{"id":810840,"date":"2022-09-23T19:37:01","date_gmt":"2022-09-23T19:37:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobin.com\/2022\/09\/british-left-corbyn-melenchon-labour-france-insoumise\/"},"modified":"2022-09-25T03:44:12","modified_gmt":"2022-09-25T03:44:12","slug":"the-british-left-could-benefit-from-a-few-lessons-from-the-french-left","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2022\/09\/23\/the-british-left-could-benefit-from-a-few-lessons-from-the-french-left\/","title":{"rendered":"The British Left Could Benefit From a Few Lessons From the French Left"},"content":{"rendered":"\n \n\n\n\n

Five years after their electoral breakthroughs, the projects led by Jeremy Corbyn and Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon have gone in opposite directions. The British left would be in a stronger position today if it had displayed some of M\u00e9lenchon\u2019s confrontational grit.<\/h3>\n\n\n
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\n Rebecca Long-Bailey and Jeremy Corbyn on the fourth day of the Labour Party conference on September 24, 2019 in Brighton, England. (Leon Neal \/ Getty Images)\n <\/figcaption> \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n \n

Five years ago, in elections held barely a month apart, the Left took a big step forward on both sides of the English Channel. First Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon won nearly one-fifth of the vote in the first round of the French presidential election \u2014 the best performance by a radical-left candidate since 1969. Then Jeremy Corbyn led the British Labour Party to its highest vote share in almost two decades, with the biggest increase in support for either of Britain\u2019s major parties since 1945.<\/p>\n

The current state of play for the movements that came together around M\u00e9lenchon and Corbyn could not be more different. The French politician surpassed his 2017 result in this year\u2019s presidential poll, with 22 percent of the vote. He went on to lead a left-wing alliance that outperformed Emmanuel Macron\u2019s governing party in the first round of June\u2019s legislative elections. M\u00e9lenchon\u2019s party, La France Insoumise, is clearly the most dynamic element in that alliance.<\/p>\n

Corbyn, on the other hand, is no longer even a member of Labour\u2019s parliamentary group, having been excluded by his successor, Keir Starmer. The former leader\u2019s suspension is one aspect of Starmer\u2019s unrelenting drive to exclude left-wingers from all positions of influence in the party, which has escalated to psychological warfare<\/a> in an effort to remove one left-wing MP, Apsana Begum.<\/p>\n

How can we explain this divergence of fortunes? In what follows, I\u2019ll outline some of the factors beyond the control of the British Labour left that made their task harder than M\u00e9lenchon\u2019s, before discussing where they would have benefitted from a different approach closer to that of the French left-wing leader.<\/p>\n\n \n\n \n \n \n

Chunnel Vision<\/h2>\n \n

First of all, we should guard against the tendency to believe that the grass is always greener on the other side. There are many things to worry about on the French political scene. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen once again reached the second round of the presidential election this year, and her Rassemblement National party made a real breakthrough in the subsequent legislative poll. For the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic, the far right has a major presence in the French National Assembly.<\/p>\n

Moreover, M\u00e9lenchon\u2019s achievement in leapfrogging the traditional party of the French center left was only partly due to his own increase in support. Emmanuel Macron gobbled up a large section of the Socialist electorate in 2017 with his own centrist vehicle and led them rightward. There are also many unanswered questions about the ability of La France Insoumise to capitalize on its position as the largest component of the French left, and to bring forward a new generation of leaders who can eventually take the place of M\u00e9lenchon.<\/p>\n

Having said all that, there is still no question that M\u00e9lenchon and his allies are in a much stronger position than the forces that mobilized behind Corbyn after 2015. As things stand, the British left would be very fortunate to face the same kind of challenges as their counterparts across the English Channel.<\/p>\n

In making sense of this contrast, we need to avoid an excessively voluntarist approach that overlooks the constraints on political action. Take, for example, the question of the European Union. In general, critical understanding of the EU\u2019s role in promoting neoliberalism since the 1990s is more widespread on the Left in France than in Britain. British liberals and social democrats still tend to see the EU as a benign force that upholds social rights and environmental protections.<\/p>\n