Of late, centrist and centre-left political parties have been facing setbacks while centre-right parties have been in ascendency the world over. Comment. (Answer in 350 words)

- Of late, centrist and centre-left political parties have been facing setbacks while centre-right parties have been in ascendency the world over. Comment. (Answer in 350 words)
Introduction
The pattern is real but uneven. The centre-right is advancing by absorbing radical-right positions while social democracy loses a coalition it has not rebuilt, which makes this a realignment along a cultural cleavage rather than the end of the left.

Body
1. The evidence: Meloni in Italy (2022), Wilders topping the Dutch poll (2023), Milei in Argentina (2023), the FPO's first place in Austria (2024), the AfD's second place in Germany (2025), gains for the EPP and the hard right in the June 2024 European Parliament election, and Trump's return in 2024.
2. The counter-evidence: Labour's landslide in Britain (2024), Lula in Brazil (2022), Sheinbaum in Mexico (2024), Australian Labor's re-election (2025) and Poland's ousting of PiS (2023). Any explanation must fit both columns.
3. Cultural backlash: Norris and Inglehart (2019) read the shift as a reaction by older, less-educated and non-metropolitan voters against post-material value change, with migration its most mobilising issue.
4. Class dealignment: Thomas Piketty's data on the "Brahmin left" show social-democratic parties becoming parties of the educated and ceding working-class voters, with PASOK in Greece and the French Socialists in 2017 as the terminal cases.
5. The Third Way's debt: Giddens-style triangulation surrendered economic distinctiveness, so after 2008 the anti-establishment space was available on the right. Chantal Mouffe's claim that a post-political consensus manufactures right-populism follows directly.
6. Inflation and anti-incumbency: 2024 punished governments almost everywhere on the cost of living, and the centre and centre-left simply happened to hold office in more of the affected states.
7. Mainstreaming: Cas Mudde's point that the radical right is now normalised — the cordon sanitaire has eroded and the centre-right wins by adopting its agenda, as with the EU Migration and Asylum Pact (2024).
8. Media ecology: fragmented, algorithmic and personality-driven campaigning rewards insurgent framing over programmatic centrism.

Conclusion
The centre-right's ascendancy is derivative: it is renting the radical right's issues rather than owning a positive mandate. Where the centre-left recombined redistribution with a credible position on borders and order, as in Britain and Australia, it won, which points to a cyclical realignment rather than a secular defeat.