This summer the far right were meant to sweep to power in Eurrope. Except they didn't
On 18 June the outgoing President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, predicted by many journalists to be ousted as MEPs opposed to her decisions taken as EU chief over the last 5 years, was easily re-elected with a bigger majority than she got 5 years ago.
Giorgia Meloni, Marine Le Pen, the AfD, and assorted hard left MEPs had been briefing Brussels journalists they had the votes to oust her. But they didn’t. Meloni who has just sued an Italian journalist who wrote that she isn’t a tall woman She is 5 feet high (1.52 m) – about five inches shorter than Rishi Sunak. Meloni looked more than pissed off that the most powerful woman politician in Europe, the German moderate centre-rightist was re-elected as President of the Commission until 2029.
Now something similar has happened in the choice of the President of the French National Assembly. Macron it should be recalled reacted to the extreme right Marine Le Pen led party she inherited from her openly anti-semitic EU-hating papa, Jean Marie Le Pen (who still lives with her her) coming top in the European Parliament elections by dissolving the French National Assembly ( the French lawmaking Parliament) and calling fresh elections.
Le Pen and many commentators especially in the British and US media told us that this was a disastrous error by Macron and Le Pen would easily win the parliamentary election.
This conforms to the media and academic establishment wisdom that the far-right were on unstoppable rise to power in in Europe and indeed Britain. Top Tories and academic commentators like Mathew Goodwin prostrated themselves in front of Viktor Orban when he paid for them to come to Brussels in May to praise his far-right anti-EU, pro-Putinpolitics.
But in the French Parliamentary elections Marine Le Pen’s racist National Rally came third with a hastily assembled coalition of left parties coming top and Macron centre right liberal led group coming second.
The French left overplayed their hand under the leadership of Jean-Luc Mélechcon, a lifelong Trotskyist demagogue. They refused all cooperation with anti Le Pen deputies or parties and insisted that a far left Prime Minister and government should be named.
The Socialist Party which has come back to life after being marginalised by Macron when he succeeded François Hollande as French president in 2017 stayed quiet and let Mélenchon and his epigones rant about taking over the government on the basis of about one third of French voters.
Yesterday, the Mélenchon led left were defeated in a key National Assembly vote when deputies re-elected Yaël Braun-Pivet the Macronist president of of the French National Assembly, the fourth highest-ranking official in France. The vote was widely seen as a test to see who could work together in France’s fractured parliament to name a future prime minister.
It follows on the UK election result when voters booted out the rancid EU-hating recent generation of Tory leaders like Boris Johnson, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak.
Top Tories also talked of a “Muslim invasion” as they tried to stoke up racist prejudice against immigrants.
Voters were not convinced. I first stood for election as an MP 50 years ago in Solihull, close to Birmingham, where there was rabid doorstep hostility to immigrants.
20 years late in 1994 I was elected an MP in a South Yorkshire seat with a strong Kashmiri Mulsim community.
Talking to steelworker, and coal-miner voters I heard pretty foul comments about new incomers many of whose children went on to successful careers as British doctors, teachers, accountants, and business leaders.
But in the UK election the anti-EU and anti-immigrants Tory MPs, including the former prime minister, Liz Truss, were booted out and Britain now has a moderate, modern social democratic Labour government with a big majority to govern Britain over the next 5 years.
So in the space of a month, the line popularised by many who write on politics that the right were going to sweep to power had turned out not to be true.
The populist rightists are at odds with each other over supporting Putin or sticking by EU rules, the single currency and cooperating with decisions made in Brussels.
It is not a question of the left coming back as in Britain but European politics may be entering a post-populist era.
And now we wait to see what happens in America.
Denis MacShane is the former Minister for Europe