{"id":76357,"date":"2024-07-11T07:39:06","date_gmt":"2024-07-11T05:39:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-gran-bretanya-i-franca-del-canvi-de-cicle-al-zugzwang\/"},"modified":"2024-07-11T11:50:44","modified_gmt":"2024-07-11T09:50:44","slug":"idees-dactualitat-gran-bretanya-i-franca-del-canvi-de-cicle-al-zugzwang","status":"publish","type":"newspaper","link":"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-gran-bretanya-i-franca-del-canvi-de-cicle-al-zugzwang\/","title":{"rendered":"Idees d’actualitat – Britain and France: from political change to Zugzwang"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

From one relative majority to another… but not the one expected. The legislative elections in France have had the whole of Europe on tenterhooks over the last few weeks with the prospect of the radical right of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National<\/em> (RN) coming to power after coming comfortably in first place in the first round. After an intense week of negotiations to get the third-placed candidates to withdraw in order to prevent an absolute majority for the RN, the New Popular Front (NFP) won the majority of seats (174), although far from an absolute majority (289). The Ensemble<\/em> presidential coalition, for its part, lost its status as the majority group with 156 MPs, while the RN finally came third, far from its first-round expectations, with 143 MPs. Nor can the 66 MPs won by the conservative right be neglected, which has held out better than expected, although its president decided to ally with the RN, thus causing a serious split in the party and in the parliamentary group. The spectre of a radical right-wing government in France, Europe’s second largest economy, nuclear power and one of the reformist pillars of the EU, has thus faded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, a more detailed analysis of the results reveals a much more complex and balanced situation that leaves the door open to many uncertainties. If we look at the scores obtained in the second round by the three main blocs, the winner was the RN and allies with 37.25% (10,100,000 votes), followed by the NFP with 25.33% (7,000,000 votes) and Ensemble<\/em> with 24.07% (6,500,000 votes). Moreover, while the presidential coalition and the RN form very homogeneous blocs, the weight of the different political formations that make up the NFP has generated a distribution of seats that is difficult to manage: 71 deputies for La France Insoumise<\/em> (LFI), 58 for the Socialist Party and allies, 31 for the ecologists and 9 for the Communist Party. This diversity will undoubtedly hinder the formation of a possible minority government of the left, since its different members disagree on essential issues such as nuclear energy (which supports a very important part of the French electricity market), European integration (LFI is more Eurosceptic than its allies), pension reform (with very different positions on the retirement age), the reduction of public debt (France is the third most indebted European country with 110.6% of GDP), etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Consequently, different scenarios are now open, as no party or coalition has achieved an absolute majority and the correlation of forces between the three main blocs is very balanced. A first possibility is that of a coalition capable of winning more than 50% of the seats, an option that does not seem a very plausible hypothesis right now, as the leaders of the left have ruled out any kind of alliance with the President of the Republic’s camp or with the right. For its part, the presidential coalition has also ruled out any alliance with LFI despite being the main force on the left, while it also does not envisage a government agreement with the RN or the conservatives. A second option would be to form a minority government as has been the case in the two previous governments since Emmanuel Macron’s re-election in 2022, which were able to hold on because the right, left and far-right oppositions never managed to join forces. Despite this, the government often had to resort to article 49.3 of the Constitution to push through laws without the approval of the National Assembly. This scenario could theoretically allow the NFP to form a government, but it would require at least 94 MPs from other parties to support it, which seems highly unlikely. Finally, the last scenario would be that of a technical government made up of ministers with no party affiliation in order to manage current affairs and implement certain consensual reforms, with the support of the different political groups on a case-by-case basis. This is a solution that has already been used several times in Italy, but it is difficult for such an executive to be sustained over time due to a lack of legitimacy at the ballot box and the wear and tear of a continuous process of negotiations with political forces with radically different agendas. In short, in the absence of a clear majority, the risk of institutional deadlock is real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this feeling of the RN’s poor relative performance (probably generated by over-optimistic expectations after the first round) should not overshadow the continued rise and consolidation of the RN vote, which has already become the leading party in France. This, both in the last European elections (where it gained 2.5 million votes compared to the 2019 elections) and in the legislative elections, where it has almost doubled the number of votes obtained in 2022). This growth is rooted in a deep social crisis that the RN has been able to use – and exploit – through a simple but effective narrative that points to immigration as the initial cause of the difficulties experienced in terms of living conditions. This explains why in the first round the NR obtained spectacular results among workers (56%), middle-class workers (43%) and the low-skilled (48%), with issues such as purchasing power and immigration at the top of the list of concerns of these categories of the population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If France is now facing a possible situation of deadlock or political instability, Britain has decidedly opted for a change of cycle. Voters gave an overwhelming victory to the Labour Party with 412 seats and 33.8% of the vote, to the 121 seats of the Conservative Party (23.7%), and the 72 of the Liberal Democrats (12.2%). Also noteworthy is the collapse of the Scottish nationalists of SNP, which has lost 38 seats and will only have 9 representatives in Westminster, the big rise of the Greens with almost 2 million votes and the vertiginous rise of the Reform Party of the extremist Nigel Farage, which despite winning only 4 seats has won 4 million votes (14.3%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, if we compare with the results of the previous elections, we see that it was more a vote of punishment and rejection of the Tories, who have gone from 42.4% in 2019 to the current 23.7%, than a vote of support for Labour, which only increased its results by 1.7%. It is not therefore an explicit shift to the left but something deeper that has its roots in unfulfilled promises and broken trust, in failed public services and bills that cannot be paid, in a collective desire for change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britain is a country hit by spiralling costs of living in recent years, food bank recipients have almost doubled in five years, the National Health Service has 7.6 million patients waiting for treatment in England alone, almost three times as many as a decade ago, of the 3.4 million people claiming disability benefit, more than a third have psychiatric disorders, numerous councils have already declared bankruptcy. Despite this, more than 1.2 million people emigrated in the UK in 2023, which has only fuelled concerns about legal and illegal immigration. In short, all these factors have fuelled a sense of state failure that has ultimately driven the Conservatives from power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The election results thus paint a political landscape fragmented into four main groups: a progressive and reformist bloc made up of Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Welsh Plaid Cymru; a Conservative Party with serious internal divisions; the Reform Party with an openly racist ideology; and a left-wing group with the Greens and independents. The new Prime Minister Keir Starmer thus faces the complex task of navigating this landscape in a highly complex political, social and economic context. If leaders such as Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair were able to operate within a stable economic model, Starmer will have to address a systemic change: Britain’s economy, badly affected by Brexit, is stagnating, unable to grow with borrowing or taxation, and vulnerable to foreign interference. In parallel, Starmer will have to tackle the many tasks that the confused Conservative legacy has left unfinished: the ecological transition, job creation, modernising infrastructure, managing immigration to ensure better integration, improving the balance between supply and demand, access to housing, rebuilding the public health system and improving local government finances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is concern that the rise of the far-right vote is common to developed Western countries due to multiple factors that converge in a general current of distrust and contestation of established political power and of the consensuses that have shaped the politics of liberal democracies since the end of the Second World War. Western societies have fractured into two major spheres: on the one hand, the large urban concentrations, connected to the globalised world, with multicultural identities and new social values, where wealth, economic activity and employment, new technologies and services are concentrated. On the other hand, rural and deindustrialised areas, in economic and demographic decline, territories that are in some ways the victims of globalisation, where a feeling of exclusion and grievance has taken root, a feeling of having been abandoned by the public authorities. They view social and cultural changes with suspicion, that cling to identity references and nostalgia for the good old days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A breeding ground for resentment where what is called “patrimonial populism” has taken root, offering a radical and conservative defence of material (standard of living) and immaterial (lifestyle) heritage, which has led to a widening economic, social, cultural and political divide. Ultimately, then, this is a wake-up call that needs to be heeded, as the tide of the radical right continues to rise, and if the problems that have fuelled adherence to radical right-wing ideas in recent years are not addressed, the cordon sanitaire that has worked almost everywhere so far will break sooner or later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, a careful reading of the results of both elections and the underlying trends reveal a profound disillusionment with politics, and the wave that has swept the Conservative Party is not so different from the one that is sweeping France or the one that may carry Donald Trump back to the White House after November’s presidential election. We are warned and more than ever, we must be vigilant and militant for democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Photography: Adobe Stock.<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anna Masegosa, trainee at the CETC, has participated in this issue of Idees d’actualitat.<\/em><\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From one relative majority to another… but not the one expected. The legislative elections in France have had the whole of Europe on tenterhooks over the last few weeks with the prospect of the radical right of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) coming to power after coming comfortably in first place in the first round. After an intense week of negotiations to get the third-placed candidates to withdraw in order to prevent an absolute majority for the RN, the New Popular Front (NFP) won the majority of seats (174), although far from an absolute majority (289). The Ensemble presidential\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":76332,"template":"","category_newspaper":[584],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-76357","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-584"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nIdees d'actualitat - Britain and France: from political change to Zugzwang – IDEES<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/revistaidees.cat\/en\/analisis\/diari-de-les-idees\/idees-dactualitat-gran-bretanya-i-franca-del-canvi-de-cicle-al-zugzwang\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Idees d'actualitat - Britain and France: from political change to Zugzwang – IDEES\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"From one relative majority to another… but not the one expected. 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