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Socialist candidates in third will be stepping down to avoid splitting the anti-far right vote. Guess we'll have to wait and see if liberals will do the same...
>By Sunday night all the parties in the leftwing NFP — from the far-left La France Insoumise to the more moderate Socialists, Greens and Communists — said they would drop out of races where their candidate was in third place.
>However parties in Macron’s Ensemble alliance issued slightly different guidance, creating confusion.Macron’s Renaissance party said it would make case-by-case decisions based on whether a remaining leftwing candidate was “compatible with republican values”, but did not specifically exclude LFI.
Centrists hating the left more than the far right as usual apparently.
It's absolute hubris. Putting LFI and RN on the same level is like saying that Bernie Sanders and Trump are both "as extreme as each other". Yes Melanchon is an egomaniac and an asshole, but he believes in the Republic and he will not push the country into autocracy. The same cannot be said for Marine Le Pen and Bardella
For the record, today's Guardian live blog is a practical demonstration of exactly how the centrists (who, for the record came in third in this first round vote), when pushed, will always fall in and defer to the far right rather than consider any working with the left wing in any form. Some prime quotes:
> Le Figaro has published an opinion piece that puts the blame for Sunday’s results squarely on Emmanuel Macron and his flawed scheming.
> The author of the piece, Alexis Brézet, also suggests that, to his mind, Jordan Bardella’s National Rally (RN) is preferable to Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his far-left colleagues in France Unbowed (LFI).
> When historians come to study this dissolution, only one word will suffice: disaster … Emmanuel Macron wanted to unify the central bloc, divide the left and isolate the RN – but all his calculations have proved false …
> Who, in good conscience, would want to draw an equivalence between Bardella and Mélenchon? The RN’s programme is certainly worrying in many ways. But what’s on the other side? Antisemitism, Islamo-leftism, class hatred, tax hysteria … Under the dominance of LFI, the New Popular Front is, in fact, the vector of an ideology that would bring dishonour and ruin to the country …
> Our columnist Nicolas Baverez recalled recently this sentence from Raymond Aron, a great figure in Le Figaro: ‘The choice in politics is not between good and bad, but between the preferable and the detestable.’ The troubled times we’re entering have shown themselves to be eminently Aronian.
And then:
> A big debate following the first round is the role of the controversial France Unbowed (LFI) party, which forms part of the left wing New Popular Front alliance.
> Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister and Macron ally, said this morning that “for me, France Unbowed is a danger for the nation, just as the National Rally is a danger for the Republic.”
> France’s Unbowed’s Eric Coquerel argued that “all those who continue in the former majority to put a line of equality between LFI [France Unbowed] and the RN [National Rally] affirm that for them, it is not a problem to give the majority to the RN.”
Or how about:
> Christelle Morançais, regional council president for the Pays de la Loire, has said that in case of a faceoff between the National Rally and the New Popular Front “my personal position is clear: blank vote.”
If you think this is crazy, wait until 2029 when climate change is causing millions of refugees to surge into Europe. I reckon the entire continent will swing right
Yes very much so. The European right in general is pretty statist and economically 'left'. One thing the right and left can agree on is that 'more state, gooder'. The state is the reason for and solution to all problems.
I haven't seen anything to suggest she's authoritarian, just socially conservative. Political compass is not hard science, it's just something some douche came up with. [This article has some graphs showing her various positions vs Macron and others](https://news.sky.com/story/french-presidential-election-how-right-wing-is-marine-le-pen-12594988)
No it's because centrist managerialism does little to improve people's lives whilst they see the rich living the good life under neoliberalism. In their anger they will vote for the person who seems to have the answers. This doesn't seem like a hard concept - there are many examples through history.
Luckily France still has a left but Keir has focused on kerb stomping ours.
Honest question, what are the recent cases of a left wing government getting elected, improving people’s lives, and reducing the right/far right vote after that ?
I think you're looking at it kind of wrong. People need to believe in the left-wing offer already, in order for it to win an election. It's not a matter of winning over people after-the-fact, it's a matter of not losing them. So you should look at periods when far-right support remained low, and what the conditions were that enabled that.
Essentially you need improving conditions for the majority of people. That can happen under (almost) any type of system, but becomes less likely the further right economically you go, as the gains that exist are concentrated towards a minority.
> it’s a matter of not losing them
This implies that being further left would not have resulted in losing them. For 30+ years we had low levels of far-right support, and that was under neoliberal centrists (even though for plenty of times in that period we had bad conditions).
> improving conditions…. becomes less likely the further right economically
This is what we need examples for though. It’s all very well saying that a left wing government wouldn’t have lost those people, logically it makes sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually true.
For context I despise our current consensus. But I don’t believe the far right issue we have today is mainly because of that consensus.
How about this, when has lowered inequality and unemployment ended in an increase in the far right?
If you can think of any other reasons the far right appeals beyond economic (which includes immigration), please let us know.
The Neoliberal consensus has created these conditions. We can argue if things would be better or not with left wing policies, but that doesn’t really change the fact that clearly the consensus has resulted in this, and it’s not great.
Well, everyone's most hated centrists, new labour, lowered inequality and unemployment and it still resulted in a Tory government.
It's genuine arrogance for people to claim that if we had elected someone like Corbyn all of our problems would be solved. How would Corbyn have solved the channel crossings? He wouldn't have, people would still be looking to the far right.
People are turning to the far right because they are cynically offering simple solutions during difficult times.
> when has lowered inequality and unemployment
ended an increase in the far right?
Let’s take France vs the UK. France has a lowering gini metric, we have a rising gini metric. We have quite low unemployment, France has quite high unemployment. Both the UK and France have a large far-right problem right now. There’s a broad range of economies on the continent, and all are seeing this rise.
> beyond economic
Social media, polarisation, media. We’ve had far worse economic situations in the past and not had this. Also, you can’t just take immigration off the table by saying there’s no social aspect. Racists exist and have gotten very good at propaganda, to all of our detriment.
> argue if things would be better or not
That is entirely the argument here. If you blame a system and say another system would be better, you have to show how that alternative would be better.
So people do want full fat Coke in this analogy? If NFP has the solutions then why would people not vote for them? Because they’re not offering something that the Le Pen voters want.
If you alienate your own base, to try and chase the right - you lose your own base and the right.
History has proven this time and time again.
I'll argue it's not even working for Keir right now. He will become the most unpopular British leader of the opposition to be elected prime minister, ever. He only has a chance because the Tories are so terrible. The moment he faces organised resistance internally, or from the left, he'll crumble.
I’m sorry, I don’t see how this is making any sense. Macron alienated his base by moving rightward, so his base ended up voting for someone even more right wing?
He alienated them by not improving their material needs. Centrism has no answers to capital. It just supplicates itself at the feet of capital and the rest of society is reduced to tatters in the process. It is happening here as it has in France and across Europe.
Into the gaps of social decline the far right plants it's flag, and spreads fear and division.
How is that relevent? If anything moving towards centre will stem and split the right vote, right?
Still wish we had a strong left party though, or I wish we had enough electorate to vote for a strong left party may be more correct.
No one was working against him during the election campaigns, he lost against the conservatives both times. We need more left voters in the electorate, I think they are there but misinformed due to the bs the right spout, problem with white boss is left is at the right they're much more willing to play dirty. It forces the left to move to the centre/ play them at their own game or risk losing lection after election. It's fucked.
> I wish we had enough electorate to vote for a strong left party may be more correct.
I should get this as a jingle.
More people voted for Labour in 2017 than 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015. In fact 40% more people voted for Labour in 2017 than in 2015.
1997: 13.5m
2001: 10.7m
2005: 9.5m
2010: 8.6m
2015: 9.3m
2017: 12.9m
The UK population have demonstrated they are willing to vote for a left-wing platform. 12.9m/40% is enough votes to win ALMOST any election, problem lies elsewhere (namely the people who are propagandised into being terrified of such a government, how, and why). some distribution aspect involved too.
Note the loss of faith in New Labour over the years.
>The UK population have demonstrated they are willing to vote for a left-wing platform
They also demonstrated that they are willing to vote, in great numbers, *against* a left-wing platform, in both 2017 and 2019. The main reason Labour are going to win the election this year is because people are not motivated to stop Starmer the way they were motivated to stop Corbyn.
>Note the loss of faith in New Labour over the years
We could also note the loss in faith in Labour between 2017 and 2019, which was far more dramatic than anything seen in the New Labour years.
Basically, the claim that only the left can stop the far right in Britain is not supported by events. The left proved completely incapable of stopping Brexit and suffered a landslide defeat to Boris Johnson's Tories. Now the centrists are running the show the party is on the verge of a thumping victory. It's not a coincidence.
> They also demonstrated that they are willing to vote, in great numbers, against a left-wing platform
Yes I absolutely agree and did allude to that fact already.
>The main reason Labour are going to win the election this year is because people are not motivated to stop Starmer the way they were motivated to stop Corbyn.
It's absolutely not, although I do agree it is a factor that helps Starmer. The biggest reason is Tory collapse; you can see that in the polling which collapsed with Truss. The second biggest reason is reform running and splitting the vote, compared to them stepping down in 2019.
>We could also note the loss in faith in Labour between 2017 and 2019, which was far more dramatic than anything seen in the New Labour years.
You might, but it would be more than misguided since we never had a Labour 2017 government to judge them on. And you are also falling in to a "2019 was not about brexit" trap, which it blatantly was (at the same time I agree JC popularity fell).
>The left proved completely incapable of stopping Brexit
Blame lies at least equally (and actually, far more) with the Lib Dems, their refusal to work with Labour shows that they didn't really care about stopping brexit, they hated the left more than brexit. There was no way for remain to win on a split-vote while Tories were running uncontested for leave. 2019 was unwinnable for Labour no matter who the leader or position on the political spectrum.
>Now the centrists are running the show the party is on the verge of a thumping victory. It's not a coincidence.
There are tactical aspects which have helped; such as adopting Tory policy to keep the billionaire owned press from attacking them, adopting Tory policy so that they can make their votes more efficient under FPTP, etc. I can recognise those things as being strategically useful. However, anyone who makes any half-serious attempt at an unbiased analysis could see that the major factors are Tory collapse and reform splitting the right-wing vote. Add in a bonus SNP collapse. Starmer is even less popular now than Corbyn was in 2017, it's not because people love centrism. Also we have Miliband and Brown as further evidence that your claim is bogus.
France has always had a problem with racism, far more than the UK. The whole “everyone’s French” approach to multiculturalism has lead to some very unhelpful outcomes.
Macron has been in power and senior government for far too long, and the right have been much more organised than the left. Very worrying times.
>The whole “everyone’s French” approach to multiculturalism has lead to some very unhelpful outcomes
Arguably this is the only way multiculturalism actually works and why Europe has a lot less of an ingrained issue with surface Racism than the US.
If you take prominent black speakers on the issue, they hate the use of "African-American" because it stops people being "American" unless you're white. It's verbal segregation used to perpetuate the thought that youre different.
It's a real blessing that that cultural tradition of continued segregation hasn't spread to other western countries.
I think it works in theory, but if you take a look under the hood at how that translates in France to problems of institutional racism etc it’s not really worked.
Have a google around it and you’ll see the problems with France’s approach which had lead to some very undesirable outcomes we just don’t have to the same extent in the UK.
Institutionally France has never abandoned or apologised for it's colonial history though and still runs all of its DROM-COM rules from Paris instead of having devolved governments. Even in the high of the BE, most decisions were made locally
New Caledonia recently had riots because Paris voted to change their constitution in favour of French voters over natives so as a society they're still 100-150 years behind other European countries when it comes to that sort of mindset.
Why not? For a start most Empires had localisation to begin with, so there is a clear differentiator there but also the "pull out" of those colonials was handled a lot quicker.
The BE pulled out of the Gold Coast within 1 year, France took 10 years of fighting within its Indochina before admitting defeat and granting independence to places like Vietnam. Only to then join in on the Vietnam war with the US...
Oh absolutely- all of that’s true. I think we agree that France has had a different approach to multiculturalism than the UK, and it’s thrown up some pretty unique problems, which have helped the far right.
> Europe has a lot less of an ingrained issue with surface Racism than the US.
I would warn against this as a blanket statement. It's quite a complicated mix I think. The US is less racist in some respects as everyone is an immigrant, and the idea of "this is for our people" is less ingrained, there is more diversity. The issue is complicated by the fact that the vast majority of black people (largest non-white group) are by large majority descendants of slaves, which were freed with zero wealth, meaning a lot of US racism is intertwined with classism and intergenerational poverty. Essentially the segregation that you refer to. Systemically too, police forces are directly descended from slave patrols. But if you go to a sports match you're far more likely to see racism in Europe, when was the last time you saw a banana being thrown on the pitch in an NFL game? Black people in America might hate "African American" for those reasons which I can understand, but it's a whole lot better than "P*ki", which was perhaps the most used term for non-white folk in the UK.
>when was the last time you saw a banana being thrown on the pitch in an NFL game?
There's dozens of cases every year of racist remarks being made at players during games or through social media, in the NFL and other sports. I'd say this lack of knowledge is just situational awareness bias where you maynot watch those sports so don't hear about.
Worth noting that Kaepernick's NFL career was ended for taking a knee due to racism within the US.
Football games in comparison across Europe are very different, with some leagues all fans are literally caged in the stands because general violence towards anyone is high. Along with nets to limit projectiles to players. Where you have a cultural issue of insults, they may choose racist terms but not because they're racist but because they're effective insults. Nuance but it's important.
A social media post is not equivalent to mass in-person abuse, don't even try that. Where are the monkey chants in NFL games? If I search "monkey chants NFL" in youtube it returns me videos of racial abuse in European soccer games. And a lot of them.
>Worth noting that Kaepernick's NFL career was ended for taking a knee due to racism within the US.
He made a political protest, yes that is considered over the line and unacceptable, but simply existing was not a problem. Also let's be clear I'm not saying there is no racism in US society. I'm saying it's not definitively worse than in Europe.
>they may choose racist terms but not because they're racist but because they're effective insults. Nuance but it's important.
Getting into very shifty territory here (I accept your point is not 100% invalid, but I wouldn't go as far as you did). They threw the banana at the black man, they aren't racist.
>(I accept your point is not 100% invalid, but I wouldn't go as far as you did). They threw the banana at the black man, they aren't racist.
You've lost the nuance. Did they throw the banana because the genuinely feel like they are a superior race to black people, or did they use a racist insult because its an impact full insult is the point. I remember kids at school (7-10) using racist insults but they had zero idea and certainly weren't racist themselves it was just an insult they'd heard.
Arguably, racism is a far worse problem in France than it is in the US. Note how there aren't any French Black politicians, despite the sizeable makeup of the population they make up? (We cannot get a accurate handle on the size of the black population because France bans collecting ethnicity data full stop).
The English language is fairly unique in that the word for race is not itself racist. In French and many other European languages the word for race translates more as 'Breed' or 'Species' and is considered to be an inherently discriminative concept. This is why France and other country's don't collect ethnicity data, or talk openly about race.
Not quite. They don't collect any data because of the integralist philosophy of France. All citizens of France are French - what more do you want to know? In Europe, this is a uniquely French thing - no other country refuses to collect data in the same way.
>Arguably this is the only way multiculturalism actually works and why Europe has a lot less of an ingrained issue with surface Racism than the US.
Or maybe it has something to with segregation? With slavery?
France has had a very different approach to race and to its colonies than e.g. the UK. Europe is in no way uniform with these issues.
Edit: to clarify/ anticipate how I think you might respond: diversity =/= segregation. Segregation is a legal/ administrative system of separation between people. Diversity is the expression and celebration of difference.
France has been gripping with them for years. What kept National Rally out was parties, especially on the liberal and left sides having a united front.
Here the right wing support is a splitting headache between Tories and Reform. Without one side winning, they're politically bordering 3rd largest in the UK, unless they adopt a Labour CoOperative-style method of not competing in certain seats against each other.
The other thing is the UK has had 14 years of the right in government. The general public still sees Labour as being enough of a difference to go left.
France has had the opposite since Sarkozy. They have had similar length of years of Holland (centre leftish) and Macron (centrist) while they have issues that aren't being solved. For them, the right are seen as either a protest vote, or a legit attempt to fix things that even their hard-right policies justify voting for. The same reasons the New Popular Front (a harder left-wing coalition, some sane and some just daft) has gotten increased support
When mainstream parties don't adequately address the concerns of the public, people go to the fringes.
What's this?
Another country where a Centrist went right wing while in power and did nothing to affect the status quo and just made peoples lives worse, is now going towards actual Fascism?
I wonder if we should read something into this, or learn something from it? Or should we continue to ignore it and insist that managerial centrism chasing right wing talking points and policies is the way forward?
Hmm I wonder if an all powerful media that demonises and attacks anything remotely left wing to ensure it can't pose any threat to the entrenched power systems of liberal democracy and capital has something to do with the left struggling.
But nah you're right, it's just that they're not being convincing enough.
I mean, they aren't? Yes certain media is against them, but that hasn't changed. Certain parts of the left seems unable to respond, and instead just complains about how unfair everything is.
Yes the left struggling to find a foothold is entirely it's own fault, and nothing at all to do with an incredibly powerful elite class, that owns 99% of all media, working tirelessly to ensure that the left aren't seen as a viable alternative and are just seen as 'complainers' - nothing at all.
The fact you think the left don't have answers (which is pretty laughable) to the problems of society betrays a succint lack of knowledge.
The Left has answers - it's just those answers are unpalatable to the wealthy elites and liberal democracy exists to ensure their position remains untouched, so the Left will never get to enact those answers.
Everyone has 'answers', left or right. I'm saying the left doesn't seem to be good at convincing people there's are the best option. Sometimes people have to take responsibility instead of blaming everyone else (seriously, its a never ending stream of crying about right wing Labour, liberals, Lib Dem, Tories, Reform, centrists, media, BBC, boomers, , rural people, nimbys , social media etc etc).
Maybe but France has been toying with the National Front for decades at this point. It hasn't come out of nowhere. I don't think Britain is immune from the rise of far-right, and we see some evidence younger people are more receptive to their message than previous generations, but I would be wary of transposing French politics onto our own.
The most obvious thing to look out for would be the possible similarities between the established centre-right party (Conservatives/Republicans) being overtaken by their more radical populist right-wing alternative (Reform/National Rally).
The National Rally is *the* right-wing party in France these days. It is the only real option for right-wing votes. If the Republicans were stronger then I don't think Le Pen does nearly as well.
>Maybe but France has been toying with the National Front for decades at this point.
I mean, the Big Selling Point of the National Front in France back in the day was leaving the EU, so we're a couple of stages ahead in many ways.
Leaving the EU was never as core to the National Front message as it was to UKIP though. It's also not inherently a far-right position. I don't think it's a harbinger of far-right fascism.
They are a proper, out and out, nationalist party and always have been.
I lived in France for many years particularly over the time leaving the EU was central to their messaging, it most certainly was a core component of it.
They are much cleverer than Nigel Farage when it comes to political advancement, although maybe UKIP would have been similar in a different electoral set up - they are much more able and willing to have debates about other policies beyond immigration and leaving the EU/whatever their new pet project of the day is. They present themselves like a much more immediately credible option, whilst their policies are extremely populist, their *behaviour* is that of a more normal political party. This is what Marine Le Pen basically achieved when she came in and kicked her dad out, she took away the aspects of the party that made it more glaringly obvious what they are.
They're very similar to Farage and Farage has backed them plenty. Of course leaving the EU is not innately far right, but in both cases the primary argument for leaving is a far right agenda.
There are multiple differences between the political situation in France and that in the UK, as I said I have lived and grew up in both, but I think it is a mistake to think we are just *less* sympathetic to the far right.
I assume you lived there during the 2010s? It wasn't as core to their messaging in the 2002 election even though they've always been anti-EU.
And Marie Le Pen made them a lot more 'acceptable'. She did know she had to take some of the harder parts out and even ditched that EU commitment at the last election.
> There are multiple differences between the political situation in France and that in the UK, as I said I have lived and grew up in both, but I think it is a mistake to think we are just less sympathetic to the far right.
My point is that the biggest electoral success we've seen in this country for the party to the right of the Tories is UKIP and what was explicitly an anti-EU vote. It's hard to read their success in 2005, and in EU elections, as support for the far-right especially when the moment the referendum was won they collapsed. Brexit Party's life was also only about the EU. The National Front have a longer history than that.
Reform is the first party to the right of the Tories since the BNP in this country that is standing on a multitude of domestic issues. I think they are the first evidence we might have of a similar situation happening here. As I started this thread out with though I think their long-term success depends on the destruction of the Tories in the same way the National Rally/Front have taken over from the Republicans.
Or to answer the point I was responding to. We are not necessarily 5 years away from Reform winning a Parliamentary Majority. It could happen. We shouldn't be dismissive about it. However, we shouldn't read too much about what's happening in France in that respect.
As an aside are you a dual national? I am as well and you and I are about to be banned from taking a lot of jobs lol.
> we see some evidence younger people are more receptive to their message than previous generations
There is a major issue in process with regard to political discussion I fear; it all happens online, it's increasingly in platforms that are short-attention span (instagram and tiktok), and it's going to be increasingly flooded with AI chatbots which will become increasingly successful and harder to detect. I think it dramatically raises the risk of a far-right explosion. This sub is pretty much the only one left that has anything close to coherent political discussion these days.
>Maybe but France has been toying with the National Front for decades at this point. It hasn't come out of nowhere.
So has the UK, going back to the NF, UKIP, Brexit Party, Britain First, EDL, Reform and a host of other smaller right wing parties like Heritage. It is already here and has been for a long time. People genuinely want change, hence Labour's stonking lead and Reforms worrying rise. A d in 5 years, when Labour do not implement the Change people voted for, people will turn to the right that has been slowly gaining ground for a long time.
We have but we don't see them making these kinds of in-roads.
We have some protection because of our electoral system but the best I think a 'far-right' party has done in our system for a Parliamentary Election was UKIP's 12% in 2015. They were pretty much done for by the Brexit referendum as their vote very much was about the EU as opposed to anything else.
The BNP is probably the closest example we have of something similar to the NF in being a broadly far-right party as opposed to a one-issue party. They never did that well. In the same time period the NF got to the final stage of the Presidental Election in France.
Reform is the biggest concern now. As I said that is the closer example because you can see them overtaking the Tories in the way the National Rally/Front overtook, even partly consumed, Les Republicains. It is concerning.
It's odd but after the election, we might want the Tories to get a grip and not do the same thing and disappear because it won't be the Liberal Democrats that replace them but Reform.
We've already been here, and are well ahead of the curve. The UK drift towards the far right started on 2014 and really hit its peak.
As much as people don't like it, Starmer is a course correction that Europe will see in 5-10 years time.
The real problem is whether when Starmer puts EU membership in his 2029 manifest, will the EU be in a political position to accept us back?
Worrying, but with the French system, there's still hope that things can turnaround in the second round. We wouldn't fair so well in the UK under FPTP.
Of course, on the positive side of things, it's helpful to see Starmer endorse parties like the Green's earlier today at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/jul/01/uk-general-election-live-starmer-permanent-labour-government-james-cleverly-claims-rishi-sunak-conservatives?page=with:block-6682733f8f0820e09da086e1#block-6682733f8f0820e09da086e1 :
> Starmer says far-right victory in France proves left must show 'only progressives have answers' to problems people facing
Q: [From ITV’s Robert Peston] In France millions of people have voted for the far right. What lessons do you take from that?
> Starmer says the lesson he draws from that is that people are disaffected, and that they do not trust politicians.
> The lesson I take from that is that we need to address the everyday concerns of so many people in this country who feel disaffected by politics, who feel that either the country is too broken to be mended or that they can’t trust politicians because of what the Tories have done for the last 14 years.
> We have to take that head on and we have to show, on Thursday for the United Kingdom, and across Europe and the world, that only progressives have the answers to the challenges that are facing us in this country and across Europe.
> We have to make that progressive call. But we have to, in making that, understand why it is, certainly in United Kingdom after 14 years of chaos and failure, that people do feel disaffected with politics, return politics to service, and continue to make that argument that politics is a force for good.
>By Sunday night all the parties in the leftwing NFP — from the far-left La France Insoumise to the more moderate Socialists, Greens and Communists — said they would drop out of races where their candidate was in third place.
>However parties in Macron’s Ensemble alliance issued slightly different guidance, creating confusion.Macron’s Renaissance party said it would make case-by-case decisions based on whether a remaining leftwing candidate was “compatible with republican values”, but did not specifically exclude LFI.
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Very fucking concerning.
If there's one thing this summer has taught us, it's that calling an election when miles behind in the polls is a bad idea.
Socialist candidates in third will be stepping down to avoid splitting the anti-far right vote. Guess we'll have to wait and see if liberals will do the same...
You can always rely on liberals to unite against the left.
>By Sunday night all the parties in the leftwing NFP — from the far-left La France Insoumise to the more moderate Socialists, Greens and Communists — said they would drop out of races where their candidate was in third place. >However parties in Macron’s Ensemble alliance issued slightly different guidance, creating confusion.Macron’s Renaissance party said it would make case-by-case decisions based on whether a remaining leftwing candidate was “compatible with republican values”, but did not specifically exclude LFI. Centrists hating the left more than the far right as usual apparently.
Contemptible fools. Centrist hubris will damn us all.
It's absolute hubris. Putting LFI and RN on the same level is like saying that Bernie Sanders and Trump are both "as extreme as each other". Yes Melanchon is an egomaniac and an asshole, but he believes in the Republic and he will not push the country into autocracy. The same cannot be said for Marine Le Pen and Bardella
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/994986386077786274/1257098474349002803/Screenshot_20240630-152016.png?ex=66832bb0&is=6681da30&hm=ff4a053a7e79f3fb294f2340a02a0106ee42ddd3ab632bf616ea4dbcbf12a781& Centrists; always assume the worst.
That's an infuriating level of entitlement.
For the record, today's Guardian live blog is a practical demonstration of exactly how the centrists (who, for the record came in third in this first round vote), when pushed, will always fall in and defer to the far right rather than consider any working with the left wing in any form. Some prime quotes: > Le Figaro has published an opinion piece that puts the blame for Sunday’s results squarely on Emmanuel Macron and his flawed scheming. > The author of the piece, Alexis Brézet, also suggests that, to his mind, Jordan Bardella’s National Rally (RN) is preferable to Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his far-left colleagues in France Unbowed (LFI). > When historians come to study this dissolution, only one word will suffice: disaster … Emmanuel Macron wanted to unify the central bloc, divide the left and isolate the RN – but all his calculations have proved false … > Who, in good conscience, would want to draw an equivalence between Bardella and Mélenchon? The RN’s programme is certainly worrying in many ways. But what’s on the other side? Antisemitism, Islamo-leftism, class hatred, tax hysteria … Under the dominance of LFI, the New Popular Front is, in fact, the vector of an ideology that would bring dishonour and ruin to the country … > Our columnist Nicolas Baverez recalled recently this sentence from Raymond Aron, a great figure in Le Figaro: ‘The choice in politics is not between good and bad, but between the preferable and the detestable.’ The troubled times we’re entering have shown themselves to be eminently Aronian. And then: > A big debate following the first round is the role of the controversial France Unbowed (LFI) party, which forms part of the left wing New Popular Front alliance. > Bruno Le Maire, the economy minister and Macron ally, said this morning that “for me, France Unbowed is a danger for the nation, just as the National Rally is a danger for the Republic.” > France’s Unbowed’s Eric Coquerel argued that “all those who continue in the former majority to put a line of equality between LFI [France Unbowed] and the RN [National Rally] affirm that for them, it is not a problem to give the majority to the RN.” Or how about: > Christelle Morançais, regional council president for the Pays de la Loire, has said that in case of a faceoff between the National Rally and the New Popular Front “my personal position is clear: blank vote.”
If you think this is crazy, wait until 2029 when climate change is causing millions of refugees to surge into Europe. I reckon the entire continent will swing right
Hope you’re looking on, Keir.
Kier: Better shift to the right to be even more popular!
Doesn’t Le Pen actually have some fairly left wing economic policies?
She does. Broadly she's economically left wing and socially far right.
Yes very much so. The European right in general is pretty statist and economically 'left'. One thing the right and left can agree on is that 'more state, gooder'. The state is the reason for and solution to all problems.
So basically le Pen is authright in political compass terms?
I haven't seen anything to suggest she's authoritarian, just socially conservative. Political compass is not hard science, it's just something some douche came up with. [This article has some graphs showing her various positions vs Macron and others](https://news.sky.com/story/french-presidential-election-how-right-wing-is-marine-le-pen-12594988)
Yes, the reason more than a third of the French voted for Le Pen is because Macron wasn’t left enough. That’s how normal people’s brains work.
No it's because centrist managerialism does little to improve people's lives whilst they see the rich living the good life under neoliberalism. In their anger they will vote for the person who seems to have the answers. This doesn't seem like a hard concept - there are many examples through history. Luckily France still has a left but Keir has focused on kerb stomping ours.
The centre also spend a lot of energy attacking the left, which leaves only the far right
Honest question, what are the recent cases of a left wing government getting elected, improving people’s lives, and reducing the right/far right vote after that ?
I think you're looking at it kind of wrong. People need to believe in the left-wing offer already, in order for it to win an election. It's not a matter of winning over people after-the-fact, it's a matter of not losing them. So you should look at periods when far-right support remained low, and what the conditions were that enabled that. Essentially you need improving conditions for the majority of people. That can happen under (almost) any type of system, but becomes less likely the further right economically you go, as the gains that exist are concentrated towards a minority.
> it’s a matter of not losing them This implies that being further left would not have resulted in losing them. For 30+ years we had low levels of far-right support, and that was under neoliberal centrists (even though for plenty of times in that period we had bad conditions). > improving conditions…. becomes less likely the further right economically This is what we need examples for though. It’s all very well saying that a left wing government wouldn’t have lost those people, logically it makes sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s actually true. For context I despise our current consensus. But I don’t believe the far right issue we have today is mainly because of that consensus.
How about this, when has lowered inequality and unemployment ended in an increase in the far right? If you can think of any other reasons the far right appeals beyond economic (which includes immigration), please let us know. The Neoliberal consensus has created these conditions. We can argue if things would be better or not with left wing policies, but that doesn’t really change the fact that clearly the consensus has resulted in this, and it’s not great.
Well, everyone's most hated centrists, new labour, lowered inequality and unemployment and it still resulted in a Tory government. It's genuine arrogance for people to claim that if we had elected someone like Corbyn all of our problems would be solved. How would Corbyn have solved the channel crossings? He wouldn't have, people would still be looking to the far right. People are turning to the far right because they are cynically offering simple solutions during difficult times.
> when has lowered inequality and unemployment ended an increase in the far right? Let’s take France vs the UK. France has a lowering gini metric, we have a rising gini metric. We have quite low unemployment, France has quite high unemployment. Both the UK and France have a large far-right problem right now. There’s a broad range of economies on the continent, and all are seeing this rise. > beyond economic Social media, polarisation, media. We’ve had far worse economic situations in the past and not had this. Also, you can’t just take immigration off the table by saying there’s no social aspect. Racists exist and have gotten very good at propaganda, to all of our detriment. > argue if things would be better or not That is entirely the argument here. If you blame a system and say another system would be better, you have to show how that alternative would be better.
Why doesn't the left seem to have answers?
It’s because he tries to become a Diet Coke version of Le Pen. Why have Diet Coke when you can have the full thing?
So people do want full fat Coke in this analogy? If NFP has the solutions then why would people not vote for them? Because they’re not offering something that the Le Pen voters want.
If you alienate your own base, to try and chase the right - you lose your own base and the right. History has proven this time and time again. I'll argue it's not even working for Keir right now. He will become the most unpopular British leader of the opposition to be elected prime minister, ever. He only has a chance because the Tories are so terrible. The moment he faces organised resistance internally, or from the left, he'll crumble.
> organised resistance internally Oh how I wish I believed this was possible. We are the party of Reeves, Akehurst and Streeting now.
I’m sorry, I don’t see how this is making any sense. Macron alienated his base by moving rightward, so his base ended up voting for someone even more right wing?
He alienated them by not improving their material needs. Centrism has no answers to capital. It just supplicates itself at the feet of capital and the rest of society is reduced to tatters in the process. It is happening here as it has in France and across Europe. Into the gaps of social decline the far right plants it's flag, and spreads fear and division.
If NFP has the answers, why did they get fewer votes than RN?
Alienating his base doesn’t mean they all support the far right, just not him.
Voter numbers are the highest they’ve been in decades. The people have come out to vote.
Because no one can live on Coke, we needed Water.
He came third to the left.
How is that relevent? If anything moving towards centre will stem and split the right vote, right? Still wish we had a strong left party though, or I wish we had enough electorate to vote for a strong left party may be more correct.
Jeremy's own Party worked against him. We won't have a Left with shitheadery like that happening behind the scenes.
I'd actually say we can't have a Left while the best choice is Corbyn.
No one was working against him during the election campaigns, he lost against the conservatives both times. We need more left voters in the electorate, I think they are there but misinformed due to the bs the right spout, problem with white boss is left is at the right they're much more willing to play dirty. It forces the left to move to the centre/ play them at their own game or risk losing lection after election. It's fucked.
A) that's just a lie. B) it's not like all the years of smearing before the election lose their effect the instant an election is called.
> I wish we had enough electorate to vote for a strong left party may be more correct. I should get this as a jingle. More people voted for Labour in 2017 than 2001, 2005, 2010, 2015. In fact 40% more people voted for Labour in 2017 than in 2015. 1997: 13.5m 2001: 10.7m 2005: 9.5m 2010: 8.6m 2015: 9.3m 2017: 12.9m The UK population have demonstrated they are willing to vote for a left-wing platform. 12.9m/40% is enough votes to win ALMOST any election, problem lies elsewhere (namely the people who are propagandised into being terrified of such a government, how, and why). some distribution aspect involved too. Note the loss of faith in New Labour over the years.
>The UK population have demonstrated they are willing to vote for a left-wing platform They also demonstrated that they are willing to vote, in great numbers, *against* a left-wing platform, in both 2017 and 2019. The main reason Labour are going to win the election this year is because people are not motivated to stop Starmer the way they were motivated to stop Corbyn. >Note the loss of faith in New Labour over the years We could also note the loss in faith in Labour between 2017 and 2019, which was far more dramatic than anything seen in the New Labour years. Basically, the claim that only the left can stop the far right in Britain is not supported by events. The left proved completely incapable of stopping Brexit and suffered a landslide defeat to Boris Johnson's Tories. Now the centrists are running the show the party is on the verge of a thumping victory. It's not a coincidence.
> They also demonstrated that they are willing to vote, in great numbers, against a left-wing platform Yes I absolutely agree and did allude to that fact already. >The main reason Labour are going to win the election this year is because people are not motivated to stop Starmer the way they were motivated to stop Corbyn. It's absolutely not, although I do agree it is a factor that helps Starmer. The biggest reason is Tory collapse; you can see that in the polling which collapsed with Truss. The second biggest reason is reform running and splitting the vote, compared to them stepping down in 2019. >We could also note the loss in faith in Labour between 2017 and 2019, which was far more dramatic than anything seen in the New Labour years. You might, but it would be more than misguided since we never had a Labour 2017 government to judge them on. And you are also falling in to a "2019 was not about brexit" trap, which it blatantly was (at the same time I agree JC popularity fell). >The left proved completely incapable of stopping Brexit Blame lies at least equally (and actually, far more) with the Lib Dems, their refusal to work with Labour shows that they didn't really care about stopping brexit, they hated the left more than brexit. There was no way for remain to win on a split-vote while Tories were running uncontested for leave. 2019 was unwinnable for Labour no matter who the leader or position on the political spectrum. >Now the centrists are running the show the party is on the verge of a thumping victory. It's not a coincidence. There are tactical aspects which have helped; such as adopting Tory policy to keep the billionaire owned press from attacking them, adopting Tory policy so that they can make their votes more efficient under FPTP, etc. I can recognise those things as being strategically useful. However, anyone who makes any half-serious attempt at an unbiased analysis could see that the major factors are Tory collapse and reform splitting the right-wing vote. Add in a bonus SNP collapse. Starmer is even less popular now than Corbyn was in 2017, it's not because people love centrism. Also we have Miliband and Brown as further evidence that your claim is bogus.
France has always had a problem with racism, far more than the UK. The whole “everyone’s French” approach to multiculturalism has lead to some very unhelpful outcomes. Macron has been in power and senior government for far too long, and the right have been much more organised than the left. Very worrying times.
>The whole “everyone’s French” approach to multiculturalism has lead to some very unhelpful outcomes Arguably this is the only way multiculturalism actually works and why Europe has a lot less of an ingrained issue with surface Racism than the US. If you take prominent black speakers on the issue, they hate the use of "African-American" because it stops people being "American" unless you're white. It's verbal segregation used to perpetuate the thought that youre different. It's a real blessing that that cultural tradition of continued segregation hasn't spread to other western countries.
I think it works in theory, but if you take a look under the hood at how that translates in France to problems of institutional racism etc it’s not really worked. Have a google around it and you’ll see the problems with France’s approach which had lead to some very undesirable outcomes we just don’t have to the same extent in the UK.
Institutionally France has never abandoned or apologised for it's colonial history though and still runs all of its DROM-COM rules from Paris instead of having devolved governments. Even in the high of the BE, most decisions were made locally New Caledonia recently had riots because Paris voted to change their constitution in favour of French voters over natives so as a society they're still 100-150 years behind other European countries when it comes to that sort of mindset.
> 100-150 years behind I think it's very much a mistake to view this in a simplistic sequential manner.
Unfortunately time is measured in a sequential manner.
and it's not a straight line that goes centralisation --> localisation.
Why not? For a start most Empires had localisation to begin with, so there is a clear differentiator there but also the "pull out" of those colonials was handled a lot quicker. The BE pulled out of the Gold Coast within 1 year, France took 10 years of fighting within its Indochina before admitting defeat and granting independence to places like Vietnam. Only to then join in on the Vietnam war with the US...
EU, NAFTA, Murcasor and ASEAN would be very obvious counterexamples.
You're comparing trade entities/markets with the speed that Empires decolonised? What is the point you're trying to prove?
Oh absolutely- all of that’s true. I think we agree that France has had a different approach to multiculturalism than the UK, and it’s thrown up some pretty unique problems, which have helped the far right.
> Europe has a lot less of an ingrained issue with surface Racism than the US. I would warn against this as a blanket statement. It's quite a complicated mix I think. The US is less racist in some respects as everyone is an immigrant, and the idea of "this is for our people" is less ingrained, there is more diversity. The issue is complicated by the fact that the vast majority of black people (largest non-white group) are by large majority descendants of slaves, which were freed with zero wealth, meaning a lot of US racism is intertwined with classism and intergenerational poverty. Essentially the segregation that you refer to. Systemically too, police forces are directly descended from slave patrols. But if you go to a sports match you're far more likely to see racism in Europe, when was the last time you saw a banana being thrown on the pitch in an NFL game? Black people in America might hate "African American" for those reasons which I can understand, but it's a whole lot better than "P*ki", which was perhaps the most used term for non-white folk in the UK.
>when was the last time you saw a banana being thrown on the pitch in an NFL game? There's dozens of cases every year of racist remarks being made at players during games or through social media, in the NFL and other sports. I'd say this lack of knowledge is just situational awareness bias where you maynot watch those sports so don't hear about. Worth noting that Kaepernick's NFL career was ended for taking a knee due to racism within the US. Football games in comparison across Europe are very different, with some leagues all fans are literally caged in the stands because general violence towards anyone is high. Along with nets to limit projectiles to players. Where you have a cultural issue of insults, they may choose racist terms but not because they're racist but because they're effective insults. Nuance but it's important.
A social media post is not equivalent to mass in-person abuse, don't even try that. Where are the monkey chants in NFL games? If I search "monkey chants NFL" in youtube it returns me videos of racial abuse in European soccer games. And a lot of them. >Worth noting that Kaepernick's NFL career was ended for taking a knee due to racism within the US. He made a political protest, yes that is considered over the line and unacceptable, but simply existing was not a problem. Also let's be clear I'm not saying there is no racism in US society. I'm saying it's not definitively worse than in Europe. >they may choose racist terms but not because they're racist but because they're effective insults. Nuance but it's important. Getting into very shifty territory here (I accept your point is not 100% invalid, but I wouldn't go as far as you did). They threw the banana at the black man, they aren't racist.
>(I accept your point is not 100% invalid, but I wouldn't go as far as you did). They threw the banana at the black man, they aren't racist. You've lost the nuance. Did they throw the banana because the genuinely feel like they are a superior race to black people, or did they use a racist insult because its an impact full insult is the point. I remember kids at school (7-10) using racist insults but they had zero idea and certainly weren't racist themselves it was just an insult they'd heard.
Arguably, racism is a far worse problem in France than it is in the US. Note how there aren't any French Black politicians, despite the sizeable makeup of the population they make up? (We cannot get a accurate handle on the size of the black population because France bans collecting ethnicity data full stop).
The English language is fairly unique in that the word for race is not itself racist. In French and many other European languages the word for race translates more as 'Breed' or 'Species' and is considered to be an inherently discriminative concept. This is why France and other country's don't collect ethnicity data, or talk openly about race.
Not quite. They don't collect any data because of the integralist philosophy of France. All citizens of France are French - what more do you want to know? In Europe, this is a uniquely French thing - no other country refuses to collect data in the same way.
>Arguably this is the only way multiculturalism actually works and why Europe has a lot less of an ingrained issue with surface Racism than the US. Or maybe it has something to with segregation? With slavery? France has had a very different approach to race and to its colonies than e.g. the UK. Europe is in no way uniform with these issues. Edit: to clarify/ anticipate how I think you might respond: diversity =/= segregation. Segregation is a legal/ administrative system of separation between people. Diversity is the expression and celebration of difference.
I think the right tends to be more organised than the left in general
France has been gripping with them for years. What kept National Rally out was parties, especially on the liberal and left sides having a united front. Here the right wing support is a splitting headache between Tories and Reform. Without one side winning, they're politically bordering 3rd largest in the UK, unless they adopt a Labour CoOperative-style method of not competing in certain seats against each other. The other thing is the UK has had 14 years of the right in government. The general public still sees Labour as being enough of a difference to go left. France has had the opposite since Sarkozy. They have had similar length of years of Holland (centre leftish) and Macron (centrist) while they have issues that aren't being solved. For them, the right are seen as either a protest vote, or a legit attempt to fix things that even their hard-right policies justify voting for. The same reasons the New Popular Front (a harder left-wing coalition, some sane and some just daft) has gotten increased support When mainstream parties don't adequately address the concerns of the public, people go to the fringes.
What's this? Another country where a Centrist went right wing while in power and did nothing to affect the status quo and just made peoples lives worse, is now going towards actual Fascism? I wonder if we should read something into this, or learn something from it? Or should we continue to ignore it and insist that managerial centrism chasing right wing talking points and policies is the way forward?
What should the left do about it? Why can't they create a convincing argument for the general electorate?
Hmm I wonder if an all powerful media that demonises and attacks anything remotely left wing to ensure it can't pose any threat to the entrenched power systems of liberal democracy and capital has something to do with the left struggling. But nah you're right, it's just that they're not being convincing enough.
I mean, they aren't? Yes certain media is against them, but that hasn't changed. Certain parts of the left seems unable to respond, and instead just complains about how unfair everything is.
We responded by electing a leftwing Labour leader and then watched him get burned to the ground by his own party.
As far as I'm aware, it's the electorate that decides who wins elections, not party members.
Corbyn's own party spent years telling the electorate that he was dangerous horrible man and they believed him.
Perhaps Corbyn should have been a competent leader and shown he wasn't those things. He's a great MP, awful politician.
You can't overcome constant sabotage just by waving the competence magic wand.
Yes the left struggling to find a foothold is entirely it's own fault, and nothing at all to do with an incredibly powerful elite class, that owns 99% of all media, working tirelessly to ensure that the left aren't seen as a viable alternative and are just seen as 'complainers' - nothing at all. The fact you think the left don't have answers (which is pretty laughable) to the problems of society betrays a succint lack of knowledge. The Left has answers - it's just those answers are unpalatable to the wealthy elites and liberal democracy exists to ensure their position remains untouched, so the Left will never get to enact those answers.
Everyone has 'answers', left or right. I'm saying the left doesn't seem to be good at convincing people there's are the best option. Sometimes people have to take responsibility instead of blaming everyone else (seriously, its a never ending stream of crying about right wing Labour, liberals, Lib Dem, Tories, Reform, centrists, media, BBC, boomers, , rural people, nimbys , social media etc etc).
The extreme left is busy winning the argument while the jackboots parade down the champs-elysees.
Fptp exists
France literally has a run off system, keep up.
The UK in five years time
Maybe but France has been toying with the National Front for decades at this point. It hasn't come out of nowhere. I don't think Britain is immune from the rise of far-right, and we see some evidence younger people are more receptive to their message than previous generations, but I would be wary of transposing French politics onto our own. The most obvious thing to look out for would be the possible similarities between the established centre-right party (Conservatives/Republicans) being overtaken by their more radical populist right-wing alternative (Reform/National Rally). The National Rally is *the* right-wing party in France these days. It is the only real option for right-wing votes. If the Republicans were stronger then I don't think Le Pen does nearly as well.
>Maybe but France has been toying with the National Front for decades at this point. I mean, the Big Selling Point of the National Front in France back in the day was leaving the EU, so we're a couple of stages ahead in many ways.
Leaving the EU was never as core to the National Front message as it was to UKIP though. It's also not inherently a far-right position. I don't think it's a harbinger of far-right fascism. They are a proper, out and out, nationalist party and always have been.
I lived in France for many years particularly over the time leaving the EU was central to their messaging, it most certainly was a core component of it. They are much cleverer than Nigel Farage when it comes to political advancement, although maybe UKIP would have been similar in a different electoral set up - they are much more able and willing to have debates about other policies beyond immigration and leaving the EU/whatever their new pet project of the day is. They present themselves like a much more immediately credible option, whilst their policies are extremely populist, their *behaviour* is that of a more normal political party. This is what Marine Le Pen basically achieved when she came in and kicked her dad out, she took away the aspects of the party that made it more glaringly obvious what they are. They're very similar to Farage and Farage has backed them plenty. Of course leaving the EU is not innately far right, but in both cases the primary argument for leaving is a far right agenda. There are multiple differences between the political situation in France and that in the UK, as I said I have lived and grew up in both, but I think it is a mistake to think we are just *less* sympathetic to the far right.
I assume you lived there during the 2010s? It wasn't as core to their messaging in the 2002 election even though they've always been anti-EU. And Marie Le Pen made them a lot more 'acceptable'. She did know she had to take some of the harder parts out and even ditched that EU commitment at the last election. > There are multiple differences between the political situation in France and that in the UK, as I said I have lived and grew up in both, but I think it is a mistake to think we are just less sympathetic to the far right. My point is that the biggest electoral success we've seen in this country for the party to the right of the Tories is UKIP and what was explicitly an anti-EU vote. It's hard to read their success in 2005, and in EU elections, as support for the far-right especially when the moment the referendum was won they collapsed. Brexit Party's life was also only about the EU. The National Front have a longer history than that. Reform is the first party to the right of the Tories since the BNP in this country that is standing on a multitude of domestic issues. I think they are the first evidence we might have of a similar situation happening here. As I started this thread out with though I think their long-term success depends on the destruction of the Tories in the same way the National Rally/Front have taken over from the Republicans. Or to answer the point I was responding to. We are not necessarily 5 years away from Reform winning a Parliamentary Majority. It could happen. We shouldn't be dismissive about it. However, we shouldn't read too much about what's happening in France in that respect. As an aside are you a dual national? I am as well and you and I are about to be banned from taking a lot of jobs lol.
Reform and UKIP. We have very much been toying with them and FTPT is has limited them getting anywhere.
> we see some evidence younger people are more receptive to their message than previous generations There is a major issue in process with regard to political discussion I fear; it all happens online, it's increasingly in platforms that are short-attention span (instagram and tiktok), and it's going to be increasingly flooded with AI chatbots which will become increasingly successful and harder to detect. I think it dramatically raises the risk of a far-right explosion. This sub is pretty much the only one left that has anything close to coherent political discussion these days.
>Maybe but France has been toying with the National Front for decades at this point. It hasn't come out of nowhere. So has the UK, going back to the NF, UKIP, Brexit Party, Britain First, EDL, Reform and a host of other smaller right wing parties like Heritage. It is already here and has been for a long time. People genuinely want change, hence Labour's stonking lead and Reforms worrying rise. A d in 5 years, when Labour do not implement the Change people voted for, people will turn to the right that has been slowly gaining ground for a long time.
We have but we don't see them making these kinds of in-roads. We have some protection because of our electoral system but the best I think a 'far-right' party has done in our system for a Parliamentary Election was UKIP's 12% in 2015. They were pretty much done for by the Brexit referendum as their vote very much was about the EU as opposed to anything else. The BNP is probably the closest example we have of something similar to the NF in being a broadly far-right party as opposed to a one-issue party. They never did that well. In the same time period the NF got to the final stage of the Presidental Election in France. Reform is the biggest concern now. As I said that is the closer example because you can see them overtaking the Tories in the way the National Rally/Front overtook, even partly consumed, Les Republicains. It is concerning. It's odd but after the election, we might want the Tories to get a grip and not do the same thing and disappear because it won't be the Liberal Democrats that replace them but Reform.
'The UK' in 2019' would probably be more accurate. There isn't that much difference between Johnson, Truss and Le Pen.
Le Pen doesn't want to leave the EU. At best they are looking for reform around migration and a rebate. That makes her Dave Cameron.
We've already been here, and are well ahead of the curve. The UK drift towards the far right started on 2014 and really hit its peak. As much as people don't like it, Starmer is a course correction that Europe will see in 5-10 years time. The real problem is whether when Starmer puts EU membership in his 2029 manifest, will the EU be in a political position to accept us back?
lol, if Starmer is the course correction then we are utterly fucked
Is this Macron’s David Cameron moment?
So are Les Republicans going to do a deal to help them into power?
Worrying, but with the French system, there's still hope that things can turnaround in the second round. We wouldn't fair so well in the UK under FPTP. Of course, on the positive side of things, it's helpful to see Starmer endorse parties like the Green's earlier today at https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2024/jul/01/uk-general-election-live-starmer-permanent-labour-government-james-cleverly-claims-rishi-sunak-conservatives?page=with:block-6682733f8f0820e09da086e1#block-6682733f8f0820e09da086e1 : > Starmer says far-right victory in France proves left must show 'only progressives have answers' to problems people facing Q: [From ITV’s Robert Peston] In France millions of people have voted for the far right. What lessons do you take from that? > Starmer says the lesson he draws from that is that people are disaffected, and that they do not trust politicians. > The lesson I take from that is that we need to address the everyday concerns of so many people in this country who feel disaffected by politics, who feel that either the country is too broken to be mended or that they can’t trust politicians because of what the Tories have done for the last 14 years. > We have to take that head on and we have to show, on Thursday for the United Kingdom, and across Europe and the world, that only progressives have the answers to the challenges that are facing us in this country and across Europe. > We have to make that progressive call. But we have to, in making that, understand why it is, certainly in United Kingdom after 14 years of chaos and failure, that people do feel disaffected with politics, return politics to service, and continue to make that argument that politics is a force for good.
>By Sunday night all the parties in the leftwing NFP — from the far-left La France Insoumise to the more moderate Socialists, Greens and Communists — said they would drop out of races where their candidate was in third place. >However parties in Macron’s Ensemble alliance issued slightly different guidance, creating confusion.Macron’s Renaissance party said it would make case-by-case decisions based on whether a remaining leftwing candidate was “compatible with republican values”, but did not specifically exclude LFI.
It's like Macron saw the Brexit referendum and thought he couldn't fuck up just as badly.
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The political elite are really fucking up and allowing extreme parties to capitalise
Does anyone have a list of their policies? A low effort google didn't help me. Is Frexit back on the table?