THE crisis of continuity liberalism engulfing France applies in Britain too. Our government may not have fallen, but unless it changes course it will, as soon as it has to face the electorate.
President Emmanuel Macron is in denial. Addressing the French on Thursday night, he blamed everyone but himself for the collapse of the Michel Barnier government: an unholy alliance of far left and far right had conspired to defeat the centre.
It’s a deceitful account. It is not the left, but Barnier and Macron’s parliamentary bloc who entered alliance with the far right.
The rejected budget continued the discredited policies Macron has championed throughout his presidency. It cut social and healthcare spending, promised job losses and attacked pensions. The French voted against all this in the summer.
The parallels in Britain are striking. Britain’s first-past-the-post election did not deliver a hung parliament, but a proportional system would have done.
The “centre” was rejected, with Labour and the Conservatives receiving their lowest combined vote share in a century. Labour were less popular at the last election than at any stage of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, but they have still managed to become more unpopular since. One poll this week put them in third place, behind both the Tories and Reform UK.
Reform is surging. The far-right threat so obvious in France applies in Britain too. As Trademark Belfast’s Stiofan O Nuaillain told the TUC’s anti-racism conference on Wednesday, we have four years to beat the far right.
O Nuallain pointed out that the key to far-right success has been presenting itself as the alternative to the status quo.
In France, Marine Le Pen’s ability to do that has been held back by a combative left. The left resisted the familiar guilt-tripping by liberals claiming they had to line up behind the system to stop the fascists: they understood that this simply helps the far right monopolise public anger.
The NPF alliance denied Le Pen the majority so many had predicted. They did so by presenting a plan to break with the status quo, but to the left.
Britain’s labour movement should aim at the same thing. The far right will make the running politically until the left offers a real alternative.
The Labour government as it stands does not. It is allowing energy bills to rise further, refusing to tax wealth and continuing to allow the private sector to wreak havoc across essential services.
Keir Starmer’s bland relaunch doesn’t change any of that. Pressure for a real relaunch must come from the labour movement.
It could start with one immediate demand that would signal a far bigger shift than anything Starmer said this week.
Thames Water is collapsing under the weight of debt loaded onto it by irresponsible privateers in order to funnel huge sums out to shareholders. Its investors’ latest bailout comes with a middle finger raised to the British people, as they warn none of this money may be used to pay the fines it has incurred for recklessly polluting our waterways.
Meanwhile, water execs insist the funds to modernise the infrastructure they have let go to rack and ruin will only be available if we can guarantee them still greater shareholder returns, funded through higher bills.
Nationalise it. Hardly any other country has a privatised water supply. The public support public ownership, and since we have to pay to dig reservoirs and fix pipes anyway, we may as well spare ourselves the built-in cost of ensuring fat profits for the crooks who created this mess.
It would be a dramatic and popular statement of intent, showing the sense of purpose that eludes this government. Starmer isn’t listening: but if trade unions and Labour MPs want to keep Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage out of power, they need to find a way to make him.
