LONDON -- When Barack Obama visits Europe this month, the presumed Democratic presidential nominee may be shocked to find himself standing in the middle of a vast, blood-soaked continent littered with the bodies of his political allies. He will see left-wing parties that have reached their lowest popularity in a generation and many that have slid into non-existence.

It is an ironic reversal of fortunes: At the start of the decade, a conservative leader such as George W. Bush was almost alone in the world. Today, conservative leaders are taking over the world.

Across Europe, the left is collapsing.

In Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel's left-right coalition government has recently seen its left-wing partner, the Social Democratic Party, fall to its lowest popularity level in 40 years and enter an interminable leadership crisis. That has allowed Merkel to govern virtually as a lone conservative. In France, conservative President Nicolas Sarkozy has overseen the unraveling of the Socialist Party, which has lost political viability. In Italy, Silvio Berlusconi's angry far-right group bulldozed Romano Prodi's smart but awkward left-wing coalition in April.

In Denmark, Sweden, the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland, conservatives have swept out social democrats. Even the traditionally left-wing cities of London and Rome have this year elected right-wing mayors. In Norway and Britain, long-standing left-wing parties are plummeting toward defeat.

Among the 27 countries of the European Union, Obama's friends are secure only in Spain, Portugal and Austria, where they can wield little wider influence.

"The democratic left in Europe is facing its gravest crisis in more than half a century," says British Labor Party MP Denis MacShane.

It is an extraordinary fall for the social-democratic left, which redefined the world's post-Cold War political center of gravity through social policy and economic growth.

Yet the left's collapse cannot be called a victory for right-wing thinking.

When Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper toured Europe in May, he met a lot of fellow conservatives and made some diplomatic inroads with them. He also encountered more left-wing policies than Europe has introduced in years -- most of them delivered by those conservative leaders.

That's because as financial problems batter voters, it is the parties of the right that are very often bringing back government regulation of markets, welfare-state protections and more generous social policies.

In Germany, Merkel has surprised everyone by reversing many of the sharp welfare and social-spending cuts launched five years ago by Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. She has increased housing allowances, welfare payments and pensions.

What has happened? Unemployment has fallen almost in half, and Germany has surpassed the United States and China as the world's leading exporter.

In France, Sarkozy has brought more regulation to financial markets. He has championed protection of key corporations from foreign takeovers and has been a leading figure in calls for carbon-emission caps across Europe.

This week, he took over the rotating presidency of the EU and immediately launched a "renewed social agenda" of continentwide welfare and health-care programs. His agenda includes a universal right for European citizens to use public-health services in one another's countries.

Even Berlusconi has proposed increases in corporate taxation and has introduced new welfare programs to subsidize food and fuel purchases.

These are shrewd politicians who know what their voters want -- and it isn't conservative austerity and spending cuts.

The current global financial shock and pending recession, combined with the disappearance of the old secure-job industrial economy, has sent voters searching for security, not for the exhilaration of choice. Now that the liberal, global market is hurting voters rather than enriching them, there is an appetite for something else.

Sometimes, conservatives satisfy this need in conventionally right-wing ways, especially on crime and immigration, where the new conservatives have ranged from tough (in France, where mass deportations are taking place) to outright hateful (in Italy, where some ethnic groups are now being fingerprinted). But conservatives have also managed to buy up the left's former monopoly on social security, both in rhetoric and often in policies, and do good electoral business there.