65 million people compared with 17 million people. The most decrepit voting system compared with one of the world's most advanced. Breaking from the EU compared with broad commitment to the EU. Nevertheless, Britain's last election in 2015, together with its vote for Brexit, and the latest Dutch general election results, both demonstrate the same deep process of the rise of the right as it grips hold of the West's political crisis.
In essence, the mainstream and traditional right in these countries incorporated the extreme right's program. Rutte's smiling face bedecks the Dutch press as the victor over 'right wing populism.' The facts are more sober. Rutte's traditional conservative party, the VVD, lost 8 seats and is down to 33 in the Dutch Parliament. The PVV, Wilder's far right 'party', increased their number of seats from 13 to 20. The Dutch 'victory' over populism involved a high turn out of voters (as with the two votes in the UK), an increase in the proportion of younger people voting, yet the parties that call themselves left wing have only reached a combined 37 seats, which is an all-time low in Holland.
Rutte's racist attacks on immigrant life styles and the too-good-to-be-true intervention of would-be Turkish Emperor Erdogan, which allowed Rutte the platform to attack Dutch Turks as well as Dutch Moroccans, stole a large part of Wilder's thunder. In the UK's EU referendum, Nigel Farage's UKIP offensive was stalled and then spectacularly reversed as a coterie of Tory 'big hitters' crawled out of their up-to-then pro EU woodwork, banging the gong for 'proper immigration controls', cutting UKIP off at the knees. By a hair's breath and the massive reactionary impact of a laughable voting system UKIP's 4 million votes translated to no MPs at all in the 2015 General Election. But key Tory Grandees knew from that moment that a dramatic turn was called for, if the Conservative Party's role as Britain's main political leadership - as well as the ludicrously undemocratic and antiquated voting system - were both to survive.
The election in France remains the key. France is a pivot of the EU. Its extreme right has a profound social base involving at least 2 million firmed up voters, then 12% of the French electorate, established when Marine's Nazi father got to the second round of the Presidential election. (Marine Le Pen now leads all contenders with 22% in the first round in the latest polls.) The left in France, particularly Socialist Party, has never frontally confronted racism. Indeed they have played with it in constitutional battles where white, older French norms and behaviour (and dress) have been been given hallowed (and legal) status.
But Macron (the 'independent' with his new Party called Forward!' - where have we heard that before? -) with his 21% support in the latest polls - and therefore the likely candidate to face Le Pen in the two person play off in the second round of voting, cannot do what Fallon (the right /centre Republican Party candidate) was meant to do; following what the British Tory and the Dutch VVD leader Rutte did. He cannot camp on Le Pen's lawn - which Fallon's initial religious right wing program looked like he was intending to do - because the Republican leader and his new Holy Family has been found with their fingers in the till. Fallon cannot pull off the Tory / VVD trick. He is hors de combat. And Macron has a following but no substantial social base which can connect him up to and thereby drain off the racists' support for Le Pen.
Le Pen suffers from a lack of novelty, but as the novelties since Berlusconi show (including recently in Italy) the political crisis in Europe is too profound now to stop novelties, who have no established social base, running out of time quite quickly. If Le Pen fails in round 2, but by margins of 10 or 15% only, she becomes the obvious, most powerful candidate in any emergency election where an economic crisis hooks up to the already existing political breakdown. And that is her aim. And a new stage of the rise of the right, second only to Trump's victory, will have happened.
There are some very hopeful obstacles to the right's progress. The level of participation in politics, generally and particularly by younger generations is undoubtedly rising where there have been contests with the right. The substantial advance of the Dutch Green Party which is now the third party in Parliament with an extra 10 seats is not only an overwhelmingly young Party but has played a significant role in the direct, anti-racist movement in Holland, contrary to the Dutch Labour Party (which collapsed) and the far left SP (which retained its seats but has taken completely 'economist' approach to Dutch racism.)
In the UK, social attitude polling indicates that the large support to remain in the EU during the EU referendum among 18 - 24 year olds (75%) and 24 - 49 year olds (66%) did have a strong, anti racist bias. And Europe's largest political Party, the British Labour Party, is flooded with younger people. Again, the young from the Banlieues round Paris mobilised a month ago to resist violent police action and challenge Hollande's Socialist Party government. These are powerful indicators of a growing radicalisation among youth, in opposition to racism and towards varieties of the left.
Also in the UK another spanner has been thrown into the right's political progress, with the reopening of a new Scottish Independence referendum. There is the potential danger that the SNP leadership of this campaign will reduce the argument to the benefits of the EU over Brexit - as though there was any value in dropping the previous largest bank in the world, the (corrupt and failed ) Royal Bank of Scotland, for its newest version, the (corrupt and failing) Deutche Bank. Such an approach will fail to mobilise Scotland,which mobilisation is essential to break up Westminster's drive to reorganise Britain. The Scottish question will become a struggle within a struggle but its initial impact on what remains of the British establishment is wholly to be applauded.
The political moves of the right, throughly rooted in racism, are opening up radical responses, especially from young people and also cracking open failing parts of the political systems and previous social 'settlements' of the West. Inequality is challenged everywhere. Austerity is deeply unpopular. Unresolved injustice, from the US cities to the Banlieues of France's cities have sparked resistance, even insurgency. The political gains of the right are so far not social gains. And we are only at the beginning, as the Dutch and French elections (and the resistance to Trump) show, of the unravelling of the political crisis in the West.
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