1066 and All That? 2024 Could Be the Year France and Britain Start To Converge

It has not happened for nearly a thousand years, but if it does it will be the rendezvous of the century: London and Paris wearing the same crown. Nearly four years after Brexit liberated Britain from the shackles of Brussels, the island nation is hopscotching ahead of the European pack left behind. Now the smart money across the English Channel — namely, the ascendant National Rally of Marine Le Pen — is eyeing the newfound British élan with une certaine envie.That could translate into tectonic shifts in the European electoral landscape in the new year. If so, it will pave the way for a reimagined map of Europe the likes of which has not been seen since 1066 when William the Conqueror bade Normandy adieu and became king of England.There is more recent precedent. In June 1940, with the prodding of Charles de Gaulle, Winston Churchill floated the idea of a Franco-British union as a way to fend off a looming French surrender to Nazi Germany. The proposal sank just days before Maréchal Pétain handed to Hitler the keys to Paris. Pétain had been leery of ceding French colonies to Britain. France would eventually lose most of those anyway. The ice, though, was broken and, more significantly, this all pre-dated European union.As 2024 debuts the European Union is as inexplicably expansionist as it is politically rudderless, whereas post-Brexit Britain is forecast to be Europe’s hottest economy for the next decade and half. That is the conclusion of a new study from the London-based Center for Economics and Business Research. While it is true that labor supply problems have led the Bank of England to take a more pessimistic view of prospects for long-term growth, the CEBR report asserts that “the fundamentals of the British economy are still very strong.”In fact, growth in the United Kingdom is set to outpace that of the four major economies of the Eurozone — France, Germany, Italy, and Spain. Germany will, within 15 years, be outperformed by India and Japan, which does not bode at all well for France, whose economy still trails Britain’s. France and Germany are the kernel of the European project. The more Brussels bureaucrats seek to push the boundaries of EU eastward to encompass countries like Moldova and Ukraine — culturally Slavic, decidedly not Gallic — the more already highly-taxed EU citizens like the French bristle. At some point that simmering discontent will boil over into open calls to opt out of the EU that will be impossible to ignore.The cauldron is already bubbling, even if only a few French politicians speak openly of a “Frexit.” Marine Le Pen, the three-time presidential contender who is widely expected to run again in 2027, is about as Eurosceptic as they come — and that stance is already paying dividends for her domestically. The more Ms. Le Pen comes out swinging against Brussels — as she did last year when she said “the EU debases our history and our cultures, sees us as packaged goods, and harms our people” — the more her party rises.In her New Year’s video message to the French, Ms. Le Pen took aim at her political nemesis, President Macron: “In 2022 we handed Emmanuel Macron a minority position in the National Assembly,” she said, adding that “it is now up to us to make his political family a minority in the European Parliament.” In a reference to the strict French immigration law that recently passed in large part due to the jockeying of National Rally parliamentarians Ms. Le Pen crowed, “never before have our ideas been so validated by our adversaries.”Ms. Le Pen is cleverer than her clumsy and infamously raciste nonagenarian father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who in 1972 founded the far right Front National party, of which the National Rally is the rebranded spinoff. In 2022 she formally handed the reins to Jordan Bardella, who at 28 injects a dash of youthful vigor to French politics that makes Mr. Macron look like yesterday’s news. Mr. Bardella, like his mentor Ms. Le Pen, is preparing for European Parliament elections next June — the Battle of Hastings revisited, as it were, as the left and the right get set to square off at Strasbourg. Young Bardella, in his New Year’s remarks to the French public, suggested that “the National Rally has established itself as the favorite political party of the French.” For Mr. Bardella the June elections will determine “the extent of the burden inflicted on Brussels’ European Union and the disavowal of Emmanuel Macron’s policies.”One of those policies is immigration. The passage of the immigration bill was further evidence of Europe’s swing to the right, which in France spells the erosion of President Macron’s flawed neoliberal agenda. Marine Le Pen is already beating Mr. Macron in polling. The issue of immigration is inextricably linked with that of the economy. Last year the EU under the dubious leadership of Ursula von der Leyen showed the world that it was incapable of managing the immigration crisis, with islands like Lampedusa overrun with refugees. Mr. Macron may be loathe to admit it, but France is now going its own way on immigration — just like Britain. Even if Labor prevails in Britain’s next general election, chances are Keir Starmer could be even more of a cipher than Rishi Sunak. So by the time Mr. Macron starts packing his bags in a couple years, there could well be more ideological alignment between the relevant parties in France and Britain than at any time in recent memory.L’Union fait la force — unity is strength — is a fine Belgian motto. Yet the Franco-British purloining of Brussels’ thunder has, with a quiet rumble, already begun.

1066 and All That? 2024 Could Be the Year France and Britain Start To Converge

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