Andrew Neil, chairman of The Spectator magazine, first (and short-lived) chairman of GB News, and a doubtlessly formidable right-wing thinker, wrote this about the French election in the Daily Mail on 1 July: “Far from putting France’s populist Right back in its box after it came first in elections to the European Parliament last month, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which won a predicted 34 per cent of the vote according to exit polls in yesterday’s legislative elections, will now be the largest party in the French National Assembly.”
Six days later, after France’s shock election results which saw the country facing a hung parliament, in the same newspaper, he warned: “France voted yesterday for the political abyss. Far from making the hard Right the biggest party in parliament, as was widely expected, the French people gave first place… to the hard Left. Almost nobody saw it coming… The result is a recipe for confusion, chaos and weak government.” Macron, he decided was a “busted flush”.
I disagree and am somewhat alarmed. What if Le Pen had come top? Do Mr Neil and his political tribe believe that would have been better for all concerned? Several commentators do seem more panicked about left gains than the far right’s popularity.
Yes, hard times are coming. Macron will have to learn to manage a disparate parliament. But I am euphoric that Le Pen’s National Rally was pushed to the bottom by Macron’s centrist Ensemble and the left/green New Popular Front. This is good for France and the eurozone, which has seen the hard right crawling into national parliaments and the EU parliament.
Federico Santopinto, director at French think-tank IRIS, believes Macron “will be less weakened than we had expected and France will continue to be able to exercise its international role with a certain panache, as it has done until now”.
One swallow, as the proverb goes, does not a summer make. Millions of European and British citizens are drawn to the far right. They have been turned by well-organised and funded right-wing propagandists who project themselves as slick, caring nationalists.
One of them, The Movement, led by the US Trumpian Steve Bannon, set up in 2018, became particularly influential in Italy. Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy, a political party with neo-fascist roots, won an absolute majority of seats in the Italian Parliament in 2022.
The continent that birthed fascism, lands which dehumanised and tried to exterminate Jewish, black, gay, mixed-race people not that long ago, now has politicians whipping up intense animosity towards immigrants, people of colour and “lefties”. How did this come to pass? Have people forgotten why the allies fought the German and Italian fascists?
Mainstream right-wingers repeat the promise of “never again” yet tolerate far-right politicians, “understand” their appeal, become their alibis. My head swims, fury and trepidation fill my heart.
Thank heaven for the young women and men who came out to defeat Le Pen. They saved the soul of France. Several told reporters they were proud of repudiating a party that only offered fear, and for standing against antisemitic, racist and homophobic politicians.
I last spoke to Mariyam on Zoom for a piece on France’s ban on hijabs in schools – a policy I approve of. She wore a headscarf and was refusing to attend classes. Now she is a nanny to an Arab diplomat’s children in Paris.
On Monday, on the phone, she was on fire: “You know I don’t like this country and its anti-Muslim laws. I never voted. Now all of us in my family, my friends are going to vote to stop this Le Pen. Today, its Vive La France.” Her newborn patriotism took me by surprise.
Some power and legitimacy won by the left has opened up possibilities. The majority left and centre bloc will prioritise the dispossessed, excluded and poorest, and climate change. The National Rally and other European far-right parties are virulently against the EU’s Green Deal and are pulling centre-right parties into their orbit.
So let’s have less grousing about the “dangerous left”, “chaos” and “ungovernable France” and more appreciation of what Macron has done for the good people of his country and Europe.