Right-Wing Populism Gains Electoral Support in France and Britain
The two rounds of the French Parliamentary elections concluding on July 7 produced contradictory results in which the far-right racist National Rally of Marie le Pen almost doubled its vote, achieving 143 seats in the 577 Parliament. The election had been called as a desperate move by the embattled neo-liberal French President Macron as he saw his own party facing threats of annihilation from National Rally at the next Presidential election in 2027 (in which Macron cannot stand.)
It was mainly the New Popular Front (NPF) of left and social democratic parties which helped prevent the racists triumph by taking 182 seats and emerging as the largest bloc. However, the NPF is a very loose coalition indeed comprising the left-wing France Unbowed of Jean-Luc Melenchon with 74 seats, the old capitalist Socialist Party of previously unpopular President Francois Hollande with 59 seats, Greens on 28 seats and the Communist Party on nine seats.
The controversial informal pact between Macron, the consistent class enemy of the French working-class, and the NPF allowed an unexpected poll revival for Macron, whose newly named Together group gained 168 seats. Also, on the right the old Republican party (descendants of the de Gaulle tradition) gained 60 seats.
So, the prospect of the rising star of the French far right, the immaculately besuited Jordan Bordella, becoming Prime Minister was prevented but only at the cost of the left sowing illusions in Macron’s candidates. In a class collaborationist arrangement known as the Republican Front, the NPF stood down candidates in 132 seats allowing Together to poll well above its ratings. In return Macron stood down 80 candidates to allow NPF a free run.
The result has strengthened Macron’s hand as he allows his Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, to act as caretaker as he attempts to put together a center-right coalition, possibly including some of the right leaning Socialist Party, to continue his program of austerity. The attacks on pension age and welfare rights and the huge French military expenditure on Ukraine will continue and the NPF, in opposing these measures in the unions and on the streets will face the question, “but didn’t you put these people in power?”
Meanwhile le Pen and Bordella rage against the bloc of the left and center and increase their lying rhetoric against immigrants and asylum seekers as the source of French workers problems. With neighboring Italy already led as Prime Minister by the former(?) fascist Giorgia Meloni, le Pen will see a possible route to power. Only a clear refusal to work with Macron and to oppose him politically and in the working-class movement can stop the neo-fascist advance.
Three days earlier on July 4 came the equally extraordinary UK general election. American readers will be familiar with “winner takes all” electoral systems—after all Trump was elected on 46.1 percent of the vote in 2016 and Biden with 51.3 percent in 2020. The UK election did not however feature a candidate with part of his ear shot off by a would-be assassin or a party leader unable to remember who Vladimir Putin is!
In fact, it was a dull UK campaign with the hapless Tory Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, unable to shake off the disastrous legacy of Boris Johnson and 42-day Prime Minister, Liz Truss. In response charisma-free Labour leader, Keir Starmer, having abandoned every vestige of the socialist program of the Labour Party under former leader Jeremy Corbyn, tried hard to promise nothing at all. Understandably faced with this choice, the election turnout was the second lowest in history at 59.9 percent.
Starmer secured his expected majority with 33.7 percent of the vote which, in a quirk of the electoral system, gave him 411 out of 650 MPs and a massive majority in Parliament. Purged of most of its socialists little can be expected of Starmer and Labour who has already pledged full support for Israel, U.S. imperialism, NATO and ongoing privatization of the National Health Service and little social investment to combat growing homelessness, child poverty or massive gaps in the welfare state.
The heavy defeat of the Tories was not achieved by the appeal of Starmer’s Labour but by the shredding of the Tory vote in hundreds of constituencies by a new populist party of the right, the Reform Party led by Trump’s friend Nigel Farage. The Reform Party, strong on blaming immigrants for UK problems, took 14 percent of the vote and although due to the system this only resulted in five MPs, it is a greatly strengthened threat not yet on the scale of le Pen in France.
There was some encouragement for socialists in the election of four independent MPs who made clear their support for Gaza and were elected in areas with strong Muslim populations. Most significantly former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, forced to stand against Labour by his suspension, was reelected in his north London seat. Corbyn has suggested (The Guardian, July 12) that a new community based anti-racist party could be formed to challenge Labour. The debate on this rages on the left in the UK.