Clashes in France Accelerating Europe’s Swing to the Right

President Macron has a penchant for talking up the value of greater unity in Europe, going so far last year as to launch a “European Political Community” for no apparent reason other than love of a pointless rendezvous. What the French president failed to bank on is how Europeans’ frustration with entrenched social crises would in the summer of 2023 move the European political needle decisively to the right.Nearly a week of violent clashes and looting in France have not only caused at least $100 million in damages to French cities but have also eroded any clear mandate Mr. Macron had to run the world’s seventh-largest economy. The failure of his progressive Renaissance party to tackle issues of illegal immigration, social integration of disadvantaged youths, and racism has given a boost to his chief rival on the right, Marine Le Pen of the National Rally party. A new poll shows that more than a half of French voters would favor Ms. Le Pen over Mr. Macron for the French presidency. The survey of 1,000 French voters commissioned by Britain’s Daily Express found that 51 percent would choose the 54-year-old daughter of the far-right figure Jean-Marie Le Pen over the 45-year-old Mr. Macron. While the next presidential elections in France are not until 2027, Mr. Macron has seen his popularity plummet since he jammed a pension reform bill through parliament last April. The poll also indicated that a majority of Frenchmen would like to see a state of emergency declared after the country has been wracked by days of violent riots following the shooting death of a teenager by a police officer at a suburb of Paris. That has also been the position of the National Rally, which has lambasted Mr. Macron for being weak on crime and lax in restoring public order. For now though, while tensions in French cities are running high, the clashes in the streets appear to be petering out. Yet political scars will remain, at least for Mr. Macron, on whose watch France has been plagued by domestic turmoil from the “yellow vest” protests in 2018 to the pension reform protests and recent riots that have marred his second term. Mr. Macron is “trying to escape political escalation,” as Le Monde phrased it, but as the rapid deterioration of public safety has shown, this is a leader who is following events, not driving them. The special brand of fury seen in recent days across major French cities, with smashed shopfronts and the torching of thousands of cars, may be unique to France. On the political level, though, what is happening mirrors trends across the continent, where center-right and sometimes far-right parties are making inroads on the left, and sometimes annihilating it altogether. The latest example is Greece, where last month the conservative New Democracy party of Prime Minister Mitsotakis trounced the main left-wing opposition party, Syriza, in national elections. So decisive was the victory that the opposition leader, Alexis Tsipras, a former prime minister, resigned from the leadership of Syriza, leaving its future as a viable political party in doubt. The more center-left socialist party, Pasok, made gains in the Greek parliament, but its leadership has yet to craft a message that resonates with a majority of voters. France, like Greece and Italy, has seen a surge of illegal immigration in recent months and there is not only social but also political fallout because of it. In the poll of French voters, 30 percent blamed Mr. Macron for the recent riots while 41 percent blamed them on migrants. Taking a tough line on illegal immigration has long been the National Rally’s stock in trade, just as it is for Prime Minister Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party. In Spain, Prime Minister Sánchez’s Socialist Workers’ Party took a drubbing in local elections in May. As Spanish voters head to the polls this month, the center-right People’s Party is poised to win big. In a bid to stave off such a victory, Mr. Sánchez has sounded the alarm on a potential alliance between the PP and far-right Vox party. Yet as in Greece, that amounts to so much squirming from the left. In the recent Greek elections, small far-right parties did garner more than a tenth of the national vote. That saw fringe parties like the Spartans gain seats in parliament. A presence in parliament, though, is not the same thing as power. A representative of the Greek socialist party, Pasok, told the Sun that “Pasok, a democratic socialist party, will never cooperate with a neo-Nazi formation, such as the Spartans,” adding that “the strengthening of the social state is at the forefront of the political existence of the party.”Under the stewardship of Mr. Mitsotakis, the New Democracy party has taken a tough stance on illegal immigration, leading to the charge that it has more in common with the far right parties than is generally admitted. Yet the case of France, where the National Rally had its genesis in the extreme right National Front, could prove instructive. The more combustible the fabric of modern France shows itself to be, the more Marine Le Pen can successfully rally hesitant but right-leaning voters to her side. This process is already happening, and her party’s moderate-right approach — as opposed to Mr. Macron’s outmoded neoliberal one — is in effect squelching extreme populist voices even as it grows more popular. As the smoke over French cities clears, the message for Europe’s political parties is unambiguous: The left is out and the right is in. Common sense on the Continent, it seems, is on a winning streak.

Clashes in France Accelerating Europe’s Swing to the Right

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