There’s a continuum between “hypothetically there is competition but the competition almost never wins” (Japan, at one time I would have said Mexico), “politics is a cruel simulation of democracy which is manipulated so you know the competition never wins” (Singapore, but most of the world’s leaders are jealous) and “It isn’t even fair to call that a political party in the electoral sense” (China).

Contrast that to the U.S. where a party has only held the presidency for at most three terms since 1948 and that just once and where there is usually divided government, as much as Democrats and Republicans can claim the other side wins all the time, no party is so perpetually out of power that it can evade all blame for the way things are. Looking at Europe and sideways at the U.S. it seems almost like center left parties are doomed to be in some quantum superposition of Tony Blair and Jeremy Corbin. By simply framing themselves as the surviving defenders of the welfare state, the far right wins.