It is plain as day in Britain that Tory leader Teresa May is fighting the General Election on support for Brexit mark 2. In France, Macron uses the EU to win against Le Pen in his Presidential battle. Macron's victory and May's very likely victory in June rely on opposite premises in relation to the EU - yet in both cases the political right will win!
May's election campaign is a miserable affair. She has blocked any TV debate. There are no face to face discussions. Public meetings, walkabouts and visits are packed with supporters and exclude any media questioning. Her sole message is that she will be that 'bloody woman' in the Brexit talks to come. There is not even any pointers offered to the public about what sort of Brexit May might want, except that she is willing, she says, to cut prolonged negotiations and build a new UK economy from scratch.
All of the mainstream news mediums so far simply echo her rows with EU top negotiator, ex Luxembourg Prime Minister Junker, and with ex French President Hollande, as though her adolescent provocations were the basis to elect a UK government for 5 years. But May's stony offer to the British people has been more than enough to grab the UK Independence Party vote of nearly 4 million in the 2015 General Election (as seen dramatically in the latest local election results, where UKIP lost all of its council positions - bar one). A million and more of those UKIP votes came from ex Labour voters in 2015 so that will work for May too.
As a result there is no obvious excitement, commitment or mobilisation of the British electorate going on. A small turn-out is expected. May is predicted to win handsomely from the ashes of genuine democratic engagement. The Liberals who hope to represent anti Brexiteers and become the 'real opposition' in the next Parliament are so far limping to continued irrelevance and Labour is forecasted to crash.
There were two 'Mayday' marches in Paris this year. The largest, supported by the French union federation the CGT and Melenchon's 'France Resists' movement, broke with the CFDT union federation that traditionally has supported the French Social Democratic Party. The much smaller CFDT rally called for a vote for Macron - against Le Pen in the final round of the French Presidential campaign. 'France Resists' and the CGT opposed Le Pen but are crystal clear that they do not support Macron either. They realistically thought that Le Pen would be defeated of course, but Mayday is a celebration of the working class movement, and they felt that at least that movement should warn France's population as a whole of the battle to come that they will be need to lead in order to fight Macron.
The critical success of Melenchon's independent movement in the first round of France's Presidential election opens political space to start a mainstream challenge to Macron's defence of globalisation and his proposed labour and welfare 'reforms', let alone allow the preparation of a different sort of centre of 'resistance' should Macron fail and Le Pen re-emerge. This has meant that the collapse of the French Social Democratic Party does not equal the break up of working class political organisation but is at least partly by-passed by Melenchon's initiative (which started in 2008.) The left leadership of the Labour Party in Britain is sadly in quite a different position.
While an enormous and mainly young membership has led to inner party victories for a left leadership of Labour since 2015, May's Brexit mark 2 election has decided its chosen target as Labour leader Corbyn. The Tories, the Liberals (who have decided that they are the 'real' opposition), the SNP (who have retained their marginalisation of Labour in Scotland) and also the bulk of Labour's MPs and Mayors - are all opposing Labour's leadership as the UK decides who governs for the next 5 years.
A possible Labour retreat to its core support, and 200 or less MPs in Parliament on June 9, has not emerged because of Corbyn of course. (See numerous previous blogs.) Although the number of supposedly pro-Labour commentators, reporters, analysts, let alone the army of Labour politicians and traditional 'leading' supporters who are now wailing that it's all Corbyn's fault is frankly one of the greatest fantasies since Goebbels speeches. The Labour crisis goes very deep and has been maturing for a decade and more.
Nevertheless their remains one distinct failing of Labour's left leadership which is not that it could cure Labour's ailments, rather that it thought that it could. Everything from Melenchon's initiative to Trump's election campaign - against the Republicans - tells Corbyn that prioritising the good old status quo in one of the most traditional parties is a short step to undermining the credibility of any radical proposal you make. There are precious few really radical Labour leadership messages so far. And the few that have surfaced have credibility problems. How can people believe that Corbyn's leadership will do anything about the 'rigged system' he describes when he appears to be desperately holding up part of the rigging!
Looking for critical lessons in what are evolving and contradictory developments across two countries is bound to be a precarious occupation. However, it is worth registering some more obvious points the have surfaced so far.
The argument among the British left about whether Brexit was a principle because the fundamental character of the EU is a capitalist club, will not do. Experience certainly confirms that the EU is the European wide ruling class initiative designed to manage globalisation in a way that benefits them, but its removal does not necessarily mean a blow to globalisation. In some contexts, like those of Britain and France, Brexit or Frexit can become a signal for the political regroupment of the right. And globalisation will continue, or be bent in certain ways a la Trump, to suit the survival of the capitalist system whether the EU survives or not. Opposition to the EU can therefore (must therefore) take different forms in different contexts, including possible exits, and/or making critical demands that expose and crib the EU's force (e.g. Greece's Syriza government could have repudiated its EU led debt mountain and moved to its own currency when its population voted 'no' to any more austerity deals), and/or mobilising to overthrow one or other of its institutions, e.g. the ECB and debt burdens, etc. These actions can only be a consequence of the concrete analysis of the concrete situation.
Britain's Labour left leadership are already mounting an heroic but defensive stand. And there is still time to break out of the constraints created by the death agonies of Britain's enfeebled Social Democratic Party. The overall social relation of forces in Britain deny the early possibility of conquering a majority in Britain's population, or rather a sufficient minority that can, at this stage, lead society. The June 8 General Election result was written during the Iraq war, during the Scottish referendum, following the 2008 crash and the 2016 Brexit referendum. But it is still possible for Labour's left leaders to speak directly to their radical members, and to the fucked up, pissed off, de-motivated and increasingly impoverished Britons. The first step in ending Corbyn's 'rigged system' is measures that could really bring it down, whether official Labour likes them or not. And, to guarantee the voters who might listen, that the fight for these measures will go on inside and if necessary outside the Labour Party in a national movement and organisation from June 8 onwards.
Finally, does anybody really believe that Macron is going to succeed to reanimate French capitalism where every politician in France for the past two decades have promised and failed to do exactly that? Does anybody believe that May's Brexit will make the rich poorer and the poor richer in Britain? These politicians are walking failures. And what's next? When the political system genuinely fails, particularly when masses of people have already changed their allegiances and political habits of a lifetime to get answers, then fundamental shifts in thinking begin to supplant traditional understanding and direct action fills the vacuum left by failed representation. A new political arena emerges in society, and within that arena new forces are suddenly more relevant. The danger and complexity in society creates fear and scapegoating, but self-organised success and insurgency can build revolution.
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