psychological warfare<\/a> in an effort to remove one left-wing MP, Apsana Begum.<\/p>\nHow 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>\nJean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon didn\u2019t have to confront his own equivalent of the Brexit crisis, with a successful campaign to leave the EU spearheaded by the nationalist right.<\/q><\/aside>\nThis is not merely because the Euro-critical left in France has done a better job of explaining the situation than its British counterpart. The EU which took shape after the Maastricht Treaty left a much deeper imprint on French society and politics, above all because France joined the single currency. The pressure from European institutions to privatize, marketize, and cut public spending was tangible in France long before the crash of 2008.<\/p>\n
Across the Channel, much of the Labour Party embraced the vision of \u201csocial Europe\u201d set out by European Commission president Jacques Delors in a famous 1988 speech. Many of their Conservative opponents also took what Delors said at face value and perceived the EU as a nascent social democratic superstate.<\/p>\n
Since Britain stayed out of the euro, neither side had to look very closely at the neoliberal doctrines that were built into its structures from Maastricht on. British-style neoliberalism was homegrown and never relied on support from Brussels or Frankfurt to advance its cause, whether during Margaret Thatcher\u2019s heyday in the 1980s or in the decade of austerity that followed the Great Recession.<\/p>\n
Jean-Luc M\u00e9lenchon and his supporters didn\u2019t have to confront their own equivalent of the Brexit crisis that unfolded in Britain after 2016, with a successful campaign to leave the EU spearheaded by the nationalist right. In the British context, Brexit was a deeply polarizing issue where socialists could not honestly take up a position at either pole. It had a corrosive impact on the movement around Corbyn and on his own public image.<\/p>\n\n \n \n
\n Inside Out<\/h2>\n \n The warning about unrealistic voluntarism also applies to the most obvious difference between the two movements. Having been a Socialist politician for many years, M\u00e9lenchon broke with the party in 2008 and set up his own organization, the Left Party, before going on to establish La France Insoumise in 2016. He negotiated this year\u2019s electoral pact with the Socialist Party from a position of strength, having outperformed its candidates by a wide margin in two successive presidential elections.<\/p>\nThe electoral left has always been more diverse in France than in Britain.<\/q><\/aside>\nCorbyn, on the other hand, continued to work through the Labour Party, in line with the thinking of his political mentor Tony Benn. This was not merely a subjective choice. The electoral left has always been more diverse in France than in Britain. The French Communist Party (PCF) was much stronger than the Socialists for several decades after the war. Even when the PCF went into decline from the early 1980s, its typical vote was still much higher than the best-ever performance by the British Communists in 1945.<\/p>\n
During the first decade of this century, Trotskyist candidates took 10 percent of the vote in the 2002 French presidential election. In Britain, on the other hand, the most successful left-wing challenge to Tony Blair\u2019s New Labour \u2014 outside Scotland at any rate \u2014 came from the Respect Party. Although Respect achieved some local successes in Tower Hamlets and Birmingham, its share of the national vote in 2005 was less than 1 percent.<\/p>\n
In other words, M\u00e9lenchon had a preexisting base to build upon when he first ran for president in 2012, taking 11 percent of the vote. The electoral space to the left of Labour in Britain was much more tightly constrained, especially when the party returned to the opposition benches after 2010 and could present itself as the only viable alternative to the Tories. While this does not mean that we could never imagine a group on Labour\u2019s left flank making an impact in British politics, it would certainly face obstacles that M\u00e9lenchon and his party did not have to overcome.<\/p>\n
There is a suggestive comparison to be made with the development of right-wing politics in the two countries during the same period. In France, Marine Le Pen and her allies have replaced the Gaullists as the dominant force on the right of the spectrum. In Britain, the Tories have absorbed the program of the UK Independence Party circa <\/i>2015 and swallowed up much of its electoral base in the process.<\/p>\n\n \n \n \n The Enemy Within<\/h2>\n \n
Jeremy Corbyn and his allies found it much harder to transform an existing party than the pro-Brexit Conservative tendency. Labour\u2019s Westminster MPs are by far the most important and influential section of the party, closely followed by its representatives in Britain\u2019s regional assemblies and local councils. At the moment when Corbyn became leader, the Parliamentary Labour Party\u2019s center of gravity was further to the right than at any previous point in its history.<\/p>\n
The first generation of New Labour politicians came of age during the 1970s and \u201980s, a time of intense political debate and social conflict in Britain. The Labour Party was a lively space back then, with vigorous local parties and strong ties to the trade union movement. To become a Labour MP, you needed the ability to think on your feet and make political arguments with people who did not share the same basic assumptions as you.<\/p>\n
The second generation, on the other hand, began climbing the ladder in the period between the demise of the Soviet Union and the great financial crisis. They internalized the idea that there was no longer any need to discuss the merits of capitalism, or indeed Britain\u2019s post-Thatcher model of how to organize a capitalist economy. There was a well-established career path for would-be Labour politicians under Blair\u2019s long stewardship: Oxbridge degree, service as a parliamentary assistant or researcher, and a parachute landing in a safe Labour constituency. At every stage of the process, loyal conformity was the best way to get ahead.<\/p>\nWhen Corbyn became leader, the Parliamentary Labour Party\u2019s center of gravity was further to the right than at any previous point in its history.<\/q><\/aside>\nThe collective psychology molded by this environment left these Labour MPs completely unequipped for the 2008 crash and its aftermath. Unable to identify any problems with Britain\u2019s turbocharged version of capitalist finance, they settled on the idea that excessive public spending was to blame for the crisis. In the 2015 Labour leadership election, Corbyn was the only candidate willing to challenge this absurd consensus, which is why he won.<\/p>\n
When Corbyn\u2019s shadow chancellor John McDonnell argued that neoliberalism had failed and it was time for a new economic model based on public ownership and investment, he might as well have been proposing an extension of the London Underground to Saturn, so far as many Labour MPs were concerned. They could not respond to the rise of Corbynism as if it were a legitimate body of opinion \u2014 even a profoundly mistaken one. Instead, Labour MPs and their media outriders spent several years presenting all forms of political disagreement as bullying, abuse, or simply an eruption of madness from the depths of British society.<\/p>\n
Before the 2017 general election, their trump card was \u201celectability\u201d \u2014 a nebulous quality, but one which Jeremy Corbyn appeared not to possess, judging by Labour\u2019s opinion poll scores. When Labour took 40 percent of the vote under Corbyn\u2019s leadership, this argument lost much of its force. Instead of questioning their baselevel assumptions about political reality, the Labour right fell back on a pseudo-ethical case against Corbynism. Having previously insisted that Corbyn was a good man, but not a leader, they now informed a receptive commentariat that he might be a leader, but he was certainly not a good man.<\/p>\n\n \n \n
\n Fault Lines<\/h2>\n \n M\u00e9lenchon has faced the same vitriolic attacks as Corbyn, with center-left critics accusing him of being an antisemite, a stooge of Vladimir Putin, and so on. Crucially, however, these attempts at character assassination did not emanate from within La France Insoumise. The fact that it was Corbyn\u2019s erstwhile party colleagues who were leveling such accusations against him lent those charges a spurious credibility. It also discouraged Corbyn and his associates from hitting back in the same forceful and unapologetic spirit as M\u00e9lenchon.<\/p>\n
Even if the finer details of the accusations against Corbyn did not register with much of the British public, they certainly picked up on the fact that he was frequently at odds with his own MPs. Party management skills are one of the first things that people look for when judging the competence of a political leader. On a superficial level, it seems like a logical point: How can you expect to run the country or the state when you can\u2019t even run your own party?<\/p>\n