Post a response:
|
Without speaking for Dio, I would say there are a couple of reasons why the situation in France is different from the UK. First, because Farage is loooking a lot like a busted flush. Reform has peaked in the polls, it is hobbled by corruption scandals, and Farage is no longer looking like a PM in waiting. Also, with a new (momentarily popular and seemingly half-way competent) centre-left prime minister, the wind is in the government's sails. This situation probably will not last - it's a long way to the next general election - but for now the left doesn't feel it has a whole lot to fear from Reform. And Reform is in no strong position to capitalise on this anyway. This is very different from the position of the RN, which already has a fairly strong lead in French presidential polls. The election is Le Pen's to lose. Secondly: the timing. Britain's next general election will in all likelihood be in 2029. France's next presidential election will be in just over six months. That's a huge difference. There'll be plenty of scandals come and gone between now and the next general election in the UK. At the current rate we may even get through half a dozen prime ministers before then. The timeline is much shorter for the French left or centre to seize the narrative or even find a compelling leader. Thirdly, the Greens are fairly marginal in British politics, at least electorally speaking. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrats - the other two main parties of the centre-centre-left - have distanced themselves from the Greens' Zionism motion, screaming like a little girl who has discovered a tarantula in her Wendy house. Most UK parties are utterly in hock to the Israel lobby, especially Labour. Disillusioned Zionist Green voters (if there truly are any) have plenty of places to go before having to resort to Reform. Whereas with RN, the problem is the people are already there. Over a third of French voters offer Le Pen their first-preference support. That's massive. And the pathetic offerings from the other parties (the superannuated Mélenchon on the left; the loathed puppets of the centre) have nothing at all to offer as an alternative. Finally, rioting in the streets (that is how France's manifestations are of course characterised in the right-wing media) are quite a different matter from a controversial motion pased by a marginal political party. Ultimately, the Green Party motion is a bitter and vicious family squabble for the left; social disorder is a question for the citizenry as a whole. And while public protest is a great and honourable French political tradition, so too is the counter-revolutionary swing toward the right that protests invariably provoke. Mai 68 was followed by the Gaullist victory in the electrions of that summer. The Commune of 71 was followed by the semaine sanglante. The revolution of 1848 ended with Louis-Napoleon, just as the revolution of 1789 ended with Napoleon I. The entire history of the French Republic is the story of how noble but wholly unrealistic hopes were brutally smashed by the forces of established power. Imagine a Christian Louboutin designer stiletto stamping on a human face forever. Disappointment is a deeply-ingrained habit of the French left, which always lurches between missed opportunities and absurd own-goals. Britain is much the same, and I'm sure we'll return to our scheduled programming as soon as the momentary excitement over 'Eyelashes' Burnham has evaporated (and/or the right-wing parties find themselves less completely useless leaders). But for the moment, Le Pen is selecting new curtains and carpet for the Élysée Palace, while Farage is sitting on a dilapidated seaside pier in Essex farting 'Rule Britannia' and collecting pennies in a cap. There is really no comparison between the two situations. |