UK, France and the Return of the Welfare State Against the Right – New Sion

Last week, the left, whatever its guises, achieved something it had not seen in years: electoral victories in two of Europe’s major powers, France and the United Kingdom. While the Labour Party emerged victorious in the northwestern European island nation on July 4, the New Popular Front, a coalition of several parties, emerged as the winner on July 7, despite predictions that Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party would win. Pen and Jordan Bardella

Although the French result is still missing, we can be sure that some leftist expressions are ruling the European economies. Pedro Sánchez in Spain, Olaf Scholz in Germany, Keir Starmer, the new British Labour Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen in Denmark, Jonas Gahr Store in Norway, among others. It is not a phenomenon dominated by social democratic or labour formations in Europe, but with the rise of the far right and the right-winging of classical conservatism and liberalism, and the emergence of xenophobic and/or supremacist nationalisms, it has become an oasis of social and political interaction. At least ideologically.

It seems that the electoral victories that we will discuss, At first glancedifferent in many respects, but with many similar edges. The British single-member system and peripheral The French have the advantage that the candidate who gets the most votes stays with the seat in the constituency, with a difference in the second round if he does not get 50% or more in France. This allowed the Labour Party in the United Kingdom to obtain 34% of the total votes and 67% of the seats; while the Popular Front obtained 9 million votes in the first round and 2 million fewer votes in the second round, and still managed to obtain an absolute majority of the seats in the French Assembly, which catapulted it to the forefront from the Champs-Élysées. At the same time, in both cases, the problem of migrants is a thorny issue on the agenda, and each, in its own way, has managed to save its neck without being directly part of the minority agenda: they have prioritized nationalization for campaign and government programs.

The similarities continue in government programmes. The focus on social and public housing is a pillar of both programmes alongside migration to renewable energies, countercyclical funds, various nationalisations – especially in relation to energy and transport – and accessible credit. Likewise, the generation of work with labour rights is proposed in the face of the increasing decline in income, but in the face of regional problems, such as the growing wave of alienation of companies with national capital, as happened in China and Southeast Asia and their exploitative production. Labour competes with national production. Another common point between the two is tax progressivity, i.e. those who have more pay more, and this includes companies, not households, which have been affected by neoliberal income transfer measures in order to maintain extraordinary profits.

They question xenophobia, racism and the problem of integration with compelling facts. For example, Keir Starmer is a human rights lawyer, and as a first step he decided to cancel an agreement with Rwanda on the deportation of migrants. In addition, he appointed as an adviser David Lammy, a lawyer who studied at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the University of London, comes from a black working-class family of Guyanese origin and held various positions in public administration in the Labour administrations of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. It is worth noting that the leader of the party with the largest number of seats in the Popular Front, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, was born in Tangiers, Morocco, and was one of the first to think comprehensively about the issue of migrants in France. The abolition of the asylum laws passed by Macron is part of the Popular Front’s programme, as is the creation of the necessary conditions for equality between migrants and full citizens.

Profiles of right-wing voters in these areas

These victories do not show, as some claim, that the far right has been dissolved, but rather that there is an awareness among other political groups that there is no possibility of political irreversibility. Part of the centrist vote in both countries has gone to the left, supporting candidates with a more social democratic image. In France, for example, lower-income sectors have tended to lean towards Le Pen, as have those with a lower level of education, while those with a higher education have tended to lean left, a fact that is repeated in the UK. Part of the service workers’ struggle is more present in far-right campaigns than in left-wing ones, a question that needs to be reconsidered.

In contrast, anger and resentment towards the regime has gone to the far right, both towards Leprosy In France, and towards Reform in the United Kingdom, the former Brexit Party, in Great Britain, the Eurosceptic party that came in third place in the number of votes, ahead of the Liberals and centrist Democrats (LibDems). The anti-European nationalist solution is growing in the countries of the Union, and the traditional right is turning, at a low level and with little success, towards these racist and even supremacist schemes. In this sense, it is no coincidence that Catholics and Jews tend mostly to the right, and secularists and Muslims to the left, which indicates the points of interest in tolerance and political support for each of these sectors.

In this regard, and coincidentally, a series of Jewish sectors were seen asserting that a victory for the left would harm them, without highlighting that the majority of anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist candidates for the post of deputies came precisely from the extreme right and the extreme conservative sectors, without excluding this, positions on the situation between Israel and Hamas and on certain defamations of left-wing groups regarding Zionism and Israel. In mid-June, the National Rally was forced to dismiss four candidates for their public anti-Semitic statements or their support for old French anti-Semites.

There is no doubt that the left has great challenges ahead, and attracting popular sectors and returning to mass politics is a great duty. Synergy is needed to focus on this at the European level to confront the far right. Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish president, has said that there is little time left to separate. You have to pay attention to that.

Cover photo: Keir Starmer, the new British Prime Minister.