Amsterdam’s PES Congress showed social democrats know what they’re against. They still struggle to say what they’re for.
From 16–18 October, Europe’s social democrats gathered in Amsterdam for the Party of European Socialists (PES) Congress. It was tightly run, well-produced and confident in tone. Leaders spoke the language of unity, resilience and “progressive mobilisation”; the resolutions and staging conveyed a movement that knows how to campaign and how to govern. Yet beneath the polish, one big absence remained: a forward-looking, concrete and credible vision that people can hold onto.
However, two things stood out. First, two seeds of renewal were on display—from Frans Timmermans’s Dutch Labour–Green merger to Raphaël Glucksmann, now firmly within the S&D family and giving the French left a more optimistic face. Both offered sparks of a path forward. Second, the moral clarity brought by dissidents from Europe’s east—most notably Yulia Navalnaya and Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya—cut through platitudes with a reminder that democracy is a lived struggle borne by people with names, risks and costs.
Strong on defence
Today’s leading centre-left parties—Labour in Britain, the SPD in Germany and the PSOE in Spain—are excellent at defining the threats and enemies: authoritarian nationalism, democratic backsliding, austerity’s social wreckage and culture-war polarisation. They are credible custodians of institutions and defenders of the welfare state. The Congress made that clear, and did so with admirable discipline.
The keynote lines captured that defensive clarity. As SPD chair Lars Klingbeil put it, “we must protect our security, freedom and prosperity”—by building a “stronger Europe”. David Lammy struck an expansive note: “We can be confident that the great story of the 21st century is going to be the expansion and the deepening of Justice, and not its reverse.” Spain’s Pedro Sánchez vowed that “we will not take a single step back.” Together, these statements were rousing and worked with the Congress delegates.
But defensive clarity is not the same as an offer. It helps to win arguments about what to stop; it does not answer the more urgent question of what to build. The right has spotted the gap. Across Europe, reactionary movements sell a vision of the past as if it were a programme for the future. Nostalgia is doing the work that progressive imagination should be doing. Progressives are struggling with their primary political task: to lead the way into a better future.
Visions of a “stronger Europe” remain empty phrases, and Lammy’s proposed “progressive realism” does not yet answer the fears voters hold about climate change, rising social inequalities and armed conflict; taken together, this illustrates progressive stagnation.
The Navalnaya mirror
A bracing contrast came from the wider Europe. Voices from the east showed what a credible cause and vision look like—and how much power they generate when you have both. Navalnaya’s contribution mattered because it recentred politics around purpose. Her presence in Amsterdam reminded delegates that defending democracy is not a branding exercise but a set of costs carried by those who resist. Her appearance made clear that you cannot win a battle by staying on the defensive; you need to organise and fight for something, not merely against something. If the social-democratic story stops at “hope and faith”, it will not outcompete reactionary movements whose story is “strength and return”.
From messaging to meaning
The stagecraft worked. The mood music—“progressive mobilisation”—worked. And new faces mattered: Timmermans’s and Glucksmann’s presence underlined that the centre-left can still be innovative. But the refrain that echoed most often from the main stage was: keep faith, keep hope. Necessary, yes; sufficient, no. Hope is not a plan; faith is not a programme.
Labour has a particular responsibility in this moment. A UK government that delivers visible gains on housing, energy, wages and care would strengthen the whole family and prove that social democracy can still draw the map, not merely defend the borders of the post-war social contract. If we can promise a better future—specific, tangible, shared—the nostalgia merchants will lose their monopoly on meaning. If we cannot, they will go on selling yesterday as tomorrow.
