom of popularity ratings. John Major, the man who, far from holding the nation at ease with itself failed even to pacify his own party, joined Mr Kohl in the popularity doldrums after only two years in office.

It would be tempting to believe that the fault lies only with the character of the present leaders: faded personalities in grey suits sporting the same grey hair. But the problem is much more profound.

France's voters wiped out their ruling Socialists in one election, while the now inevitable meltdown of Japan's party system mirrors Italy's wholesale political slaughter. Everywhere, it seems, popular disenchantment is not confined to just some boring leaders, but is directed at the entire political establishment they represent. It is noticeable, for instance, that although the German and British premiers remain lame ducks, opposition parties in both countries do not offer a more credible alternative.

The economic recession is blamed by all western leaders for their current unpopularity: come the 'green shoots' of recovery, they argue, and all would be well. Not very likely, partly because current economic ills have deeper causes, and partly because the whole political agenda is in dire need of change.

Party politics in the West now resembles nothing more than a petty bureaucratic squabble. Economic priorities appear pre-ordained, and the dispute is only about who is better suited to apply them. Britain's Conservatives are offering Thatcherism without Thatcher; their Labour counterparts are espousing conservatism without the Conservatives. The electorate should be forgiven for disbelieving both, since it remains aware of only one tiny snag: current policies somehow do not seem to work.

German interest rates, blamed for much of the recession, are falling, but EC unemployment continues to rise, from 14.6 million in January, to 17.3 million now. This appears to confirm a trend: while the EC and the US enjoyed economic growth rates throughout much of the Eighties, employment in the EC grew by only 0.8 per cent a year, compared with an average of 2.5 per cent in the US. Even more alarmingly, half the EC's unemployed have been out of work for more than a year, eight times the comparable American figure. Given the pace of technological change, many of those long-term unemployed are probably unemployable as well.

Politicians are in the business of purveying good news, and a conspiracy of silence is now sustained by both governments and oppositions. Thus, everyone promises to preserve, and even expand, existing welfare systems despite a rapidly ageing population, without raising taxation or increasing already bloated budget deficits. And every politician still pays lip-service to the idea of seemingly inexorable economic growth, invariably lurking 'just around the corner'.

The problem is that all western leaders continue to derive their legitimacy from national elections, but in practice have little control over an economy that is truly global. Billions of dollars can flow from computer screens in seconds and - as the British, Irish, Spanish, Italian and Portuguese have already discovered - few countries can oppose market trends for long. Although not familiar with the intricacies of the ERM, people everywhere are painfully aware of realities: the people who do affect their lives are usually unknown and unelected; those who ostensibly hold political power prove unable to exercise it.

The obvious answer to intertwined economies could be provided by international institutions, such as the EC. Yet the Community is also fading from people's minds, for very similar reasons. It remains a bureaucratic construction founded on the premise that regulating the size of eggs (usually without even bothering to tell the hen) would gradually draw Europeans closer.

By having an elected parliament which decides nothing and a Commission which, although unelected, rules on everything, the EC is replicating the internal problems of its member states. The bureaucrats in Brussels who believe the Community's unpopularity could be solved by better publicity should first ask themselves whether the product they intend to sell actually has any customers. Until the issue of democratic accountability is properly addressed, no amount of neat packaging is likely to provide salvation.

Promises of lower interest rates, free trade, a two-speed or a federal Europe: all are within the gift of investors and bureaucrats, not current leaders. Yet most European politicians still pretend that they could force their economies to converge into a monetary union by the end of this century.

Furthermore, in pursuing their schemes, European leaders are offering mutually contradictory explanations. The Danes were told that the Maastricht treaty would not affect their sovereignty but, the moment they granted their approval, Brussels resumed talk of a federal Europe. In Britain, Maastricht is sold as the least bad of many awful choices; in France, the same treaty is presented as the only mechanism for controlling a powerful Germany.

National interests pursued under the cloak of a false internationalism cannot work. In essence, a convergence of European minds has to come before economic convergence. And, as long as this does not exist, electorates are unlikely to be persuaded by the argument that many must lose their jobs in order to keep up with the policies of the Bundesbank on behalf of a unity dream which few now deem either desirable or achievable.

The task of leaders in any democracy is to articulate and guide public opinion at the same time. But, far from accomplishing this, west European leaders are now caving in to popular backlash in almost every other field. Immigration is a case in point. Despite large numbers of permanent foreign residents, both the French and German governmments continue to repeat, parrot fashion, that they are not immigration countries. Mr Kohl chooses to combine a condemnation of racist violence with a warning to Germany's 'guest workers' to behave themselves. And France's leaders are openly complaining about their foreigners' 'foul smells'.

As Britain has long discovered, stopping primary migration is feasible, but eliminating immigration, mainly family unification, is almost impossible. Every leader knows that a rich, western tip of the Continent cannot be insulated from a wild East. Yet nobody has the courage to admit this, and all politicians, both in government and opposition, pretend that legislation, as well as the erection of new walls, would somehow solve the problem. France's new government, for instance, has recently copied Britain's long-discarded 'sus' laws in order to detect illegal immigrants. It will soon find out that outbidding nationalist rabble-rousers at their own game risks both democracy and national stability at the same time.

Most west European governments suffer from similar afflictions for essentially the same reasons. It is now clear that the end of the Cold War had much wider consequences than anyone originally expected. Far from simply transforming the East, it is now melting down all political institutions. Socialist ideologies of every hue are discredited, but traditional market economy strategies are not perceived to be relevant either. The old beliefs in an inexorable economic growth and 'European construction' have disappeared as well. The result is a mishmash: Bill Clinton wanting 'managed trade'; conservative west European politicians determined to achieve economic convergence by fiat. Both are faintly Marxist enterprises, cloaked in the language of Adam Smith. And both are served in a mixture of nationalism and internationalism at the same time, a concoction which leaves electorates either bewildered or utterly indifferent.

Governments everywhere are engaged in the pursuit of policy by wishful thinking, clinging to the belief that the old certainties would return. They will not: Europe's persistent lack of competitiveness cannot be hidden by a new trade war, as Francois Mitterrand urged this weekend. Nor can the Continent remain in suspended animation, ruled by politicians overwhelmingly detested, but still immovable from their posts. The vacuum of ideas will ultimately be filled by new ideologies and fresh economic programmes. Yet the present drift is perfect breeding ground for messianic leaders of all kinds. The only question is how many Churchills and how many Mussolinis Europe's current drift is likely to throw up.

Dr Jonathan Eyal is Director of Studies at the Royal United Services Institute.

(Photograph omitted)