Just as Britain gives up on its right-wing anti-European populist government, along comes Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France, surging to power, or the verge of power, in a dramatic rejection of the country’s centrist president Emmanuel Macron.
Are Britain and France changing places?
If Starmer wins in Britain, and in France Le Pen and her prime ministerial nominee Jordan Bardella become the government or the clear government-in-waiting, then that is how it will seem.
There could hardly be a starker contrast than between Le Pen and Starmer as political character types. Not just right against left, but mainstream pragmatist against radical populist, and human rights lawyer against the daughter and political heir of Jean-Marie Le Pen, founder of the National Front (as it was called until changing its name a few years back) who described the Holocaust as “a detail of history.”
And there will be real consequences. France will descend into culture war politics just as Britain is emerging from it. Le Pen is addicted to the politics of quick fixes, soundbites, and avoiding the big tax-and-spend challenges, just like Farage, Johnson and Truss in Britain. And there is a latent pro-Putin strain in Le Pen and the National Rally which strongly echoes Farage, but which has no echo in the centre-left—or indeed centre-right—of British politics.
All this could make for frosty relations between Britain and France when and if the National Rally takes office. And it could deepen tension between France and the EU over support for Ukraine and further European integration.
However, the sharpness of the contrast should not be over-estimated, and the nuances are very revealing about the continuation of populism in Britain and its circumscription, even under Le Pen, in France.
First, the National Rally, learning from Brexit, is no longer proposing Frexit. Nor is it proposing to end support for Ukraine. Le Pen has made the sending of French or Nato troops to Ukraine her red line. And no one in is seriously proposing that, although Macron foolishly floated the idea in a speech a few months ago—only to immediately backtrack—which enabled his opponent to create the dividing line.
Conversely, Starmer isn’t proposing to reverse Brexit, so his position remains far more Eurosceptic than Le Pen’s in practice. When it comes to his more modest “asks” in terms of improving Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal, he might even find Le Pen and Bardella more accommodating than Macron, precisely because they too are Eurosceptic and less committed to upholding Brussels rules and orthodoxies.
There is also the paradox of populism in this week’s British election. The Tories are being defeated not just by Labour from the centre but by Farage from their right, who may be in a position, over the next few years, to undertake a takeover of the Tory party in a similar fashion to Le Pen’s evisceration of the old patrician right in France.
Of course, at the moment in Britain Reform and the Tories are simply struggling for leadership of the opposition to Starmer. But then, Le Pen’s National Rally was engaged in a long-standing struggle to take over the French right which has only been resolved by this current French election.
Even two years ago, when Macron was convincingly re-elected over Le Pen, it was hard to see the National Rally coming to power in France any time soon. For all its populist appeal, there seemed to be simply too many political blocks. But then suddenly it became the main opposition and on their way to power. Let’s hope Starmer, in power, doesn’t aid the process in Britain as Macron has done in France.
