9 July 2024 – There have been a number of recent electoral results that can rightly be described as left-wing successes. In France, the ‘Nouveau Front Populaire’ was able to prevent the far-right Rassemblement National from emerging as the big victor in Macron’s stunt election, while Labour leader Keir Starmer can take up residence at 10 Downing Street as Britain’s new prime minister after Labour delivered a crushing electoral defeat to the Tories. But can one speak like La Repubblica about Sunday’s election result as a “French Revolution”, or like The Guardian about the Labour take over as “a historic victory” heralding a “new dawn” for Britain? Is it plausible that, as the president of the European Left Party Walter Baier puts it, the French Popular Front can not only repel the attack of the radical right, but also usher in a new chapter of social and ecological progress in France and Europe?

That cooperation between left and ‘progressive’ parties around tactical objectives such as blocking the way for Le Pen can be successful was clearly proven on 7 July, and should delight every democrat and inspire democratic politicians. It is an approach that can bear fruit, analogous to a cordon sanitaire as it has so far been successfully applied in Belgium w.r.t. Vlaams Belang. That the Dutch bourgeois parties were no longer prepared for such a cordon we now see in the result: a far-right government that gives way to the far-right.

But tactics are not a strategy, and an intelligent approach to the electoral system to keep the far-right out of political power does not prevent a large proportion of voters from continuing to choose the far-right. The 33% score for Le Pen’s Rassemblement National in the first round (which, unlike the second, reflects real political intentions) will not melt away because of electoral constructions, any more than the popularity of Vlaams Belang melts away because of the cordon sanitaire. That higher, strategic goal requires different policies that, in the longer term, cut the grass away from the feet of the demagogues. That is where the shoe pinches, because the ‘democratic’ centre parties are not prepared to enter into such an agreement anywhere in Europe, fused as they are with their neoliberal policies.

For this reason, it is highly doubtful whether Walter Baier’s hopes for ‘a new chapter of social and environmental progress in France and Europe’ were ushered in with the success of the Front Populaire. For the PS and the Verts, hitching their electoral cart to that of strongman Mélenchon’s France Insoumise was more a matter of political survival than ushering in a new era. A progressive manifesto was adopted, but that is a thousand times easier than implementing progressive policies. Moreover, Mélenchon will not become prime minister, and the relatively good result of the parties around Macron will mean a continuation of his anti-social policies. Do we really think that opportunist parties like the PS have put their decades of neoliberal support behind them ?

Let us briefly consider British Labour, which – thank God – was able to oust the odious Tories. But that is more the result of the unimaginable mismanagement of those Tories than of an attractive project put forward by Labour. On the contrary, knighted chairman Keir Starmer did the right-wing establishment the favour of expelling consistent advocate of social reform Jeremy Corbyn from the party as an anti-Semite and mischievous utopian. Labour under Keir Starmer is the better option for British capital than the inept Tories.

Those who declare a successful tactic to be a strategic formula are committing a strategic error of the highest order.

H. Michiel, Ander Europa