Starmer said he could work with French far right. How about the left?

Right, so pollsters appear to have egg on their faces, the mainstream media have been handed their backsides, and the left appear to be triumphant. If only I was talking about the UK, but sadly I’m not. The French election exit poll has handed a big fat shock to the status quo, as predictions of the far right taking power were way off the mark and the left coalition that managed to unite itself quickly in the wake of Emmanuel Macron calling a snap General Election - and by snap I mean 2 weeks of campaigning – and look set to be the ones to take power instead. We could well be set to look at what a proper left administration across the water can do as Labour voices here bleat the same tired old Tory line of there being no money left here to do anything, to excuse more Tory austerity coming down the road rather than find money by implementing a wealth tax, but equally, Keir Starmer was quick to go on record as saying he could work with a Marine Le Pen French administration, so why hasn’t he said likewise yet about the left?
Right, so Marine Le Pen, head honcho of the National Front, renamed National Rally, as if that made a difference really, we knew who she was still, so did French voters, has been in floods of tears, as the final exit poll in the French Elections showed that she wasn’t on the cusp of leading her rancid party to power after all, as the first round of voting implied she was, her awful outfit pushed into third place in fact, still coming behind Macron’s centrists, but crucially he has lost too, as the coalition of 5 left wing parties topped the exit poll and look set to take power, so instead of the far right ruling, socialism has won through, and did so by setting their differences aside and coming together to defeat the politics of hate.
No one party or coalition it seems has done enough to win an outright majority, so Macron, with 3 years of his presidency left to serve, and his Prime Minister from his party having already resigned, has a choice to do a deal with the left coalition or rumble on with a lot of hostile MPs to his legislative plans. He took a gamble that people would pick him over the far right and instead, they backed the left. Centrists just never see that coming, never see it as something people will liegitimately vote for.
Whilst he mulls over his options though, Keir Starmer has been conspicuously quiet on this matter of the left surge in France. Some in the media will be saying how pleased Labour will be, but this is no left wing Labour Party, the likes of left French figures like Jean-Luc Melanchon prefer to hang with the likes of this bearded fella who is now the Independent MP for Islington North, pictured here as both were part of the South African delegation, behind their genocide case against Israel at the Hague last January. No, Starmer is far more a Macron type, Macron himself directly compared to Tony Blair when he first got elected, and his popularity has sunk as a result since. Well Starmer’s popularity sunk before he even reached power, the first incoming Prime Minister in British history apparently, to have seen his majority reduce – and it didn’t just reduce it was more than halved – instead of increase. And just as we’ve seen centrists here do, when the Lib Dems supported the Tories and put them in power in 2010, preferring that option to the left and also in that line of thinking we can include the ridiculousness of Jo Swinson – remember her? Refusing to countenance a provisional government led by Corbyn over one led by Boris Johnson. It’s what centrists do, they end up enabling the right.
Case in point, was that following those initial first round results which apparently had the far right of Marine Le Pen front and centre and on course for victory, it seemed, Keir Starmer readily announced at that time, that he could work with her, saying:
‘I will work with any government in Europe and across the world if we are elected in to serve the country.
For me, that’s what serious government is about. So yes, we will work with whoever.
I do think it is important that we make the progressive case to meet the challenges that we face across Europe and across the world.’
Well of course he has been elected now, but Le Pen has not and conspicuously, he has not repeated this mantra in light of the left taking a legislative lead in France now as it appears they very much will be able to do.
Notably Starmer said this the same week he made such grossly offensive comments about Bangladeshis and in regards as to what policy area he felt he could work with Le Pen on, he gave stopping small boat crossings as one example, because these people, desperate as they are, cannot be demonised enough and it very plays to the right wing votes he desperately courted in the General Election, but which, given his party only managed to increase it’s vote share by 1.6% over 2019, the Starmerroids having a very hard time accepting their man actually did so badly and is only in power due to our crackpot electoral system, as the Tories of course lost 20% of their own vote. For all of Starmer’s right wing tubthumping, he gained sod all in the way of Tory votes and attacking migrants and refugees arriving by small boat to claim asylum just makes him look as rancid and racist as the Tories in this regard. There’s no political gain for him in it, if his advisors now aren’t telling him to shut up about it and forget chasing right wing votes, there are as deluded and political inept as their boss is.
Now, I have no doubt in the coming days, when Starmer finally stops dragging his heels, that he will end up saying similarly regarding what these shock results in France that nobody saw coming with regards to the new left wing direction. I will look forward to French responses to that.
But whereas he saw an opportunity for shared policy with the far right over small boat crossings, he’s going to struggle given the initial policy announcement made by Jean-Luc Melanchon, leader of the left wing Le France Insourmise Party, or France Unbowed, one of those left coalition parties and that Party’s representative in the French parliament Mathilde Panot, have announced that they will seek French recognition of the state of Palestine. Oh dear Keith what will you do now?
Starmer might now rue his backtracking during the election campaign as far as state recognition of Palestine goes, because although a lot of media are still saying he backs this, and ostensibly he does, his backing for it, is still conditional and the condition he has placed on it is that Hamas unconditionally release all their hostages. No Israel gets out as well, no end to the fighting even, no release of Palestinian hostages, that the media always refer to as prisoners, though in too many cases their only crime is their existence, three of whom were released incidentally by Israel at the Kerem Shalom crossing yesterday, where Israel, Gaza and Egyptian borders all meet, and were then murdered as they walked away. No, the condition Starmer demands is just that Hamas must give up their hostages. So he’s in a bind where French relations are going forwards. He has his pro Israel lobbyists and party funders, paymasters as they’ve proven to be to look after, to represent and just to make things tougher as Starmer struggles to get his head around how to keep Israel happy, whilst still maintaining a relationship with one of our closest European neighbours and with whom migration is such an overblown but massive issue of his own making, determined to ape the Tories on that matter, Israel care fuming over the direction France has taken!
Israel liked Macron, he called the left antisemitic, he was their sort, but if the tweet put out by Israel’s Minister for Diaspora and Combatting Antisemitism – because of course they have such a thing – Amichai Chikli is anything to go by, they are furious and for all the usual reasons:
‘I see here some clowns celebrating the achievement of Melanchon, the French version of Jeremy Corbyn, a hater of Israel in heart and soul who refused to condemn the Shi'a events in October and define Hamas as a terrorist organization. The red-green alliance will lead Europe to a deep, very deep abyss.’
Well, it seems Jeremy Corbyn still lives rent free in the heads of Israelis too, state recognition of territory they occupy illegally terrifies them.
Still there are those who consider Macron’s gamble to have worked though, to keep the far right out, as if that is why he did it. He called this election out of arrogance. With the far right gaining popularity, he dared the French people to vote him out and them in. Insofar as them being kept out, sure, that worked, but only because the left united under one banner and as such Macron has lost something like 80 seats and his centrist Renaissance Party came second. The far right have been kept out, but, from a certain political point of view, so has he. It won’t stop our media falsely equivalencing Starmer with the French left, when really he is another Macron and therefore another Blair.
I look forward to seeing what diplomatic knots he ties himself in now.
Meanwhile, here’s a video recommendation explaining the truth behind that other election we’ve just had, our own and the reality that Labour really didn’t gain votes to win a majority, rather they lost votes, just that the Tories lost more and oh look, we’ve suddenly won all these seats despite that. Our electoral system is a joke, democracy it ain’t when Starmer literally only won 20% of the voting public’s support, get the details of that analysis here and I’ll hopefully catch you on the next vid. Cheers folks.