They are in transition and meltdown, but they will change. At the moment they represent everything that is impractical in politics, but when and if they pay attention to immigration issues, the failing EU, stop serving the ends of political correctness, get their act together and re-emerge, they will be in a position to take Labour's place as official opposition.
Liberal Democracy is the left of centre political ideology of the new millennium. Nationalist conservatism is the right of centre emergent ideology. They will make quite volatile opponents in some ways and in others will form cusps. This will take time, but I feel it will happen large-scale across the old West.
America is already feeling the pinch of the new as Hilary Clinton struggles against her rival and Bush rapidly disappears from view. America, too, will change, with a new feisty secular faction in the ascendant and a number of libertarian oriented groups still nascent but starting to take shape into what will be the new American conservative camp.
American politics will die a rather agonising death before these infants of the new age break free of their placentas. But they are coming down the birth canal and nothing is likely to stop them now.
Old Europe is dying too, and has been for a long time. It is like a once great edifice that has stone cancer and is being eaten away slowly by the elements. New, smaller, groups will form and even smaller, newer groups within those. These will make new alliances. This will all take at least another decade to show up significantly and perhaps another to come to full being. But I feel they are there and I can see their misty shapes emergent in the glare of light that almost always flares after the first decade of a new century.
A new millennium will make this evolutionary change even more pronounced. But there we are looking at changes over generations and centuries.
In our immediate time, we are looking at decadence and rot crumbling to fertilize new ideas within the next twenty years.
