France Legislative Elections: A Left turn for Europe?

This piece is featured in the New Statesman here and on the Huffington Post blog, here

Yesterday saw a record low level of participation (48.31%) in France’s legislative elections as 6500 candidates campaigned for 577 seats. People headed to the booths to choose between an average of ten candidates, including a number of smaller fringe parties such as the Pirate party and the Blank vote party, which reflect the broader European tendency towards a balkanisation of politics.

Despite tepid public interest in the elections, their outcome could have a significant impact on the government and its ability to undertake its agenda, which includes raising taxes on the wealthiest, tougher measures to regulate the finance sector, the creation of 60,000 new jobs in education over the next 5 years, reducing the deficit to 3% by 2017 and outlining a new Franco-German treaty. The high level of abstention increased the number of ‘three ways’ in the second round on June 17, whereby three candidates reach the second round, and which traditionally sees the formation of alliances to achieve a majority, a situation in which smaller parties can become King-markers. Such an outcome is likely to favour Hollande’s Socialist party (PS) which already has a national alliance with the Ecology party and a less formal agreement with the Far-Left.

The party which wins the presidential elections traditionally achieves a majority in the national assembly, a result which could see the Left dominate all the major government institutions and consolidate Hollande’s power. Whether the PS will have to be drawn into a coalition with the anti-capitalist Far-Left in order to achieve that majority will determine its ability to manoeuvre subsequently and could further complicate negotiations with European partners on the already thorny issue of austerity, just as Spain has conceded a bailout. Leader of the Leftist Front, Melenchon, who wants a ‘citizen revolution’, has previously expressed his desire to weaken the Right in France in order to create a precedent for Leftist policies in Europe, starting with Greece, which will vote straight after France and Germany, set to vote in October. Such a prospect has Layla and Florian, a young Parisian couple and Melenchon supporters, enthused. They claim the Leftist Front offers a way out of this “corrupt and unjust capitalist system” and reflects the only real alternative: “We don’t need three cars or big houses – the current system means the middle class and the elite get richer whilst the poor get left behind – we need a revolution.” But their conviction the Far-Left can resolve France or even Europe’s problems, is far from unanimous. An elderly couple queuing at the polling office tell me they’re concerned there could be a ‘return’ of the communists, as occurred under the government of Leon Blum in 1936, which they recall was marked by “near constant strikes.” After casting a vote for the UMP, they praise Le Pen’s views on immigration, but say their memory of the war and “the fratricide which occurred” means they would not contemplate voting for an anti-EU party.

The elections have highlighted tensions with the UMP, which suffered significant losses, over its ideological outlook and strategy . The traditional UMP alliance with Centre right parties has been negatively affected by the poor showing of Francois Bayrou’s ModDem party, as well as by the rise of the Far-Right, which has drained some of its electorate. Since the departure of Sarkozy, the party has been embroiled in a power struggle between Party leader hopefuls and the public squabbling has served the interests of the National Front, which seeks to position itself as the ‘New Right’. Despite some pressure from its base to form UMP-FN alliances to keep the PS at bay, the UMP has so far resisted such a move, with Alain Juppé warning of the dangers of an alliance with a party which seeks to weaken the Right, in order to subsume it. But MP for the Gironde and representative of the UMP’s right wing, Jean-Paul Garraud, has called on the party to move beyond an ‘ideological blockage’ for pragmatic reasons and unite with the FN, a strategy which though officially denounced, may end up being reflected on the ground. The pressure on the UMP to concede is even more accute, in light of the thirty two ‘three ways’ in which the FN remains present for the second round.

A UMP-FN alliance, though grounded in electoral concerns, also reflects Marine Le Pen’s success in transforming the image of her father’s party, distancing herself from his racist and anti-semitic rants through a focus on anti-EU rhetoric and economic protectionism, coated in xenophobia. The FN which achieved almost 18% in the Presidential elections, has traditionally failed to gain seats in the National Assembly, a fact that reflects both an element of protest vote in its score at the Presidential election and the higher levels of abstention in local elections, which disproportionately affects smaller parties. Yesterday, it achieved 13.77% of the votes, a three fold increase on its 2007 showing in the legislatives elections then, through considerably lower than its score in May’s election. In the second round, the FN may achieve between 0-5 MPs, under the banner of the “Marine blue gathering”, a symbolic gain which reflects the growth of the Far-right in Europe and which would undoubtedly negatively impact France’s Muslim citizens.

While it looks likely Hollande will get his socialist majority parliament, the chorus of anti-austerity voices from both the Far-Left and the Far-right, which may be rewarded with a parliamentary presence, will complicate his ability to act against the significant challenges faced, including 10% unemployment, sluggish growth, a lack of competitiveness and a massive deficit. Despite the lack of enthusiasm for them, these elections will have a decisive impact on France’s policies and given its place in Europe, on the very nature of European policy.

Sky News: Live commentary on the French elections

A snippet of my commentary on the first round of the French Presidential elections on Sunday, on Sky News.

France is Turning ‘Bleu Marine’: the Existential Crisis of the French Right

This piece is published over at the Huffington post, here

France is turning “bleu-Marine”, a play on words which refers to the National Front (FN)’s strong ‎showing in the first round of the French Presidential elections. 18% of the vote is the strongest ‎polling yet for Marine Le Pen’s party, out-doing even her father’s 16.9% in the 2002 elections, ‎where he made it to the second round. The success of the National Front was in stark contrast to ‎the poor showing of France’s Right. Sarkozy has the dubious privilege of being the Fifth Republic’s ‎most unpopular president, with a 64% disapproval rating, and the first incumbent not to take the ‎lead in the first round. But these sobering findings clearly hadn’t dented the President’s self-belief on sunday as he delivered a “victory” speech, in which he claimed his supporters had ‘proven the ‎polls wrong’ – despite the rather accurate predictions that he’d lose out to Holland in the first ‎round, with around 26% of the vote. Which he did. ‎

His hope now will be to galvanise the Far-right and Centrist votes to compete with the Leftist block, ‎totalling 41%, which gives the socialist candidate, Francois Hollande a solid basis on which to achieve the winning 54%, predicted by ‎an IPSOS poll in the second round.‎

As Sarkozy seeks to salvage the situation in the run up to May 6th, his Sunday speech offered a ‎glimpse of things to come as he focused on key National Front issues of immigration, border ‎controls and national identity. In recent years, the UMP has been split by its veer to the right under ‎the direction of Sarkozy’s adviser, Patrick Buisson, considered the architect of the UMP’s “LePen-‎isation”. Many blame the strategy for alienating traditional right-wing voters and changing the very ‎nature of the neo-Gaulliste party. Others see Le Pen’s success as a vindication and evidence of the ‎need to move further on this terrain. The fact Sarkozy can count on 60% of Le Pen’s votes in the ‎second round, poses some existential questions about the very nature of the Right in France.‎

A regional breakdown of the vote showed Le Pen achieved high scores in the industrial North Est, ‎where she often came second, behind the Left for whom the North is not traditional terrain and ‎where Sarkozy had scored highly in 2007. The North Est and France’s industrial regions were those ‎worst hit by the economic crisis in 2008-2009, with a significant increase in unemployment. Today ‎jobless claims are at a twelve year high across France. In addition, France has lost competitiveness. ‎Its exports have lagged behind those of its major trading partners in the past decade, labour costs ‎have grown and whilst the economy is sluggish, workers are faced with reduced purchasing power. ‎This squeeze on the working class under the UMP’s rule means many are looking elsewhere. The ‎breakdown of votes shows Sarkozy lost many seats in central France, the 6th largest industrial ‎region, where the Far Left made significant advances and 29% of Blue-collar workers now vote Le ‎Pen.‎

But the Far-Right has also benefited from Sarkozy’s tactical inclusion of Far-right themes into the ‎mainstream political discourse. Many of Sarkozy’s election pledges seemingly acknowledged the ‎problematisation of issues raised by the FN, including the halal meat saga and the proposed rethink ‎of the passport-free Schengen zone. This strategy assumed the incorporation of such issues into ‎the UMP’s agenda, could garner more votes away from the NF, but appears instead to have ‎legitimised Le Pen’s discourse and ensured the perennity of her party on the French political ‎scene. What’s more, Sarkozy’s perceived failure to address these issues, alongside his ‎acknowledgement of their importance, has bolstered the FN’s agenda.‎

Marine Len Pen’s speech on Sunday suggests she now views her party as the ‘true’ Right, in the ‎face of a weak and discredited UMP. What is certain is that her historic success in this first round ‎has shifted the political terrain in France and conveyed a degree of respectability she has worked ‎hard to foster. Since taking over from her father, Marine has morphed the party’s image, seeking ‎to distance it from its racist reputation and consolidating its platform through a solidly anti-EU ‎focus, broadening its appeal. The message of curbing immigration and combating a European elite ‎by taking France out of the Eurozone, is designed to protect an allegedly threatened French ‎identity. ‎

Alongside proposals to protect small businesses and ban supermarkets in towns of under 30 000 ‎people, she speaks to a France suspicious of globalisation and of the EU’s austerity plans, in a ‎country where only 31% of people agree that a free market economy is the best system. It is ‎amongst the squeezed working and middle classes, who feel that Europe is failing to protect them ‎against global competition, that her message of protectionism, both social and economic, has ‎found an audience. ‎

Last year, academics warned of the “France of the invisibles” where almost 40% of the electorate ‎in rural and suburban areas, as well as in towns hit by deindustrialisation, feel abandoned by the ‎democratic process and unrepresented in their concerns. The consequence is the emergence of a ‎more radical political vote, towards the Far-Left but more so towards the Far Right whose ‎combination of a focus on social and identity issues has broad appeal. Worryingly, this is no longer ‎perceived to be a protest vote, but a vote of adherence to the FN’s agenda. 64% of FN voters state ‎their support for Marine le Pen as a candidate, and only 36% describe theirs as a “protest vote”. ‎Amongst FN voters, immigration polls as the highest concern (62 %), followed by insecurity (44 %) ‎and purchasing power (43 %) and Le Pen has successfully taped into this combination of social and ‎economic conservativism.

While Hollande may be elected France’s first Socialist president in 17 ‎years, it was under another socialist, Francois Mitterand that the National Front first made ‎headways in response to austerity measures in the 1980s. In 2012, their presence is far more ‎entrenched and they’ll be facing a candidate whom only 25 % of voters believe can improve the ‎situations in France. If he fails, an emboldened Far-right is waiting in the wings.‎

“There aint no crescent in the Union Jack”

In 1987, Paul Gilroy penned his now seminal book “There Ain’t No Black in the Union Jack”, in which he unpicked the usual explanation of racism as a peculiar evil on the margins of British society, and highlighted instead how the history of British racism is bound up with an imaginary English ‘national culture’ which is supposedly homogenous in its whiteness and Christianity. Cut to 2011, where Far-Right discourse has shifted from an anti-black focus to an anti-Muslim focus (although how cynical this ploy is, is anybody’s guess), and it is clear that Gilroy’s ideas continue to have huge relevance. While the focus of the Far-right’s vitriol has shifted from race to culture, the new target has been afforded widespread legitimacy by mainstream arguments asserting that ideas, unlike race, are a legitimate target for criticism and ridicule. There is no denying that all ideas must be open to critique and therefore potentially derision, but this convenient argument ignores the reality that arguments critical of Islam have been used to tar, stigmatise and even at times legitimise violence against individual Muslims. Baroness Sayeeda Warsi put the problem succinctly in a recent interview with emel magazine, in which she stated: “Islam is a religion and everyone has a right to question, criticise, disagree with, and object to other people’s religions… but where you have an approach of hatred towards a community because of the religion they belong to… that’s what I am saying is wrong.”

Examples of critical derision instrumentalised to justify hate campaigns trickle down from pseudo intellectual articles in the usual suspects, arguing Islam’s alleged inherent misogyny, to groups like the EDL, who like to proclaim their questionable feminist credentials as being part of their opposition to Islam. The language slips frequently and fluidly from Islamism, or Islamic extremists to Islam, condemning not only the violent minority, but criminalising the entire community.
Even the politically correct caveats have now been omitted so that Islam is now described as an ideology, not a religion or spiritual tradition, but a human contruction, considered like other ideologies, as inherently power hungry, oppressive and machiavellian, not an ethical body of ideals which nourishes the framework of values of societies as diverse as Indonesia, Senegal or Bosnia.
It is Islam, not its interpretations which are now described as barbaric, violent or backwards, a simplistic refusal to recognise the reality that texts don’t speak for themselves, humans, as a product of their social, cultural and political context – make the text speak, as their filter the words and their significance. To anyone familiar with the diversity within religious interpretations, this comes as no surprise. It is basic hermeneutics. But the talking heads, many of whom have now made a career in Islam-bashing, are not interested in nuances. And their irresponsible commitment to perpetuating a clichéd and narrow conception of Islam and the Muslim community, is not merely an insult to the real theology experts, but actually affects the lives of Muslim citizens.
The reality is that the pervasive hostility towards Islam, fed and well watered in the public sphere, has a very real impact on the private sphere of individual Muslims. Personal anecdotes abound, my friend Abdul being called into a management meeting to ask if he might consider changing his name to something which might be less likely to ‘offend’ the customers. Kareema being verbally abused on the bus. In Paris a few years ago I was told my “headgear” was not permitted in a bowling alley… In France, the 5% overall unemployment for university graduates contrasts with 26.5% unemployment for “North African” university graduates. Here in the UK, my research with the European Muslim Research Center (EMRC) highlighted just how widespread and how serious incidents of islamophobia have become from discrimination in the workplace to arson and even murder. More worrying still however is the continuing unwillingness to acknowledge its existence, be it through the incessant debates over the semantics of the word or the insidious suggestion Muslims are always portraying themselves as victims, implying it would seem, that we should put up or shut up. The grievances of citizens discounted by virtue of their religious identity. To be Muslim is to be less worthy of sympathy when attacked, less entitled to complain when slighted, to be fair game for public ridicule and derision. To be Muslim today is to owe the world an explanation for your very being.

And yet so little thoughtful analysis has been dedicated to assessing the similarities between the race bating of the 1980s and current Muslim bating. Racist arguments often contained a cultural dimension, that the black community was inherently more violent or criminal, just as caricatured media stories today which derive their alleged legitimacy from a focus on ‘Islam’, actually contain clear racial slurs.
Just as black men were portrayed as sexual predators biologically predisposed to sex attacks, Jack Straw’s recent comments that Muslim men were targeting “white” girls for sex attacks represented, he claimed, a “specific problem” for Pakistani men “fizzing and popping with testosterone “. Phantasmagorical predictions presented through the lens of the alleged clash of civilizations, that Muslims will soon be outnumbering the so-called “native” population (presumably white, Christian), mirror claims made in Powell’s insidious speech, in which he predicted race-wars, affirming that the black man would gain “the whip hand over the white”.
For Gilroy, the history of slavery was not simply an aberration, but a key component of Western modernity and this oppressive potential within modernity is complicit in the history of slavery. In the case of diasporas, the way colonised peoples were viewed during the colonial era continues to impinge on conceptions of the descendents of immigrants today. In the midst of local elections in France in which the Far-Right party, the FN is set to achieve record votes, Marine Le Pen has largely defined the parameters of the electoral discourse. In a recent inflammatory statement, she claimed that Muslims praying in the street represent “an occupation”, recalling that of Germany in the Second World War, but also France’s presence in North Africa. The implications for how Muslims are conceived of, is clear: foreign, hostile, fascist. Conclusion? like the Nazis, they must be fought and expelled. Like the movement for national independence in Algeria, that struggle is legitimate.
For those convinced the far right remains a marginal voice in Europe, it is time to consider the facts. Germany’s best selling book since the Second world war claims that Muslims are lowering the intelligence of the nation and represent a genetic tar. Entitled, “Germany Does Away With Itself,” it claims Germany is “committing suicide by Islam”. Four days after its publication, it topped Amazon Germany’s bestseller list and Sarrazin’s “theory” has been published widely in the mass circulation Bild newspaper and discussed and debated on talkshows, with muted approbation from the country’s intellectual elite, many of whom have praised his willingness to tackle the “problem” of Islam.
During the second round of France’s cantonal elections, the Far Right has made large advances, becoming the third political force in France, behind the Socialist party and Sarkozy’s UMP. Despite being present in 402 cantons, the FN has 12 per cent of the votes and gained more than 300,000 voters between the two rounds of votes, with over 40% of votes in some areas. That France’s elections have come to be defined by issues such as “the veil”, the burka and Muslim prayers as well as the enduring debate on ‘laicite’ , speaks volumes for the state of populist politics and for the dearth of real political initiative. It also reflects the dangerous strategy employed by Sarkozy to draw far-Right voters away from the National Front (FN) with a tough line on Islam, security and immigration, confirmed by Jacques Myard’s statement that a large part of the UMP’s base had defected to the FN. Previously viewed as a renegade party on the fringes of France’s political life, a recent poll found that a majority of French for the first time consider the FN to be a party “like the others”. Its growing success, fuelled in part by the legitimacy afforded to the Far right discourse by the remainder of the political scene, who have capitalised on its rhetoric, led the FN’s poster girl and daughter of its founder, Marine Le Pen to state: “the redrawing of political life in France is under way”. In my region, Seine-et-Marne, the FN achieved 21,64% overtaking the UMP. In Marseille, traditionally one of France’s most multicultural cities, the FN has achieved over 30% in all the cantons. And this despite the fact over 10% of the French electorate is Muslim.
Infamous Geert Wilders’ Freedom party came third in the June 2010 elections in the Netherlands, following a campaign in which he compared the Quran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. And the Far Right parties have made important gains in the European parliamentary elections, where the BNP now hold two seats as MEPs.
The shift from race to religious identity among the far right is a newly discovered discursive ploy which emerged as a consequence of race-baiting being criminalised. But the race card itself was just a way to define the focus of the unease each generation seems to confront with the absorption of different influences and outlooks, often redefining aspects of national culture.
“We want Briton for British” one less than eloquent young EDL member shouted in a much derided interview now re-mixed on youtube. It would come as no surprise to Gilroy that music, which he regards as a prime example of a ‘counterculture’ – available to a diverse and undifferentiated audience, was used by a Muslim to mock and deride the ignorance displayed by the EDL member. Music was just one tool available for a community under attack to forge a notion of itself, defining its culture and outlook away from the restrictive and narrow reflection offered to it by a mainstream culture which rejected its place within it.
Gilroy’s title, ‘There aint no black in the Union Jack’ served to highlight the inability of the black community in the 1980s to recognise itself in mainstream culture’s definition of Britishness. Today, it is equally true of the Muslim community that many feel “there aint no crescent in the Union jack”, that despite their longstanding presence and undeniable contribution to the construction of our society, mainstream culture is hostile to Muslims and to “Muslim culture(s)”, erecting Islam as the latest bogeyman against which to define britishness, all the while ignoring those very concrete examples of individuals who already represent the hybrid of ‘British Muslim’ identity.

In 2008, Gilroy penned an article for the guardian in which he criticised the canonisation of Enoch Powell, whom he wryly describes as “a talisman of authentic English nationalism” and his association with an increasingly popular notion of culture that only makes sense in exclusionary terms. Gilroy’s momentous contribution to the field of race relations was, amongst other things, to demonstrate effectively that cultural traditions are not static, but develop, grow and indeed mutate, as they influence and are influenced by the other shifting traditions around them. Of equal relevance to contemporary debates was his notion of “Double Consciousness” in the black community, which he described as the striving to be both European and Black through a relationship to the land of their birth and their ethnic political constituency, a notion which challenges the restrictive view that Muslims must somehow choose between their religious or spiritual orientation and their national citizenship.
Gilroy noted the importance of culture as expressed in the life of the community and suggested one route of revolt against a society which refused to recognise its place within it, was through cultural assertion, including through notions of a transatlantic diaspora community, the ‘Black Atlantic’ for the black community… the Umma for the Muslim community..?
As the Far-Right continues to make headway across Europe, it is time to re-examine our history and the ideas that challenged the narrow conception of national culture in previous eras and evaluate the possible contribution of such ideas to current debates. Gilroy and his peers shook the debate on racism in the 1980s, but his ideas continue to hold clear relevance for the challenge of one of the particular forms of hatred we face today.