March 5, 2024 - 1:00pm
Marseille
On Sunday, the challenge to the European Union from the resurgent Right became more visible and more threatening. France, if it swings hard Right under the Rassemblement National (RN) as is likely, will swiftly demote the EU and promote state sovereignty. If successful, this would satisfy most Brexiters and allow the UK, retaining independence, to rejoin the Union if voters so wish.
In the vast hall of Marseille’s Palais de Europe on Sunday, 8000 RN supporters offered full-throated support to Marine Le Pen, candidate (fourth time lucky?) for the French presidency in 2027, and for Jordan Bardella. Dubbed Marine’s “Dauphin” by French media, he is a 28-year old political prodigy from a working-class background, the RN’s president and head of its list for European elections in early June.
Of the two leaders, Bardella is the more popular. He was the only politician featured in the top 50 of an annual poll for most favoured public figures — at 30 (Le Pen, 61; President Emmanuel Macron, 63) — raising speculation that the party might prefer him as a more electable presidential candidate than “Chere Marine”. Perhaps to suppress gossip, he paid extravagant thanks to her for his high office, “striving every day to be worthy of your trust”.
Both leaders made the EU the malign centre of their rhetoric: Le Pen called for the European states to “take back the powers that the EU confiscated”. Meanwhile, Bardella said that a “punitive EU should be a coat that protects us, but every day strips us naked, to deliver us to the icy winds of globalisation”. With the RN in government “France will protect its borders.” “On est chez nous!” (we are in our own house!) roared the packed ranks of party supporters. “When Brussels moves against our interests,” he roared back, “we oppose it with the voice of France.”
The party’s enemies, the Dauphin warned, should recognise that much of political Europe is against them. The New Right parties in Italy, Sweden, Hungary, Austria and elsewhere are comrades in the fight for a reduced EU, confined to work with sovereign states.
The RN is a member of the Identity and Democracy group of the EU, with the Italian Lega now part of the governing coalition: its leader, Matteo Salvini, is close to Le Pen. Both have contempt for Brussels and are highly sceptical about providing further aid to Ukraine. The Alternativ für Deutschland is also a member: Bardella did not mention the German party, probably because Le Pen had publicly scolded it for being represented at a meeting which discussed large-scale repatriation of Muslims from Germany.
Le Pen now worries that she has not become moderate enough: unlike the RN’s competitor further to the Right, the journalist and Reconquête founder Éric Zemmour, Le Pen clearly distinguishes between Islamists prone to aggression and Muslims who lead generally peaceful lives, even if often separate from secular French citizens. Zemmour, in testy remarks given to Le Figaro the day after the Marseille rally, wrote that the RN “is becoming more and more fake, because it more and more resembles (Macron)”. Le Pen might be grateful for that terrible insult.
The RN is eight to 10 points ahead of Macron’s Renaissance party in the polls for the European election. The French President, bruised by recent rebarbative contact with inflamed farmers, cuts a reduced figure at home and abroad. Most recently, he was the object of barely concealed exasperation, especially on the part of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for proposing that Nato troops fight with Ukrainian forces.
Three years is a a long time in politics, and much could change before the European elections in 2027. But a multi-national movement for a return to a Europe of fully sovereign states and a stripped-down Brussels runs strongly. A New Right France implicitly claimed leadership of it in Marseille.
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SubscribeWhich parts of the EU don’t the French like? The massive PAC subsidies? The protectionism? The free trade of their heavily subsidised agricultural goods? The workers’ rights? The food regulation? If France does get its sovereignty back from the EU it will only double down on all the things for which the EU is often criticised.
If it’s just immigration then Britain is a cautionary tale. Instead of European immigrants all those underpaid but vital health and care jobs and services jobs will be filled by francophones from former colonies, i.e. Africa. And if that kind of immigration and immigration from the middle east is the kind RN voters want to protest vote against then withdrawing from the EU will do absolutely nothing to change it.
Well, in that case, the French will do what they normally do; vote for change and then take to the streets when it starts to happen.
plus ca change.
Well no, an independent France wouldn’t do those things, because they’re only affordable if the rest of the EU is paying for them.
But you’re right that the French seem to have forgotten that the EU was conceived as a means of extending the reach of French political power outside France itself. If French voters no longer have an appetite for this, it calls into question the point of the EU in ways that Brexit never did.
Hint for non-UK readers: whenever a writer uses the phrase “Brexiter” (with one “e”) rather than the more common “Brexiteer” it means they are a rabid Remoaner that continues to indulge in the dream that Britain will one day return to the EU fold.
don’t believe this non-UK readers. I have no idea what he’s on about.
Are you sure about this? I don’t dispute the existence of “rabid Remoaner(s) that continue to indulge in the dream that Britain will one day return to the EU fold”, but I had no idea they could so easily be identified through a mere spelling idiosyncrasy.
Agreed, I’ve never heard anybody make any kind of distinction between a Brexiter or Brexiteer. In fact I think this is the first time I’ve heard of the first example
I don’t know much John, but I know this. It is as sure a tell as wearing an EU beret or voting Lib Dem. It dates back to the referendum when it was thought that the double E made Brexiteers sound romantic like Privateer or Buccaneer. And so the other side dropped the second one. “Brexiter” is never said by normal people, even the spellchecker on my phone is trying to alter it.
I suspect that any word with “brexit” in it, for hardcore Europhiles, is spat with contempt. There are respectful terms for 2016 Leave voters such as “souverainistes”, “democrats”, “independents” etc, but none of them would adequately convey the degree of hatred involved in describing us.
Note that I refer to “Europhiles”, not “Remainers”. Most people who voted Remain in 2016 aren’t like this, it’s only a shouty and petulant minority who still need their nappies changed every time the subject of the 2016 Referendum comes up.
“If successful, this would satisfy most Brexiters and allow the UK, retaining independence, to rejoin the Union if voters so wish.”
The fastest non-sequitur I’ve ever read, I think.
‘Hard right’ – all of the views attributed to the RN here could be the reasonable views of any left-leaning social democratic party.
The power of wishful thinking diverts rational thought. If the EU allowed state sovereignty and the terms of rejoining were not too great and Poland was no longer being punished and Germany had resolved its Green issues and the Republic of Ireland rolled back its criticism of Free Speech then it could possibly happen.
Seems unlikely.
Yet only last week Eurobonds were raised as an ECB requirement. Should be one hell of a ringside seat.
It’s all falling apart these days for the globalists. Every day it seems like there are more holes in the dam and they have long since run out of fingers. The current dynamics are locked in place and there’s very little indication they’ll change anytime soon. Enforcing NetZero will still put a millstone around the necks of European economies. Multinational corporations and oligarchs will continue to suck up a ridiculous proportion of the profits within western economies. The middle class will shrink while the angry proletariat will grow. Russia and China will continue to do whatever they please regardless of the opinions and interests of anyone else. The Soviet communist empire fell apart from 1989-1991. Future historians may one day regard 2024-2027 as the years when the American/European led neoliberal empire fell in turn, having outlasted its competitors by a mere 33 years, chump change on historical timescales.
So a France led by a RN government might repatriate power and put Brussels back in its box? Good luck with that. When you’ve lost your currency, you are basically screwed. Look what happened to the Greeks, ten years ago.
The Eurocrats will not give up an inch of their power without a fight to the death. The primary purposes of any large, bureaucratic organisation are 1) to ensure it’s own survival and 2) to expand its power.
“If successful, this would satisfy most Brexiters and allow the UK, retaining independence, to rejoin the Union if voters so wish.”
Stopped reading there. What a bunch of tosh.
“If successful, this would satisfy most Brexiters and allow the UK, retaining independence, to rejoin the Union if voters so wish.”
How would this satisfy anyone and what would it prove for Brtain? Why would UK citizens look at a more Eurosceptic France and decide to give up sterling and national sovereinty? No nation in the EU is sovereign – that’s the whole point.
Is that a typo?
European elections in ‘27?
That’s the presidential elections.
Europe is this year …in June?