The rise of far right, anti-EU, anti-immigrant and anti-free trade parties in Europe is splitting the Right/Centrist vote, making it much easier for the parties of the Left to win elections. This has nasty implications for private healthcare services in countries like Sweden, the UK and Finland where private equity-backed healthcare has really taken off by Max Hotopf.

Take Sweden. Yes, before the September 2015 elections, there was an impassioned debate about whether for-profit should be allowed in welfare. But what really marked out the elections was the near tripling in the anti-EU Swedish Democrat vote to 15%. That was mainly at the cost of the pro-EU, pro-free market moderate and centrist parties.  We now have a minority Social Democrat government, which to win the support of the Left and the Greens, has signed up to a manifesto which explicitly states that for-profit has no role in publicly paid for healthcare provision. A 20 year consensus that it didn’t really matter who provided healthcare as long as the quality was good appears to have broken.

This does not bode well for the UK where there will be a general election on May 7, 2015. Labour is ahead in the polls, mainly because the right has split with the anti-EU UK Independence Party (UKIP) now polling support at 25% or more – enough to give it 100 seats in 2015. UKIP has said it will not do a deal with the Conservatives. If it keeps that promise, a Labour or Labour/Lib Dem government is inevitable.

No one knows precisely what Labour’s Andy Burnham, the shadow health minister, will do if Labour gets in, but the unions who support Labour are likely to insist on a much reduced role for private operators.

2015 also sees elections in Finland, where private healthcare operators provide around 40% of care. Juhani Lehto, ‎Visiting Professor of social and health care at the University of Helsinki, reckons that for-profit healthcare will be heavily targeted by the Left. Meanwhile, the True Finns are polling at 20%.

The difference, he thinks, is that in Finland there is a tradition of forming broad coalitions across the left/right divide. The current government, for instance, includes the Moderates and the Social Democrats. While in Sweden the Swedish Democrats are taboo to the other parties, in Finland he says there is a tradition of bringing new splinter parties into coalitions. But, as in Sweden, he says it is almost certain that private equity investors who use dubious overseas vehicles to avoid tax will be severely reined in.

It would be simplistic to imagine that parties of the left always oppose private healthcare providers – eventually Labour in the UK under Tony Blair pushed through radical pro-market reforms. But the swing to the left, and the rise of anti-EU parties who feast on nostalgia for easier days and who dislike free markets, is unalloyed bad news for the sector.