Daily Times

Two politicians, an academic and a bunch of nosey reporters are making socialism sing again. One can almost hear the strains of “The Internationale” rising in the global background.

From the bottom: the reporters are those now pawing their way through the 11 million documents leaked from Panama law firm Mossack Fonseca. They gave a heads up this week that, on May 9, they will release tens of thousands of files detailing “200,000 companies, trusts, foundations and funds incorporated in 21 tax havens, from Hong Kong to Nevada,” quietly exempting their clients from tax.

The revelations have prompted the resignation of Iceland’s prime minister and the embarrassment of Britain’s David Cameron: the latter, letting no misfortune go to waste, has published his tax affairs and ordered tougher probes into companies’ tax arrangements.

In exposing the Mossack Fonseca files, the journalists have given vivid underpinning to the conclusion of Thomas Piketty’s best-selling (best read? It’s complicated.) “Capital in the 21st Century.” The French economist writes that if people understood how rich the super rich are, they would demand change.

Demanding and getting change live in two different spheres – the first relatively easy and popular, the second cutting through layers of political and legal thickets which dull original enthusiasm while suffering lost public interest. But it may be that a “self-sustaining politics that demands ever more information on the ways in which wealth is being hidden” is possible.

If it is, politics will make it so. And in the two main Anglosphere states, the United Kingdom and the United States, two men of the left have taken commanding positions and have run the red flag up the flagpole, to see who salutes.

Jeremy Corbyn, whose time as a Labour MP was spent on platforms in the halls and at rallies of the far left, was put on the ballot for a new leader after Labour’s defeat in the general election of a year ago as a gesture to the Party’s left – and, shock! – won. He’s retained the support of the mainly youthful new members of the party, has built a team, and from a poor start has won a few tricks against a prime minister whose upper-class, wealthy background makes him vulnerable to shrewd populism.

The American Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, now just about out of the race after Tuesday’s lone one win out of five primaries, won’t go quietly into any good night. He’s been energized by a popular campaign that saw him press hard on Hilary Clinton through the winter: his militant liberalism focuses on breaking up the big banks and securing a much higher, $15 hourly minimum wage. Some 29 states have already raised that minimum above the federal floor of $7.25, and New York will bring in $15 in 2018 – so he’s running with the tide.

Both Sanders and Corbyn aim part of their firepower at those in their own parties who had sought to embed centrist politics. Corbyn, for decades a fierce critic of former Labour leader and Prime Minister Tony Blair, believes his election has buried Blairism. His supporters, bolstered by an excoriating and partial “biography” of Blair, now see the man who took Labour to three victories – and who has become a millionaire since he left office through speeches and advice to governments, some authoritarian – as the pantomime villain whose every appearance on the public stage calls forth boos and rotten fruit. To argue for left-of-center positions in today’s Labour Party is to be abused.

The Bern has been more decorous, up to a point. He’s even joked about his constant attacks on the huge speaking fees Clinton has accepted from banks, saying he would release the speeches he gave to banks, adding after a beat – “there were no speeches!” Clinton has insisted the size of the fees – $675,000, for three speeches, from Goldman Sachs alone – will not influence her one jot. She’s a strong woman, and it will take a very strong woman not to retain a soft spot for the generosity of such a company.

The hollowing out of centrist politics happens on the right too. The rise, in Europe and the United States, of militantly right-wing groups and parties – the US tea party/Trump fans, France’s Front National, Germany’s Alternativ fur Deutschland, Italy’s Lega, Sweden’s Swedish Democrats, Britain’s United Kingdom Independence Party – tear into the center-right governments of Germany, the UK and Spain as much as the centre left governments of France, Italy and Sweden as betrayers of the people.

And there’s a new kid on the rightist block. The leader of Austria’s Freedom Party, Norbert Hofer, topped the first round poll for the country’s presidency last Sunday, with 35 percent. He may not win the final round, and the Austrian presidency is largely ceremonial, but it’s clear the left-right-centrist governments of the past decades are seen as failing.

This matters greatly. Centrist politics everywhere have promoted globalization for the past several decades, arguing that freer trade, less regulation, more open borders and increased competition benefits the economy. The greatest enthusiasts were President Bill Clinton and Prime Minister Blair, but George W. Bush and David Cameron have followed suit. The European Union, which “has been firmly in favor of greater economic openness,” depends on globalization’s success for its own claims for more powers. The spread of global business and finance demands stronger transnational governance: the two work in harmony.

President Barack Obama sees the conclusion of a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with the EU as one of the defining acts of his last year. He was pushing the need for it with Chancellor Angela Merkel earlier his week. But Merkel, a supporter, has left, right and the public against it now and will find it hard to ratify.

Trump, the anti-European Europeans and opposition to immigration blend to weaken the center. The left is part of this, often proclaiming the same opposition to finance and global capitalism as the right. Popular support isn’t so much for the positions of Sanders and Corbyn, it’s for whatever political force will stop the waves of rapid, destabilizing and sometimes impoverishing change. If Hillary wins – both the nomination and the presidency, which now seems the best bet – that’s what she, a globalizer to her core, will have to take on. She’ll only hold the center if the economy lets her.

John Lloyd co-founded the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford, where he is Senior Research Fellow