Last of the centre-lefties

ARGUMENTS ARE always worse when they involve family, politics or money. They are especially bad when they contain all three. So it proved when EU leaders sat down this summer for four days of talks about issuing €750bn-worth ($884bn) of common debt. Rather than left versus right, the main fight was left-on-left. Europe’s small band of social-democratic siblings attacked each other. On one side were Portugal and Spain, who wanted the cash handed out as non-repayable grants. Meanwhile, their supposed political allies from Denmark, Sweden and Finland tried to stop them. It is not just money that divides the EU’s dwindling bunch of centre-lefties. Portugal and Spain have both been advocates of allowing more refugees into Europe. Social democrats across Scandinavia demand the numbers are cut. “We won’t tolerate any xenophobic rhetoric,” declared António Costa, the Portuguese prime minister, in one speech. Denmark, meanwhile, calls for control of non-Western immigration. Siblings can often look very different.