The UK general election and the French legislative election both produced victories for parties on the left. Uğur Tekiner writes that while the results demonstrate the left can defeat the radical right, major challenges lie ahead.
This summer’s elections in Britain and France produced radically different results. The UK is now governed by a single-party government under the premiership of Sir Keir Starmer, with a massive majority in the House of Commons. France is now left with a hung parliament where none of the blocs hold a majority.
Yet both elections had one thing in common: they represented victories for parties on the left in the face of rising support for parties on the radical right. All eyes are now on whether the left can maintain or build on this support in office.
Loveless victories for the left?
In the UK, Labour’s victory and the Tories’ epic defeat were not surprising. The result came at a point when the country was in desperate need of political stability and strong leadership following 14 years of rule by the Conservative Party. However, as Labour won the election with less than 34 per cent of the vote, up by only 1.6 per cent and with a drop of over 4 million votes since its catastrophic 2019 result, the victory has been dubbed a “loveless landslide” by some commentators, with many noting that Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour achieved over 40 per cent in 2017. The general impression is that Labour did not win the election, but rather the Conservatives “lost it”, mainly because of swings to the Liberal Democrats and Reform UK.
The victory for the New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire – NFP) in France can also be seen as a “loveless win”. After the far-right National Rally (Rassemblement National – RN) won the first round of the election, politicians from the centre (President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble) and the left (NFP) agreed to block the far right. Consequently, around 240 third-placed candidates pulled out of the race to support the better scoring anti-RN candidate. This informal alliance stood as one of the primary factors behind the NFP’s unexpected win in the second round.
However, these assessments cannot conceal an overriding fact: the left still won the elections in Britain and France. This means that short of Macron resorting to political tricks, France will be governed by a leftist prime minister alongside Germany and Britain.
The last time the three biggest European democracies were governed by centre-left parties at the same time was the early-2000s (Blair-UK, Schröder-Germany, Jospin-France). After the decline of Third Way politics and accompanying electoral defeats, the past two decades have seen an ongoing debate on the plight of European social democratic parties. This year’s elections have changed the narrative.
Reclaiming ground from the radical right
The election victories won by the German Social Democrats in 2021 and the British Labour Party and the French NFP in 2024 also have another meaning. These parties have been ascribed a different political mission by voters from those in the early 2000s: namely to stand as a serious alternative to the radical right.
In France, the NFP’s election victory stopped the RN from winning power. The RN was previously tipped by election polls to win the election and the 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, named as the Le Pen family’s “poster boy” in the French press, was expected to become the next prime minister. However, the results of the second round have shown that the “cordon sanitaire” is still intact in France.
Labour’s landslide also limited the political ascendance of Reform UK. Ever since Brexit, Labour and the populist radical right have been in direct competition for votes. In the 2015 general election, UKIP attracted Labour voters with anti-European arguments. In 2024, Labour’s strong showing in certain constituencies prevented Reform UK from winning more seats. As a result, the party only won 5 MPs, despite senior Reform UK figures expecting to win around 15 MPs based on the exit polls.
But what lies behind the left’s electoral success? Alongside tactical voting, Labour and the NFP ran successful election campaigns appealing to different voter groups. In effect, the left managed to do this by reclaiming some of its key political arguments from the radical right.
Previously, right-wing parties fiercely opposed the welfare state, as well as the rights and benefits granted by it. However, recent decades have seen some parties on the right adopt a new strategy of refashioning key social democratic arguments with an ethnonationalist, xenophobic and anti-immigration core. This “welfare chauvinism” presents social rights and benefits as the exclusive preserve of “native” citizens, opposing access to them for immigrants and “outsiders”.
The RN also made a pledge ahead of the 2024 election to ban dual nationals from strategic jobs, while also proposing harsher measures to halt immigration to France. The NFP countered these pledges by vowing to put caps on basic goods to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, raise the minimum wage, distribute wealth through progressive taxation and establish a new agency for undocumented migrants.
In the UK, the race was primarily between Labour and the Conservatives, but Reform UK’s campaign pledges also aimed to attract traditional Labour voters. These included increasing funding for public services, reforming the NHS, increasing the income tax threshold and freezing immigration for unqualified workers. In return, Labour pledged to create over 650,000 jobs and cut bills via a Green New Deal, set an actual “living wage”, cut NHS waiting lists by paying staff more, and create a Border Security Command.
The rebranding of the centre-left’s political arguments by the radical right rendered them strange political rivals. Faced with this challenge, Labour and the NFP succeeded in profiling themselves as an antidote to right-wing politics. The policy proposals that Labour and the NFP offered as an alternative to the radical right’s divisive social policies convinced people of their capacity to address deep social and economic problems in an age of social injustice.
The challenges ahead
The rise of the left nevertheless comes with certain caveats. First, these parties are now obliged to prove to their voters that they can deliver in office. Failure to do so may be followed by another period in the electoral wilderness for European social democracy.
Second, Labour and the NFP are not without internal problems. In the UK, Starmer is now enjoying a honeymoon period in office, but mounting problems facing the country (the cost-of-living crisis, a troubled NHS, public security issues, overcrowded prisons and a housing crisis to name a few) will soon test the government. Failure to deliver could prompt a rise in support for Reform UK, as three prominent members of the new cabinet recently warned.
In France, the political deadlock facing the country poses a different set of challenges for the NFP. The composition of the left-wing alliance raises its own questions. The NFP was hastily organised by Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise, the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists after Macron called the election on 9 June. During the election campaign, they put their political and ideological differences to one side for the common goal of keeping the far right at bay. However, as recent infighting over the selection of a candidate for prime minister shows, the bloc may not hold together amid political uncertainty.
Third, there is no guarantee the radical right surge will prove ephemeral. Despite failing to take office, the National Rally came first in the European Parliament elections and the first round of the legislative elections, increasing its number of deputies from 88 to 125. It now stands as the biggest individual party in the National Assembly.
As a sign of the rising trend towards a multi-party system in Britain, Reform UK entered parliament and gained five seats with 14.3 per cent of the vote. This is the best result a party coming from this political tradition has ever achieved in a UK general election. Based on these results, both the RN and Reform have targeted bigger electoral victories, which will complicate matters for progressives in France and Britain.
All things considered, Labour and the NFP’s election victories were a welcome development for the European left. Yet given the massive challenges ahead, only time will tell whether this success will prove lasting or not.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy or the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com
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