Air Date 7/12/2024
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the Best of the Left podcast. Recent elections in the UK, France, and Mexico span the spectrum from confirming inevitabilities to completely up-ending expectations, but they each have lessons for politics in the US. Sources providing our top takes in under an hour today include TLDR News. Zeteo, DW News, Novara Media, Today in Focus, Democracy Now!, ABC In Depth, and The Hill. Then in the additional deeper dives half of the show, there'll be more on France, the UK, a nd Mexico.
Now, just a quick note before we get started. Once again, I have more thoughts on the current state of politics in the US in the wake of the attack on Donald Trump at his rally in Pennsylvania, but I will save those comments for the editor's note in the middle of the show.
The UK Election Results Explained - TLDR News - Air Date 7-5-24
The key event from last night occurred at 10pm, when we got our first indication of what was to come in the release of the exit poll. Now, the most [00:01:00] shocking thing to note in the exit poll here was the number of expected Reform seats.
The exit poll predicted that Reform would get 13 seats, significantly higher than most of the MRP polls in the run up to the election. However, there were some wobbles through the night with some polls suggesting that the exit poll had overestimated the number of seats. The more observant of you will notice that it turns out that the exit poll had indeed overestimated, and in the end Reform achieved only four seats.
The other shocking find from the exit poll was the number of predicted Tory seats. Prior to election day, many of the MRP polls were predicting below 100 Tory seats, while the exit poll predicted that the Tories were going to win 131 seats. What followed was deeply chaotic, and something that made writing this video through the night even more difficult.
As the results started coming in it appeared that the exit poll was slightly wrong, although the BBC and ITV couldn't quite agree in what direction. In the wee hours of Friday morning the BBC updated their prediction, with [00:02:00] them suggesting that the Conservatives were going to win more seats, while ITV updated theirs and predicted that they would, in fact, win fewer. As things stand, it appears that the Tories have won slightly fewer than originally predicted, but not significantly.
Anyway, overall results aside, the night was also particularly interesting when it came to individuals. There were two properly shocking and unexpected results. The first was Jonathan Ashworth unexpectedly losing his seat to an independent candidate. Ashworth has previously been the Shadow Health Secretary and, up until today, was the Shadow Paymaster General.
It appears that the loss of his seat has been a result of Labour's stance on Gaza, something that could cause problems for the incoming Labour government more generally. The second unexpected result was Jeremy Corbyn's election in Islington North. Having been deselected as a Labour MP, Corbyn opted to stand in his constituency as an independent.
He did, however, make the decision to stand rather late in the election cycle. Something that led to a decent proportion of [00:03:00] journalists and pundits to believe that he was going to lose the constituency to the new Labour candidate. This wasn't the case though, and Corbyn secured himself a pretty decent majority.
So, now that we've gone through exactly what happened through the night, it's worth going through what this all means for the main parties. Now, the most interesting party to discuss right now are the Conservatives, who, as we've just discussed, lost some pretty major figures through the night. At the time of writing, Sunak has not yet announced his resignation as Conservative leader, although he is expected to either this morning or in the coming days and weeks.
This will naturally kickstart a Tory leadership election. The question now is who would take over? While it's a little too soon to tell, there are some candidates that are in a particularly strong position right now. Kemi Badenoch is in the strongest position. She's got a rather strong following among right wing Tories, both in Parliament and among the membership.
What really bolsters this position is the fact that one of her key rivals for the leadership, Penny Mordant, [00:04:00] lost her seat last night. It is worth mentioning, though, that there has been an issue in Badenoch's constituency with postal votes, and if this is challenged in the courts, it could cause problems for her candidacy in the Tory leadership election.
Anyway, someone else that there's some chatter about in terms of taking over the Tory leadership is Nigel Farage and his potential defection from Reform UK in order to lead the Tories. After all, he now has a seat in the House of Commons, and there are some relatively senior members of the Conservative Party who have gone on the record as saying that they would like Farage to join their party.
Only the next few weeks will show exactly what happens here, but if you do want to stay informed on this, make sure you subscribe to the channel. Anyway, what happens next for Labour is quite simple. The new prime minister, Keir Starmer, will meet the King and agree to form a government in his name. He'll take office at Downing Street, assemble his first cabinet, and could even represent his party in a PMQ session before the imminent summer recess.
They will soon begin implementing their policy platform as outlined in their [00:05:00] manifesto. Whether they're successful at implementing this is not yet known though, and something we'll need to keep an eye on through the next few years of Labour government. Regardless, this is clearly a monumental election for Labour and the UK.
Shocking French election results- What you need to know - Zeteo - Air Date 7-8-24
RIM-SARAH ALOUANE: I was holding my breath the whole time. And finally, my reaction was: Wow. Crisis averted. We escaped the worst all over again. But until when?
So the next couple of weeks are going to be crucial. That will be a formation of the government. So it will be a coalition government. And multiple factors are at stake. Macron will have to make a choice -- a critical choice with the left. There are people on the left with whom he clearly does not want to deal with or to govern with. So you will have a lot of compromises being made. And that's a bit the point of the coalition. And the left, even within [00:06:00] the left, there are a lot of divisions in between parties, even though they were united for this election.
So the question is, what topics, what projects are going to be compromised or left aside to be able to be part of the government? And it will be a sort of game of thrones because in the end, Macron still has a lot of power and we'll have -- and this is a novel situation in this country, even though we had cohabitation before, but we had cohabitation coexistence with more conventional parties. It's the first time we have it with a far left party as well. So it's going to be interesting on a constitutional level to see what is possible.
I would say that President Macron's legacy will be one of achieving a full normalization of far right policies. And he put a lot with the snap election that took everyone by surprise -- really nobody, very few people were expecting this -- put people in a dire situation, and when you are a genius [00:07:00] you do not put people in dire situations even more if you are the president of the republic.
And when I mean putting people in a really dangerous situation, I mean vulnerable minorities have been attacked, including physically. The racism has been out even more than the usual. You would hear things that you would have heard before, but not at this level. And if that was his plan to take over control of the situation, then I don't think it's a genius move. I think it's it's the move of a spoiled child who just want to keep power. And this is not how you run a country. And you don't put democracy at stake when you are president. And that's what he did.
The traditional party system as we know it is no more. Really, I think that's the end also of centrist parties. The political landscape in France has been deeply polarized, deeply [00:08:00] divisive, and we have seen that with the right wing, which barely hides its connection with the far right. There has been issue within the Republican party and also with the left.
So now we have some sort of new political landscape. Now we need to be careful to not fall into another new establishment. I think the people have been clear: they are tired. They do not trust the establishment. They do not trust traditional political parties. They want something new. They want politicians -- I would say regardless from which political side they are from -- to listen to them, to actually be concerned with their daily struggles. And Macron's new government, or whoever is going to be prime minister next, needs to take this into account, because it cannot be just a short momentum.
The far right may not have won this time, but keep in mind that their policies are already into place [00:09:00] and we shall be careful for 2027, which is coming very soon. And if nothing is done, we are all over again giving them a possibility of taking power on a silver platter.
The biggest problems Mexico's first female president Claudia Sheinbaum is facing - DW News - Air Date 6-3-24
ALEXANDRIA WILLIAMS, DW NEWS: Mexico's biggest election in history has produced a unique winner. Claudia Sheinbaum is set to become the country's next president. Cheers and jubilation decorated her celebration speech. The former mayor pledged an office that leads for all.
CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM: We will govern for everyone, men and women. But as a humanistic principle of our movement, for the good of everyone, first take care of the poor.
ALEXANDRIA WILLIAMS, DW NEWS: Her win has resonated with the public.
PERSONS ON THE STREET: We are proud that we are giving way to a [00:10:00] woman to govern us. You can see that she is well prepared, and that is very satisfying.
I feel very happy, very proud, and fully represented as a woman, because for the first time in 200 years, we have a female president.
ALEXANDRIA WILLIAMS, DW NEWS: Sheinbaum looks set for a landslide victory over her main opponent. Xóchitl Gálvez, a businesswoman from an indigenous background, conceded defeat, with a final request.
XOCHITL GALVEZ: I would like to emphasize that my recognition of the results comes with a firm demand for solutions and outcomes to the serious problems the country faces.
ALEXANDRIA WILLIAMS, DW NEWS: At least one person was killed at a polling station in Puebla State. And more than 30 presidential candidates were assassinated ahead of Sunday's vote, making [00:11:00] it the most violent election in Mexico's history.
Tackling crime will be a top mandate for Claudia Shainbaum's office. But she also addressed other major concerns for Mexico's public.
CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM: We will be austere. Corruption won't come back, nor the privileges, nor the presidential airplane, or the retirement pensions for former presidents, or the presidential state guard.
ALEXANDRIA WILLIAMS, DW NEWS: Mexico's constitution only allows one term presidencies. This means Claudia Sheinbaum has six years to take forward the issues on her agenda when her time in office begins on October 1st.
PHIL GAYLE, DW NEWS: Jason Marczak is Senior Director of the Atlantic Council's Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. Give us an idea, if you would, of who Mexico's first female president is. What's her background?
JASON MARCZAK: President-elect Scheinbaum was [00:12:00] head of government of Mexico City. She served as Minister of the Environment in Mexico City. But also importantly, she's a scientist by profession, she's a technocrat. She has a PhD at at the UNAM in Mexico, so she is somebody who will approach the presidency from a very pragmatic, technical perspective.
I'll tell you what, when I first met with her team, when she was head of government of Mexico City, they showed me a 220-page plan of government that was put together immediately when she took office as head of government in Mexico City. And my understanding is on a regular basis, perhaps even a weekly basis, she was asking her team to say the extent to which those government plans were being addressed and implemented.
I expect a president who is incredibly methodical, very detail oriented. At the same time, a president who is the handpicked successor to the current president, who is very popular, and will largely continue, as your report showed, with [00:13:00] the policies of President López Obrador.
PHIL GAYLE, DW NEWS: And from the outside it looks as though domestic security, especially drugs-related violence, is the biggest problem in the president's entrée. Is it?
JASON MARCZAK: Yeah, security, violence were the top issues as part of the campaign. The last presidential debate squarely focused on security. President-elect Scheinbaum has vowed to continue with the security policy of President Lopez Obrador, which is focused on essentially hugs and not bullets which is to find ways to prevent violence, social programs, education programs.
But at the same time, there is going to be a real focus and a real need for the president-elect to be able to extend even beyond some of the policies of the current president, because we've seen homicide rates continue to increase in Mexico under the previous six years. And we saw one of the most violent campaigns in history, as your report [00:14:00] showed, with upwards of 30 different candidates, largely at the local level, being killed as part of this campaign season. Luckily, the weekend was free of major violence, and we didn't see that at the polling stations either. But this is going to be her priority focus, not only for Mexico, but also for the United States, for Mexico's northern neighbor, where security, especially fentanyl trafficking, is a priority in the bilateral relationship.
PHIL GAYLE, DW NEWS: And so why is cartel violence such an intractable problem in Mexico?
JASON MARCZAK: There's been different approaches to try to combat cartel violence over the years in Mexico. Back 20 years ago, the early 2000s, the president at the time had a strategy to try to go after the kingpins. That just resulted in even more violence because the different cartels ended up fighting among each other.
It historically goes back to the fact that there are areas of the country that don't have as much support from state security, and also the ways in [00:15:00] which state security is divided between the federal government, the local government.
Also important to point out the fact that Mexican cartels are no longer just Mexican cartels. Criminal organizations have become transnational criminal organizations. So you see Mexican cartels operating all across the Western hemisphere, and that gives them further power within Mexico itself.
PHIL GAYLE, DW NEWS: Okay. Mexico also has a problem with gender-based violence, and so one wonders, is the election of the country's first female president likely to have much of an effect on those disturbingly high gender-based violence rates?
JASON MARCZAK: Yeah Phil, I hope so. I think that Mexico is known as a country that is historically more machista. And so the fact that Mexico now has its first woman president, hopefully that will be a sign writ large across Mexico of the need to respect [00:16:00] the rights of women. And Claudia Steinbaum as well will likely continue with policies now in the presidency that will address some of the challenges that women have faced.
I think there are certain things that could be done at a micro level as well, things like economic empowerment that helps to reduce gender-based violence. But having those policies so that women have greater ownership over their own lives and there's less control by the men in the household that helps to hopefully reduce the gender-based violence that is unfortunately prevalent in Mexico.
Labour Wins Massive Majority On Low Vote Share, Gaza Costs Starmer - Novara Media - Air Date 7-5-24
MICHAEL WALKER, NOVARA MEDIA: Labour have won a stomping majority, not because they massively increased their support, but because their opponents were divided. And they also won their seats efficiently. Now that means not piling up votes in safe constituencies, but rather winning just enough in each seat to maximize overall wins, so you're spreading out your support very efficiently.
Now that has clearly been very effective in this instance, that's why Labour have this massive majority. It [00:17:00] also means that majority is somewhat vulnerable, though. This chart from The Times shows the winning margin in each seat in the last three general elections. As you can see, in both 2019 and 2017, there were a lot of seats with massive majorities, running up to over 40,000 in the case of, Labour. In 2024, however, the vast majority of seats have majorities of under 10,000. Now, according to The Times, the average seat majority in 2024 is 6,700. That compares to an average seat majority of 11,200 in 2019.
Aaron, so much going on here. Obviously, you've got this, the story about Gaza with these independents. But the broader story seems to just be Labour, they've done well, the plan has worked, they've got a massive majority, but really on not a very impressive vote share at all. As we're gonna speak about in a moment, turnout was down. Does it make any sense to talk about a party with a 170 seat majority as being vulnerable?
AARON BASTANI, CO-HOST, NOVARA MEDIA: Yes. 'cause they [00:18:00] are vulnerable. The next election that majority could actually disappear. That's easier said than done, but often when people get a big majority, and I don't mean like 2019 with the Tories, this is a very big majority. This is not, this is on a pass slightly smaller than Blair in '97. That generally takes more than one election to wind down. The next parliament could be a hung parliament. It seems very unlikely. You'd need lots of strange things to happen, but it's quite plausible.
One thing I would push back on though, Michael -- and how dare I do this against the great John Curtis -- is that this idea that reform voters would have otherwise voted Tory, I just don't think that's true. My experience of speaking to reform votes is yes, many of them are 2019 Tory voters. That's absolutely the case. Three quarters of them; I think that's what the data suggests. And the Tories need to get those people back if they want to win. Absolutely. But the idea they would have voted conservative if reform hadn't stood a good campaign simply isn't true. They just wouldn't have voted, I think. And that's the experience I saw here in Portsmouth, North, Labour won, Penny Mordon lost, [00:19:00] Reform, they did quite well. I know many people who voted Reform. I know of many people who voted Reform. And they weren't people who otherwise would have voted conservative. They had for the most part turned off from the conservative party.
So look, that's obviously contributed to the scale of the majority, but this idea that, oh no, if only reform hadn't stood, the Tory vote would have been very healthy. Yeah. You know what? Maybe a third to a half of those votes would have gone with the Tories, but actually many people otherwise wouldn't have voted, or they might have voted for an independent or maybe even some would have voted Labour
But this idea that you just need to get those people back and it's all right, no. The conservatives had very big problems with turning out their vote, whether or not Reform stood, whether or not Nigel Farage and his band of merry what men won five seats, which is what has happened
MICHAEL WALKER, NOVARA MEDIA: The result could speak in a couple of ways to potential problems regarding the legitimacy of our democracy. So first, the turnout was absolutely atrocious. So it was 60%. This was [00:20:00] the second lowest turnout since 1885. It was only lower in 2001 when it was 59%. So it's basically, the same as that. Very, very low. And this is supposed to be a big change election.
Second, the result is more disproportionate than ever. So Labour won a stomping majority on the lowest vote share of any post-war single party government. So any party that went on to form a single party government, so not a coalition, Labour have the lowest vote share compared to all three wins of Tony Blair, compared to the Conservatives in 2015 and 2019.
And you might imagine that supporters of other parties could feel justified in feeling a bit aggrieved. This is the breakdown of vote share versus seat share. So Labour on a third of the vote won two-thirds of their seats. It's somewhat proportionate when it comes to the Conservatives. So they won 24 percent of the vote and got 19 percent of the seats. It's most disproportionate when it comes to Reform, who got 14 percent of the [00:21:00] vote and 1 percent of the seats. The Lib Dems, theirs was fairly proportionate this time around: 12 percent of the vote, 11 percent of the seats. The Green Party on 7 percent of the vote and 1 percent of the seats. Until sort of a couple of hours ago, it did look as if Reform and the Greens had won the same number of seats. Reform actually in the last couple of hours won their fifth seat because they won the freeway contest in Basildon and Billericay between the Conservatives, Labour and. themselves.
Aaron, I saw today Nigel Farage in his big press conference saying he is going to be fighting really strongly for electoral reform at this, in the next parliament, I suppose he said he'll stand with anyone who's willing to campaign with him on it.
My general assumption -- I'm a big supporter of electoral reform -- my general assumption is that there are very high barriers to achieving it. And no major party is -- well, the two major parties -- have no interest in it, but at the same time, I think it's going to be difficult to, for anyone [00:22:00] to win many seats on a constitutional question of this sort. It's quite nerdy.
So even with a campaigner like Nigel Farage alongside the Green party now with four MPs, I think the unfairness of the system is obvious to people. Can it be changed? I'm still skeptical, even if I would like it to be changed, of course.
AARON BASTANI, CO-HOST, NOVARA MEDIA: It can be changed because of course, many countries have PR. These countries didn't emerge from the womb with PR. So obviously people have changed electoral systems and they've become democracies and they've tried different things. Italy, I think has had several electoral systems over the last 15 years.
I think you're right though, of course, particularly Labour don't stand to benefit from PR right now.
What I would say though, is Michael, the Liberal Democrats have had their best election, if you include the Liberals, of course, it's 1923. So that's really significant that you're going to have a party of that size supporting PR, push up the Greens, you have Reform too.
Here's the big thing though, and it's not going to change from what we can see right now.
First past the post [00:23:00] creates relatively, relatively fair outcomes when you have two parties. However, in terms of the largest two parties and the share of the vote they got yesterday, below 60%, I believe -- we can check that, we need to double check that, I'm a bit tired -- but it's the lowest it's been since 1918.
And the problem is, Michael, once the two largest parties get that smaller vote check, it's the majority of the vote share, but it's not where it should be, then you start to create all kinds of weird outcomes. And if that's the new normal of British politics, you've got the Liberal Democrats, you've got the SMP, you've got Reform, you've got the Greens. And I don't think those parties are disappearing anytime soon. I think in all likelihood Reform and the Greens will win more seats at the next election, then it's going to continue to throw out really strange results. And I think in this instance with a big majority, I agree with you. But as soon as we have this long term pattern of the big two not having that large share and we get a hung parliament with parties that want PR, I'm [00:24:00] thinking the Lib Dems, the Green party, Reform, then I think it does change things somewhat.
Look also, if you look at the number of MPs and the vote share of Reform, the Greens put together, so I think between the more than 20 percent of the vote, when it's the Green party into Reform, they got nine MPs on 20 percent of the vote. Not remotely fair or just.
And here's the irony. I think if we had PR, we would have probably had in this election a traffic light coalition. Labour, Lib Dems, Green. Somewhat like what they had in Germany. Although, don't hold that against me in terms of political judgment because that government's been awful. But actually, the politics of that wouldn't be so radically different from Keir Starmer's offer in this election -- slightly more left, perhaps, not radically -- but it would have a lot more buying and consent.
And importantly, Michael, what PR does for me is it provides stability, because you don't have massive majority for this party one minute, massive majority for that party the next minute. You can actually have [00:25:00] people saying, we want to govern, solve these problems, address these challenges over a 10-, 20-, 30-year timeframe.
And I know you're saying about it being wonky, but I actually think the electorate really likes that, Michael. And if that argument can be made, and we get a hung Parliament in the next parliament or two, given that trend I've spoken about with regards to large two parties shrinking in terms of the overall share of the vote, then I think we can get PR.
France’s leftwing alliance beat the far right, but what now? - Today in Focus - Air Date 7-8-24
MICHAEL SAFI: What are the next steps in trying to figure out who on Earth runs the French Parliament?
ANGELIQUE CHRISAFIS: Well, France is coming into a period of huge uncertainty. Usually, well, for the past 50 years, when France holds an election, voters at least know the next morning which party will be in government and what their political agenda will be. But this time it's different. The New Popular Front came first with 182 seats. It does have a little bit of room for manoeuvre, but it's very far off the 289 absolute majority that you need to form a government. So there's going to be horse trading.
Now, Emmanuel Macron's centrist grouping who were [00:26:00] in government before, they came in second place, only 14 seats behind the left's New Popular Front, and they suffered significant setback. They lost over 80 seats. But Macron's entourage saying, you know, we're reduced in number, but we're still standing. The problem is, there was a lot of anger and rejection of Emmanuel Macron during this campaign. And there was a lot of comments made by the centrist camp attacking the left.
Is the left now expected to form some kind of coalition with a hugely unpopular centrist grouping of Emmanuel Macron? And if they don't, can the centrists somehow divide the left and cherry pick some centre left to stand with them rather than the further left party of La France Insoumise? It's extremely hard to predict because I can't imagine now that the New Popular Front have had this strong standing that they're going to immediately break up and jump into bed with the centrists.[00:27:00]
MICHAEL SAFI: So, it's like, at this stage, it's a lot of questions, but not many answers.
ANGELIQUE CHRISAFIS: It's a lot of questions, not many answers, and, of course, we are less than three weeks away from Paris hosting the Olympic Games, and no nearer to having an idea of who the government might be and who the prime minister might be. The first session of the new parliament is on the 18th of July. It may be that only at that point will there be a clear idea of who could sit together in a potential coalition.
Don't forget that the French political system is not designed for coalition, and no one has any experience of this in the modern immediate history. We've got a hugely strong president. And the political system, which is really conflictual and pugnacious, where parties are constantly fighting each other and slagging each other off, is really not the type of place where coalitions have been made in the past. Will they be able to be made now?, is the big question.
MICHAEL SAFI: Help me to understand this. France is a country with a [00:28:00] president, a prime minister, and a parliament. Now there is a scramble to see who will become the prime minister. How would he or she fit into this system? What kind of powers do they have? What kind of powers does the President, Emmanuel Macron, have?
ANGELIQUE CHRISAFIS: Well, the president of France nominates the prime minister, so in theory Emmanuel Macron could choose whoever he wants to be prime minister, but it's a parliamentary system as well. So you still need to have, if you're prime minister, the biggest section, the biggest grouping in parliament, otherwise you're simply going to be voted down every few minutes.
So, there is a proper sharing of power between the president and the prime minister. And it has been the case before that a president from, for example, the right has had a parliament from the left, if there've been midterm elections and the parliament has changed. The problem here is this broadly equal split between three groups: the left, the center and the far right. And that is what's causing the [00:29:00] problem. How do they come up with a prime minister who can unite enough people behind him or her in parliament, not to be voted down every few weeks?
MICHAEL SAFI: I mean, it sounds like this is a system built for two big blocks competing for power, whereas now we have three of those blocks. They're all relatively equally balanced and nobody quite knows what happens now.
What if, Angelique, they can't come to an agreement? What happens if no governing alliance forms?
ANGELIQUE CHRISAFIS: Well, when Emmanuel Macron made this shock announcement at the beginning of June after European elections that he was going to dissolve parliament and call elections, what became clear constitutionally was that is his power that is within his remit to do, but you cannot call another election for another year. So, whatever happens, France is stuck with this permutation of parties.
The way the constitution works in France is that you can govern without an absolute majority, but what you have to do is make sure that [00:30:00] you don't have an absolute majority of opposition united against you, because in that case they can collapse the government. So, it's going to have to be a careful question of mathematics done in terms of how, for example, a budget could be agreed on in the autumn.
MICHAEL SAFI: It's not clear what combinations will form the next French government, but can we at least say that it's unlikely to include the far right, unlikely to be led by the far right?
ANGELIQUE CHRISAFIS: The far right and its allies have scored so far away from an absolute majority that they could not scrape together support to have a majority. So, what we're looking at now is everyone but the far right. And everyone but the far right is, of course, an enormous rainbow going from this left alliance into the center, also into the traditional right, Les Républicains. And most of these people refused to form a coalition last time round with Emmanuel Macron. [00:31:00] And so, it's difficult to see how they might do it this time round.
MICHAEL SAFI: And what is the worst case scenario from all this, if these negotiations don't go well?
ANGELIQUE CHRISAFIS: I think the worst scenario would be complete deadlock stretching on for months because France is in economic difficulties over its debt, we're facing the war in Ukraine, EU issues, there's a lot going on and people do not want to see stalemate. The left are saying, fairly, you know, we came first, we can slightly boost our numbers. We don't now want to be knocked back into a remote distant position if the right somehow clubbed together with the centre right.
So, what seems certain is that the makeup of this parliament, which voters are voted for has to be somehow respected and has to take into account the fact that the left alliance has got the largest number of seats, even if it's far off the absolute majority. I think any radical change [00:32:00] whereby Emmanuel Macron's centrists didn't reflect this new shape of parliament would be unacceptable for voters.
"The North Needs to Learn from the South": Mexico Poised to Elect First Woman President - Democracy Now! - Air Date 5-29-24
MARIA HINOJOSA: The reason why two women end up being the two front-runner candidates is not just, like, Oh, it just happened. There was a tremendous, decades-long work by feminists in Mexico, along with feminists all over Latin America, pushing for equality, pushing for equity for women. In the face of violence, in the face of impunity, the feminist movement in Mexico and Latin America just kept on pushing, to the point where you were able to make it by law that there had to be parity in the government, and this leads to both women ending up as candidates. And it is historic. You know, I’m asking the question. It’s a little — you know, a little — but which country is more machista? The United States, that has two old men, one accused of strange and weird sexual and cover-ups, etc., and fraud, etc., [00:33:00] and the other one, who’s just quite elderly? And in Mexico, you have two women. And so, what they’re talking about in the political debate in Mexico is really, frankly, light years away from the political debate that we’re having in this country. Mexico — strangely, Mexico, Amy, becomes like a North Star. When would I have said that? I could have never imagined. I’ve watched the entire political process. I’m not Pollyanna. Impunity and violence against women, corruption, the assassination of multiple candidates, it’s a real problem. But Mexico has a different political debate happening now.
JUAN GONZLEZ: And, Maria, I wanted to ask you if you could talk a little bit about the major differences between the two candidates policy-wise. Clearly, Claudia Sheinbaum is being supported by the current president, AMLO, and appears to [00:34:00] have a very big lead in the polls. But your sense of their differences?
MARIA HINOJOSA: So, they will both say that they are from the left. Xóchitl will say that she’s center-left. Claudia Sheinbaum will say that she’s obviously more to the left. The policy differences have to do kind of with the historical differences between their two parties, as it were — the Morena party, which was a street activist movement, that now has ended up in the presidential palace, versus you have the PRI and the PAN. These are the two oldest parties in Mexico. It would be like the Republicans and the Democrats getting together to support a candidate. It is a very strange coalition. And so, what they represent is actually these two very different parts of American history.
Having said that, there’s a big critique that Claudia Sheinbaum will continue the policies of AMLO. She responds in a retort [00:35:00] that’s saying, “That’s a misogynistic question. You’re saying that because I’m a woman, I’m only going to follow what a man has done before me.”
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go to some of the clips, the interviews you’ve done. This is Xóchitl Gálvez speaking to you, Maria, about her experience with gender violence.
MARIA HINOJOSA: [To Xochitl] How do you define feminism?
[Translating Xochitl's answer] She believes in equality for all women in terms of political, economic and reproductive rights. And to emphasize why this matters to her, she told us she suffered violence as a child. This story has become a part of Xóchitl Gálvez’s stump speech. Her father, she says, was a violent man who terrorized her as a child. One time, she tells us in the interview, he pointed a shotgun at her mother and threatened her. She says that they escaped, but that this experience marked her. And then I asked her what she thinks the solution might be for this kind of gender-based violence in Mexico. [00:36:00] What Xóchitl said to us was that women in Mexico need a support system in cases of violence, and that men need to know that if they commit violence against women, they will be prosecuted.
AMY GOODMAN: This is another clip of Latino USA’s interview with Claudia Sheinbaum. Futuro Media executive producer Peniley Ramírez asks her about her presidency, what it would mean for Mexico. She spoke to her at a campaign rally in Mexico City.
PENILEY RAMIREZ: What’s going to be unique about your government?
CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM: Well, you know, I’m a scientist, so I’m going to put a lot of effort in science and development. We’re going to go for women’s rights. And we’re going to continue bringing education, good health system for the people, housing and what I call the rights for the Mexican people.
AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Claudia Sheinbaum. They both call themselves feminists. Women got the right to vote [00:37:00] in Mexico, when?, in 1953. And what about abortion?
MARIA HINOJOSA: So, abortion right now, actually, is more progressive in Mexico than in the United States. This is actually not like a primary issue in the presidential campaign right now, unlike here in the United States, because what’s happening in Mexico is trending towards legalization across the entire country. There are parts in Mexican states where it is legal, but it’s nof the kind of abortion politics that we’re having here, where you would expect, Amy, a Catholic country to be making the decisions on abortion like the ones that are being made in the United States, that says it has no relationship with the church in its politics.
So, right now, again, for women, on the issue of reproductive rights, more progressive, but on the issue of violence, on the issue of impunity, the number of female candidates running in different parties in [00:38:00] different states, lower, much lower down the ballot, being assassinated. It’s really a huge issue. And this is the primary contradiction for Mexico. You’re going to nominate — you’re going to elect a woman, but you still haven’t resolved the fact that women are being murdered at the rate of about 10 to 11 every single day, and the impunity that comes with it.
JUAN GONZLEZ: And, Maria, in terms of this issue of Mexico electing a woman president, several Latin American countries have already done so: Chile, Honduras, Argentina, Brazil, and now Mexico. And yet here in the United States, the potential for electing a woman president still will have to be postponed for another four or eight years. I’m wondering your sense of the difference, especially with the United States supposedly claiming to represent a much more forward-looking view on equality between the genders.
MARIA HINOJOSA: Well, Juan, you won’t be [00:39:00] surprised when I say that the North needs to learn from the South. There’s always this perspective that the North, the United States, is leading the way, is the way to go. And in fact, what the United States and the feminist movement in the United States needs to do is to look at what happened in Mexico and the rest of Latin America. The number of countries that have elected a woman president in Latin America is stunning, considering the fact that the United States is still at about a third of women in Congress. You have countries like Rwanda that have legalized parity in political representation, and our country is lagging behind.
It is huge, Juan. On the issue of immigration and whether or not Claudia or Xóchitl — more likely it will be Claudia who ends up as president — will do something profoundly different, fresh, stand up to the United States, say, “No more 'Remain in Mexico',” begin to do kind of political battle on the issue of immigration — as you know, this is one of my key issues as an immigrant journalist in the United [00:40:00] States — to be seen.
The thought, though, of a Claudia Sheinbaum, who, frankly, you know, Stanford-educated, speaks perfect English, sitting down in any kind of meeting with a potential Donald Trump is — it messes with the brain, although she — I don’t think she will take things sitting down.
AMY GOODMAN: And it’s very interesting. There were just major protests in Mexico City outside the Israeli Embassy around Gaza, and AMLO, the president, and the Morena party supporting Mexico joining South Africa in its genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice, and Claudia Sheinbaum, the front-runner, following AMLO, is a Jewish woman.
MARIA HINOJOSA: Correct. This is extraordinary, because the fact that she is a Jewish woman, but she doesn’t really — she’s a scientist, so she’s not very religious. [00:41:00] But she is a Jewish woman, and her name is Sheinbaum. It’s not a big issue, which is fascinating in and of itself. In some ways, you know, my colleagues, Mexican journalists, in many ways, are leading this conversation of how you cover politics, and you don’t play into authoritarian and propaganda games. For example, there might have been journalists who wanted to kind of fuel the fire of saying, “But she’s Jewish. She’s Jewish.” It hasn’t really been an issue. And what’s more interesting is that Claudia Sheinbaum and Xóchitl Gálvez, both of them wearing huipiles, which is the traditional Indigenous Mexican — you know it because of the embroidery — this is — the fact that both of them are like, “We love Indigenous women. We love our Indigenous roots,” again, fascinating for Mexican politics, which, again, to me, that would be the word that I use in terms of Mexican politics right [00:42:00] now: “fascinating.” That is not the term that I would use when discussing U.S. politics at all.
Who Broke Britain- Part 4- The Tories Are Out - If You’re Listening - ABC News In-depth - Air Date 7-5-24
MATT BEVAN: In the last few years, two massive things have changed. Firstly, Britain isn't in the EU anymore, thanks to a campaign led by Boris Johnson, which promised to...
BORIS JOHNSON: ...take back control of our borders with a sensible, fair and impartial system.
MATT BEVAN: And secondly, extra security measures at the channel tunnel and ferry terminals have actually started to work.
But of course, now that they're not coming through the tunnel, the migrants are getting on boats. In 2018, a couple hundred people attempted to cross the channel on small boats. In 2019, it was nearly 2,000. In 2020, it was more than 8,000. In 2021, it was 28,000. So, in 2022, Boris Johnson's government, dissatisfied with the lack of cooperation from Europe, started to look at the Australia model for solutions.
PRITI PATEL: We will [00:43:00] stop those who come here illegally making endless legal claims to remain in our country. At the expense of the British public.
MATT BEVAN: They did a deal with the tiny African nation of Rwanda. The UK would pay them hundreds of millions of pounds and Rwanda would take the asylum seekers off their hands.
BORIS JOHNSON: The deal we've done is uncapped and Rwanda will have the capacity to resettle tens of thousands of people in the years ahead.
MATT BEVAN: By this stage, Boris Johnson, who had led the Tories to a landslide victory in 2019, was wildly unpopular. After lying about it for quite a while, he admitted that actually yes, he had been getting his par-tay on at Downing Street, after ordering the entire population of Britain into COVID lockdown. Much like John Howard in 2001, Johnson looked to be leading his party towards inevitable election defeat.
BORIS JOHNSON: We must find a way to stop these boats now.
MATT BEVAN: He said this was all about preventing [00:44:00] people from drowning at sea and stopping human trafficking.
BORIS JOHNSON: So, we must halt this appalling trade and defeat the people smugglers.
MATT BEVAN: And the way to do that was to copy John Howard's plan. Everybody who comes by boat goes to Rwanda. Nobody wants to go to Rwanda, ergo, nobody gets on a boat. It's a deterrent.
BORIS JOHNSON: We will do whatever it takes to deliver this new approach.
MATT BEVAN: But he had a problem. The UK is a signatory of the European Convention on Human Rights, which had already in the past prevented British authorities from deporting people to unsafe countries. Rwanda is a country which was in the midst of a genocide 30 years ago. It has poor systems for processing asylum seekers and a history of deporting people to their country of origin, even if they are likely to be persecuted there.
So, Rwanda is unsafe. Can't send anyone [00:45:00] there. Unless, you say this.
BORIS JOHNSON: Rwanda is one of the safest countries in the world, globally recognised for its record on welcoming and integrating migrants.
MATT BEVAN: Okay, so Rwanda is safe? In that case, it's not really a deterrent, is it? Johnson foresaw this issue.
BORIS JOHNSON: We expect this will be challenged in the courts.
MATT BEVAN: And it was. Immediately. The government was left in a paradox. They had to convince the courts that Rwanda is a great place, but they had to convince asylum seekers that Rwanda sucks. Meanwhile, they had to convince British voters that a few hundred thousand migrants travelling on boats were a serious threat, and convince them that the government had it all under control.
None of that worked. The courts intervened and stopped the first plane from deporting failed refugees to Rwanda. To try and convince voters that they were doing something, the British [00:46:00] government hired a barge called the Bibby Stockholm and began housing hundreds of asylum seekers on board.
NARRATOR: This three story ship that can accommodate 500 people has been compared to the notorious prison ships used to house convicts in the Victorian era.
MATT BEVAN: And it cost of tens of millions of pounds. The rate of boat arrivals increased. And the polls kept getting worse for the Tories. Less than three months after announcing the policy, Boris Johnson resigned as prime minister under the weight of several swirling scandals. The Rwanda plan was someone else's problem now.
In the lead up to the 2024 election, the new prime minister Rishi Sunak was left in a tricky situation. With polls indicating that his party was headed for an electoral wipeout, he had to decide what issues to campaign on to try and save as many seats as possible.
It wasn't as though the conservative party [00:47:00] had no achievements to tout during the coming election campaign. During their 12 years in government, they had legalised same sex marriage, years before Australia did, and without a plebiscite. They had led the G20 in fighting climate change. They had started construction on the on a high speed rail route from London to the north of England and led the most effective COVID vaccination program in Europe. Don't make me compare them to Australia on those issues. They'd provided global leadership when it came to pushing back against Russia's attack on Ukraine and in 2019 they had convinced millions of Labor Party voters to vote for them, often for the first time, by promising to deliver Brexit, which they then did.
In October last year, at a speech to the Conservative Party in Manchester, it was time for Rishi Sunak to lay out his plan to avoid electoral catastrophe.
AKSHATA MURTY: Now it gives me the greatest [00:48:00] pleasure to introduce you to a wonderful, wonderful father, my best friend, and your prime minister, Rishi Sunak.
MATT BEVAN: In his hour long speech meant to lay out his vision for the future of Great Britain, he made it clear that his vision was incredibly narrow. He promised to stop children from smoking.
RISHI SUNAK: I propose that in future, we raise the smoking age by one year every year.
MATT BEVAN: He promised to slightly alter the way end of school tests were run...
RISHI SUNAK: ...bring together A levels and T levels into a new single qualification for our school leavers.
MATT BEVAN: He randomly took a pot shot at trans people.
RISHI SUNAK: A man is a man. And a woman is a woman. That's just common sense!
MATT BEVAN: He blamed the crisis in the National Health Service on the pandemic and strikes by healthcare workers.
RISHI SUNAK: They continue to demand massive, unaffordable pay rises.
MATT BEVAN: He didn't mention climate policy. He had wound back the [00:49:00] government's emission reduction plans weeks earlier. And the big reveal: he promised to stop building that high speed rail project.
RISHI SUNAK: I am cancelling the rest of the HS2 project.
MATT BEVAN: He didn't offer a plan to deal with the cost of living crisis, or the energy crisis, or the housing crisis. He didn't mention his predecessors, David Cameron, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, or Liz Truss. In fact, none of them were anywhere to be seen. And then he said what may be the most extraordinary thing that I've ever heard a UK leader say.
RISHI SUNAK: At the next election, the choice the people face is bigger than party politics. Do we want a government committed to making long term decisions, prepared to be radical in the face of challenges, and to take on vested interests? Or do we want to stand still and quietly accept more of the same?
MATT BEVAN: Sunak is the leader of a government that has been in power since 2010 offering to stop kids smoking and not [00:50:00] build a train line. Is that being radical in the face of challenges? When it came to the challenge of asylum seekers on boats, though, he doubled down on the Rwanda plan.
RISHI SUNAK: Know this. I will do whatever is necessary to stop the boats.
NEWS REPORTER: This vision, release by the home office, shows border agents raiding properties across the country. Others have been bundled into vans after showing up for routine check-ins.
MATT BEVAN: On the last day of April this year, a man arrived at Kigali International Airport in Rwanda on a plane from London. Rishi Sunak's government had paid him three thousand pounds and given him free accommodation for the next five years if he got on the plane and went to Rwanda. He took the deal.
After two years and more than half a billion pounds were spent trying to get this plan up and running, he is the only person who has been deported to Rwanda. And now that the conservatives have lost the election, [00:51:00] he is the only one who ever will. Labor has promised to repeal the policy.
Everyone has an ideology, a way they think the world should work, a set of beliefs that guides their opinions. Sometimes it takes abandoning parts of your ideology to get elected. That's populism. But leading is something different. Leadership is knowing when your ideology isn't working, or is harming people, or making things worse, and then having the courage to abandon it.
David Cameron came to power in 2010 promising to fix broken Britain. He thought his ideology, small government, would fix it. His priority was to bring down national debt by cutting government spending and increasing economic growth by encouraging people to work more. But when his austerity program began to drive [00:52:00] millions of Britons to rely on food banks to feed their families, and saw life expectancy flatline, and saw prisons fill to bursting, and saw schools begin to crumble, he didn't waver. When his welfare cuts saw people have to leave the workforce to care for children, the elderly, or people with disabilities; when hundreds of libraries closed; when councils went bankrupt; when economic growth stagnated, he didn't have the courage to adapt. His leadership abilities were shown to be woefully inadequate when he accidentally upended 50 years of economic policy and brought about Brexit.
Since then, populism has run rampant. Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have repeatedly abandoned their ideologies for the sake of staying in power. When we ask, who broke Britain? The answer begins with David Cameron. The others often blamed for Britain's decline, Nigel Farage, Boris [00:53:00] Johnson and others, only gained prominence because of Cameron's failures of leadership. Of course, they only stayed in power because of the colossal ineptitude of their opposition, who lost four elections in a row before finally winning one this week.
First Woman President- Mexico's Claudia Sheinbaum Faces Border And Drug Cartel Challenges - The Hill - Air Date 6-16-24
Mexican president elect Claudia Sheinbaum has drawn massive media attention as the first woman and the first Jewish person elected to the top office. But when she takes office on October 1st, she is going to have to hit the ground running. One of her top challenges is will be dealing with the United States and with the one issue that's engulfed US politics: migration.
Sheinbaum won the election on June 2nd in a massive landslide, promising to keep President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's policies. Lopez Obrador has essentially become the continent's top migration cop. He's been cutting deals with both the Biden and Trump administration [00:54:00] to limit how many migrants move north and to take some third country nationals back when they're expelled from the United States.
So similarities aside, Lopez Obrador spent his first two years fielding Trump's threats and the next four years talking it out with Biden. In a nutshell, Trump threatened Lopez Obrador to cooperate or else. Biden, he used more orthodox diplomatic means. Now, we'll never know if Trump would have followed up on his threats. The pandemic came and migration basically froze.
Sheinbaum has said she wants the United States to invest serious money in development programs in Mexico's south and throughout Central America. She wants to take the jobs to would be migrants and not the other way around. That pitch might fly with a second Biden administration. But if Trump is elected again, Sheinbaum will almost certainly have to change her tune.
But in the broader US-Mexico relationship, migration is just [00:55:00] the tip of the iceberg. For starters, the two countries have the single biggest bilateral trade relationship on earth. In 2023, the two countries traded just under $800 billion. It's still short of the $817 billion of commerce between the United States and China in 2018. But US-China trade has since dropped under 600 billion. US-Mexico trade numbers are expected to keep going up as companies keep focus on nearshoring (that's setting up shop in Mexico instead of Asia). That sounds like great news for Sheinbaum. But there are a series of bubbling trade disputes, many of them a direct consequence of López Obrador policies, that promise to strain relations between the two countries.
And global financial markets, they aren't thrilled at her win either. Sheinbaum's landslide was huge. She basically beat the opposition candidate by a 2 to 1 ratio. López Obrador's [00:56:00] political party, Morena, also won big, and it might even get a constitutional supermajority. And that's what markets don't like.
López Obrador wants to pass a series of constitutional reforms to weaken the judiciary before he steps down. And that makes investors jittery. Since Sheinbaum's election, the peso has dropped from 17 per dollar to 18.40 per dollar. That'll make Mexican imports cheaper in the United States, but it'll make US-made goods more expensive for Mexican families. That could drive more migration, as it has in the past.
Financial concerns aside, Sheinbaum will also have to juggle bilateral cooperation on organized crime, including human, drug, and arms trafficking. How she juggles everything from October 1st onward will almost certainly have an effect on the US election in November. And the results of that election will determine if she needs to prepare for Trump or for [00:57:00] Biden.
French Far Right HUMILIATED By Left - Owen Jones - Air Date 7-8-24
Vive la France! What do you reckon? Pretty good. No? In the last few years, the far right have been on what seems like an unstoppable march across Europe and beyond. Take your pick guys. Been pretty bleak. Germany, let's be honest, not a country which has come to terms with its past. The AFD—the far right—are in second place. In Italy, the heirs to Benito Mussolini run the place. In Austria, they're on course to win the election later this year. Spain and Portugal seem to be immune to the far right's epidemic for a long time, but then far right parties emerged there with big support as well.
And so it proved for France as well. The far right National Rally have surged under their figurehead Marine Le Pen and the polls suggested they were on course to win the legislative elections this weekend. This did not happen. Instead, they came third. Oopsie daisy. They were defeated by a left wing alliance which came first, whose most prominent figurehead is the radical leftist Jean Luc Mélenchon.
Now, for a [00:58:00] British audience, this alliance was a bit like Jeremy Corbyn, allied to the Green Party, and Ed Miliband. Now, the program they stood on was unashamedly social democratic. In contrast, it must be said to Keir Starmer's offer here in the UK, including taxing the rich, public investment, reversing attacks on pensions, hiking public sector wages, and so on.
Now, as we will discuss, this is not a time for complacency, but there are huge lessons in France, for Britain and beyond. What is frankly beyond galling is watching centrist types in Britain try and claim this victory as their own and as a victory for Emmanuel Macron himself. One former BBC journalist tweeted about the result: "An absolutely huge shock and delight for Macron, who can argue his gamble paid off". To which I respond, WTF. Now, to be clear about what happened here, Emmanuel Macron called a legislative election, which was completely unnecessary after his centrist party, Renaissance, got a kicking in the European elections. He did so expecting the French left to be fragmented and divided, [00:59:00] um, thinking that would force the electorate in France to treat this as a straight choice between his so called centrist and the far right.
Given his disapproval rating is hovering among between two thirds and three quarters, this was a slightly unfortunate gamble. What actually happened is the fragmented left defied the expectations and got their act together. So Mélenchon's France Unbound, the rump of the old socialist party, the greens, the communists, and others formed alliance, actually within about 24 hours, the New Popular Front, record time. Mélenchon correctly has declared that the French Republic was saved by the left—le gauche—not by Macron, who nearly frankly caused catastrophe.
Now, Macron's brand of so called centrism paved the way for the far right in lots of different ways, and it really goes to show that the so called horseshoe theory, that the so called extremes of left and right are morally equivalent, is a load of self serving shit.
This rot didn't start when Macron became president in [01:00:00] 2017. I mean, we should look actually five years earlier when François Hollande took the presidency of France promising to break the austerity. No such thing happened and Hollande shattered the Socialist Party as a consequence, in fact that they nearly collapsed entirely as a political force.
He appointed Macron as his finance minister about two years in. He was attached to a right wing economic policy. But when Macron became president in 2017, the so called centrists in Britain and elsewhere treated it like Christmas on steroids. "Macron is the antidote to the right wing populist virus". That was the New European in May 2017. Very excited. "Now Macron can help Europe win the war against populism". That was Mathieu Laine, advisor to Macron in May 2017, writing in The Guardian. "Macron, the populist antidote to populism", subheading "France's leader came to power on a tide of change and is best placed to tackle the nationalism taking hold in Europe" . That was Philip Collins—not Phil Collins, the singer—the speechwriter for Tony Blair, and also for Keir Starmer, back in May 2018. "Emmanuel Macron [01:01:00] offers the populist antidote to nationalism". That was Philip Stephens, former head of the Financial Times editorial board. "Rebranding the center: Obama-backed Macron cast as populism slayer in France elections". That's CBC News in May 2017.
What actually happened? Narrator, not that. When Macron won power, the far right had just six seats in the French legislature. Sorry, eight seats. They'd gone up by six seats in that election, so they had about eight seats. Five years later, they won 89 seats in the French legislature. This week, the far right won 142 seats. Not what I'd call a great record in smashing the far right. In fact, the far right have boomed and thrived under Macron. What happened there then?
Well, for a start, Macron pursued a strategy of responding to the far right surge by taking on their rhetoric and slightly watered down versions of their policies. Indeed, France is where the horseshoe theory goes to die. Macron's strategy for defeating the far right menace adopts their rhetoric and slightly diluted versions of their policies. After first securing the presidency, he clamped [01:02:00] down on asylum seekers. More recently, he drove through an immigration bill which, among other things, restricted social security entitlements to migrants, made it harder to bring over loved ones, and stopped giving automatic citizenship to children born on French soil to foreign parents. His government railed against the so called Islamist Hydra and Islamist separatism, and his government portrayed any form of Muslim religiosity as a menace, while Macron himself denounced woke culture.
Now, all of this was wrong in principle, but it didn't do what it was supposed to do. It merely legitimized the far right, shifting the political conversation onto the terrain they thrive in, and leading Le Pen to accurately describe all of this as an ideological victory, thus putting more wind in her sails. Now, it goes beyond that. Now, as the France based, journalist Cole Stangler tells me, Macron pursued unpopular economic policies that have hurt working class people and favoured the well off, fuelling resentment that the far right has been able to capitalise on.
It's true that in the end, many of Macron's centrist so-called alliance stood down in the second round of [01:03:00] parliamentary elections for leftist candidates in a Republican front to head off the far right, but the damage was done by left bashing was done. Just 43% of French Macronists voted for Mélenchon's bloc to stop Le Pen's party in the second round with the fifth opting for the far right, while 72% of Mélenchists opted for Macron's vehicle to do the same.
Now, what prominent Macronistas did is equates the left with the far right. So, for example, Bruno Le Maire, who's the finance minister, under Macron, he savaged France Unbound, Mélenchon's party movement, as being a danger to the republic alongside the far right. So, he was saying they were equivalent. And the left was savaged as being a cesspit of antisemitism, even though they were up against a National Rally, which is defined by racism. Does that sound familiar? Yes, well, quite. As you can see, the horseshoe theory claim is just [01:04:00] risible nonsense. It's the so called centrists who took on board, who adopted the rhetoric and policies of the far right, they're the ones who paved the way for the far right and their policies, which drove economic insecurity, which the far right feed on, and it was the left who blocked the path of the far right, after Macron nearly handed them the Republic of La Plata.
There's so much to learn from because our Macron is Keir Starmer. Indeed we should note that in Germany it was Olaf Scholz of the German Social Democrats who came to power in late 2021 forming a coalition with very similar politics to that of Keir Starmer but failing to tackle the growing crises within German society the far right grew instead.
Joe Biden was supposed to be the The grown ups taking over in 2020, finally laying Trumpism to rest. Well, I don't really need to discuss that, do I? So, the bet amongst the centrists is that start up will be different. Even as, for example, there's a 20 billion a year black hole in Britain's finances, which needs to be filled just to stand still in our current dire state, which is public services falling apart. And that's without mentioning an ageing population, for example. But Labour's kept the Tories fiscal rules and ruled out the tax hikes on the rich [01:05:00] we need to fill the gap. Indeed, the Labour offer is exceptionally thin, even though Britain is in a far worse state than in France when Macron took over in 2017.
We can also anticipate Starmer responding to the rise of reform by doing the same sort of migrant bashing that Macron indulged in with the same results as in France. So here's a warning to us in Britain, because here we have Farageism and reform came second place in 98 seats, 89 of them held by Labour, ready to take them, to sweep in at the next election.
But the Greens are also behind Labour now in dozens of seats. So, here's what I think we need. In Parliament, the Labour left, the Greens, and the new left wing independents need to work together in a progressive caucus, for example. The Labour left MP should now be much more emboldened. After the independent success and the Green success, they'll be less likely to Be purged.
Do they really want Labour MPs defecting to the Greens, for example, and boosting their profile and relevance, lifting the Greens vote share nationally, and therefore threatening other MPs? Doesn't strike me as a good idea, but, you know, they should feel the beats. That could be our new [01:06:00] popular front, in any case.
But everything needs also to be thrown at the dozens of seats where the Greens came a solid second behind the Labour party. Like in Bristol Central before the last election, the Greens were second behind Labour in the nominal boundaries after the 2019 election, but it's very considerably behind. But they got a 28 point swing and took the seat from Labour in this election. The same can happen here.
But if the left don't get their act together in the UK, then the right will. In France, the far right could still take power. There's a deadlocked parliament, they'll exploit that. So there's a lesson and a challenge for all of us. And, whether we take that on or not, well, do we want to stop the far right or not?
Editors note on how to react to the current political moment and all of the many moments to come
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with TLDR News explaining the immediate fallout of the UK elections. Zeteo looked at the French defeat of the far right and why they may still come back in just a few years. DW News discuss the biggest problems facing Mexico's new president. Novara Media explained how the voting system in the UK impacted the [01:07:00] outcome. Today In Focus looked at the gridlock in the French parliament. Democracy Now! discussed why the Mexican election came down to two women. ABC News looked back at the policies and practices that led to the conservatives' loss in the UK. And The Hill considered what impact the Mexican and US elections will have on the border between the two countries.
Now, before we continue onto the deeper dives, half of the show, I just have a quick reminder that a week is a very long time in politics. If there has been any week or two in recent memory that confirms this, it has been in the last two weeks. So, for all those who are taking perverse comfort in embracing the inevitability of a Trump victory in the election, remember that these next few months will be some of the longest of our lives.
That's not to say that I don't have a complicated set of swirling feelings at the moment and a relatively dim view of the near future. I get that [01:08:00] instinct. But one article I read asked if anyone else was feeling a sort of numbness in the wake of the shooting of Donald Trump. And that's what resonated the most with me. It wasn't like full on despair or anything else. It was a sort of numbness.
But I fully expect for that to be a temporary feeling that will shift as these incredibly long weeks continue to pass. For every article stating that the attempted assassination has changed everything, there is another, often pointing to historical evidence, arguing that there's every chance it'll change surprisingly little. Like, surprisingly little. It feels right now, like, of course this is going to be hugely impactful. And then when it turns out not to be, we will be surprised, if that is the case. You know, iconic photos of a bloody Trump seem like they're going to take up all the space in the collective consciousness from now until the election, but chances are they won't, because weeks are [01:09:00] long and a lot can happen.
But even with the proven possibility of large change in a short period of time, and with the legitimately dire concerns over a second Trump presidency, the best description of the mood of Democrats I've seen comes from the article titled "The Democratic Party's strange attraction to defeatism. After the Trump shooting, another post-9/11 moment takes hold". And it took me a minute to realize, like, what comparison are we making here? Like, what elements of post-9/11 are being referred to? Like, what is happening that is similar? And then it all clicked in about halfway through the piece. It says, "The spirit of the last two days is strikingly reminiscent of the post-9/11 atmosphere. Democrats decided en masse that national unity required withholding all political criticism of the Bush administration. Democrats actively praised bushes leadership, putting aside [01:10:00] all questions of his administration's failure to heed warnings of the attacks. The news media followed suit, pulling Phil Donahue—at the time, the only liberal voice on primetime cable news—off the air in favor of a flag-waving message. The mainstream media painted George W. Bush as a transformed man, jolted into seriousness and elevated to statesmanship by the call of history. Republicans proclaimed he had been divinely chosen to lead the nation. While it has been forgotten in embarrassment, the Bush personality cult rivaled the current Trump cult in its scope and quasi-theological character. Republicans used the moment to de-legitimized all critiques of their leader as unpatriotic. Many Democrats, carrying out what they believed was their responsible institutional role, complied. The result of this dangerously unbalanced equation was a comprehensive political and moral disaster", obviously [01:11:00] referring to the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan.
What we are hearing from Democrats speaking anonymously to reporters right now is the result of panicked depression. A feeling that is perversely soothed by simply submitting to it, rather than working to fight it off. We're hearing quotes like "we're so beyond fucked", "the presidential contest ended last night", "now it's time to focus on keeping the Senate and trying to pick up the house and that's the whole fucking election", "every image from that is iconic and couldn't have been created in a Hollywood movie". It literally feels better in the moment to give up than to face the task of continuing to fight. And I'm not even going to object to that reality. I get why people would be saying that a day after the shooting, but I highly doubt that feeling will persist. And that's what we need to be looking ahead to.
As for the argument that Democrats were having about Biden in an attempt to [01:12:00] give themselves the best bet of winning the election, a reporter speaking to Democratic insiders says this: " Those Democrats who have concerns about President Biden are now standing down politically, will back President Biden because of this fragile political moment, All of that talk of the debate faded almost instantly among my top Democratic sources as this unfolded. They say it's time for the country to stick together and that means Democrats sticking together as well". And then the writer of the piece referring to that quote sums it up as well as I could, so I'll just read it. " This rationale is incoherent, even contradictory. The country sticking together means something different from, and close to the opposite of, the parties cohering internally. President Biden is deeply unpopular. There is no theory of national unity that requires Democrats to stand behind a president disliked by the [01:13:00] entire Republican Party and most Independents unless the theory is to give up on trying to win the election and let Trump have it".
Meanwhile, the lives of real people, hang in the balance. Longtime listener Erin from Philly commented on our Discord community recently, and I asked if I could quote her. She says, "I refuse to admit defeat in advance. I don't have that luxury. I'll fight from now to November 5th and longer, if I have to. After working at the polls, I was in the streets in 2020 when they were counting the votes in Philly and we turned it into a week long democracy party. I'm more than ready to do that again".
And as far as the struggle between submitting to depression and getting active, I can vouch from personal experience that the advice I've been giving for a long time now really does work. The antidote to feeling depressed and powerless is to take action. I don't mind saying that I have had the feeling of [01:14:00] wanting to simply take a nap in the middle of the day, rather than think about politics for one more minute. But then I remembered the advice and decided to take it myself. Tuning out, rolling over, avoidance, all of these things dull the pain, but do not counteract it. Only taking action actually feels genuinely good. I took on a project, separate from the day-to-day producing of this show, and while focusing my energies on something tangible and productive, all of the feelings of helplessness and depression literally melted away. I did not think about them. Could not feel them.
So, this isn't the time to be collectively wallowing in premature grief. It's the time to be picking each other up, reminding ourselves what we're fighting for—that the fight isn't over until it's over—and that fighting has the double benefit of making us feel personally better at the same time as we increase the likelihood of producing a better [01:15:00] outcome for all. After all, the far-right in France was believed by everyone to have an absolute lock on the election, right up until they didn't.
Now, before we get back to the show, a quick reminder that July is our membership and awareness drive month. If you get value out of this show, let this be at the time that you decide to chip in and help us sustain its production and tell some friends about it to help grow our base of support. Unfortunately, the same Trump resistance exhaustion that is causing so many to retreat from politics in general has also taken a real toll on our listenership, our membership numbers, and the income we're able to generate to keep everyone paid for the work they put in keeping this show going. So, when I say that we need your support, it is not in the abstract. We don't have big funders or any kind of institution or media outlet backing us up. It's really just you, the listener, deciding to chip in and make the [01:16:00] show possible.
As thanks, members get ad-free versions of every regular episode, plus bonus shows featuring the production crew in conversation. And for this month, memberships are 20% off. So, sign up now and keep that discounted price for as long as you keep your membership. Just head to bestoftheleft.com/support to grab your discounted membership, and then tell someone about us.
SECTION A: FRANCE
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue with deeper dives on three topics. Next up, section A: France. Section B: Great Britain. And section C: Mexico.
"The Whole Country of France Has Won": Far Right Blocked from Power as Left Surges - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-8-24
AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about why Macron did this. I mean, he — and the significance of him not accepting the resignation of the prime minister today. Will he remain president of France?
ROKHAYA DIALLO: I think he did this — it was a gamble, because he didn’t win the European election, and he thought that it was a way for him to reshuffle the power. Actually, many [01:17:00] people still struggle to understand why he made that choice, because it was very dangerous. It was at a moment when the far right, the National Rally, was gaining more and more power. So, it’s still a mystery to me, because it was such an irresponsible move.
And today his decision to maintain Gabriel Attal is because we know that nobody really won the election. The Parliament is kind of in between several different forces, and none of them has an absolute majority. So, I think that he hopes that he will be able to build a coalition around the center — so, the center-right and the center-left — and so that would make him able to keep Gabriel Attal the prime minister in power and not to lose the capacity of be the one forming the government.
I [01:18:00] wanted to bring Marjane Satrapi into this conversation, French Iranian filmmaker and author. Can you talk about what’s going on in the streets right now? Were people themselves as surprised as the media was around the world at what took place? And what does this mean? Is this meaning a hung Parliament? What power will Marine Le Pen’s party have in all of this? You came to Paris, what, some 30 years ago and were taking on Jean-Marie Le Pen, her father.
MARJANE SATRAPI: I think that this election is — actually, the whole country of France has won. France has succeeded. The values that are defended in France are the value of the human rights, are the value of, you know, actually accepting people, having them, giving them shelter. So, this France is very contradictory with the France of Marine Le Pen.
Then, [01:19:00] it’s about 30% of the French population that actually went to vote for the extreme right, and that is not something new. We have that since many years. They made a big deal, you know, in the European election, which is bizarre, because the people of the extreme right that are in the European Parliament, they don’t do nothing. They’re actually — most of the time, they’re absent. People, they actually voted for them, but, then, you know, we always have this idea that we really have to defend the republic. And the extreme right is against the republic.
I heard people saying, “Oh, we never tried, you know, the extreme right. So let’s see what it gives.” We actually have tried the extreme right. It’s called the Régime de Vichy. It’s called what has happened on the Second World War, where they were extremely active, more than what the Germans, they asked them, you know, in the execution of the Jews and the communists. And, you know, they collaborated. So, yes, we have that. And I think the danger of the extreme right in the whole world today is [01:20:00] equal. I mean, people, they don’t have the excuse of not knowing what the extreme right gives. Nobody has the excuse of, you know, this, a lack of knowledge. We all know what happened in the Second World War. We know that that was the extreme right, and we know what is the result of the extreme right. So, anywhere in the world, in the democratic world, that is a vote for that is actually a vote for dictatorship. And French people, basically, most of them, they didn’t want.
Now the situation is somehow complex. But you talk a lot about Jean-Luc Mélenchon. I don’t think that he is actually — he’s a representative of this united left, because, unlike what is said, he’s not a progressive leftist. He’s a radical leftist. I think he’s antisemite. You know, his relationship with Hamas is quiet; we don’t know what it is. [01:21:00] His relation with Putin is uncertain. He has been in awe in front of all the dictators of, you know, the South American. You know, he was in love with Chávez. He loves all these dictators.
I think this coalition, you have four parties. One of them is the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, where the big heads of, actually, this party, they have left it, because they couldn’t stand him anymore, people like Clémentine Autain or Ruffin or all this big power they have left. You have the communists. You have the socialists. You have the ecologists. So, you have this coalition.
But the most important, that was a slap in the face of the extreme right. But also, during this one week, I think people in the television and in the interviews, they saw the candidate of the extreme right. And, you know, it’s a joke as a candidate. None of them they have a program. I mean, it’s always easy to be against. It’s always very [01:22:00] easy to be in opposition. But once it comes to governing a country, you have to have some knowledge. You have to have an economical program. You know, just saying, “Oh, the immigrant people, they do this and that, and they come” — you know, the immigrant people also work. I mean, I work in France. Each film that I made in France, I made — I don’t know — hundreds of French people work. We bring money. We pay our taxes. We are parties of this society. And French people, actually, they celebrated that. So, yeah, it’s a victory of France.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to ask Rokhaya Diallo if you share that assessment of Mélenchon. Certainly, Jeremy Corbyn, who we just spoke to, who won back his seat as a member of Parliament in Britain and is a friend of Mélenchon, did not feel that way. Your assessment and where this all goes?
ROKHAYA DIALLO: So, I think, first of all, the issue is not about Jean-Luc Mélenchon. It’s about the left, which managed to build a coalition. I don’t agree with the fact of classifying the France Unbowed, the party of Jean-Luc [01:23:00] Mélenchon, as a radical left party, since the Supreme Court of France, le Conseil d’État, classified the protests, and the only party that is classified as being extreme is the far-right National Rally. So, all of the left parties are labeled as being from the left.
And the other thing, to me, which is important is that we — I think it’s important to tamper the joy of the fact that the National Rally, the far right, didn’t win, because even if they didn’t make it to have the absolute majority, they had opened the floodgates of racism. During the campaign, we’ve seen many people being abused, being assaulted, being insulted because they were LGBTQIA, because they were minorities, because they were foreigners. You know, they have been physically and verbally insulted, even assaulted, even people who were very famous and visible journalists. So, I think that we need to address what was at the heart of the campaign of the far right, which is racism.
So, of course, there is an issue of [01:24:00] antisemitism that needs to be addressed on the left, and not only, according to me, in the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. I think this is an issue, but I think they have been demonized because of their pro-Palestinian stance and because they are the only party to actually address Islamophobia. And I think that the left in France needs to address Islamophobia, because the anti-Muslim sentiment is very, very widespread. And it’s the reason why the National Rally has been able to be — has been normalized, because the Islamophobia is so normalized now today in France that it’s easy for the National Rally to just appear to be respectable.
So, I think that the next step for the left will be to be explicit on how they want to address racism and actually systemic racism.
How France’s left stopped a far-right surge - The Story - Times Radio - Air Date 7-9-24
This time last Monday. At the time there had [01:25:00] been protests in Paris overnight because the far right had done so well in the first round. Last night, there were celebrations. What a difference a week makes. Just explain how France sort of swerved what looked like a certain far right victory.
Just talk us through, what were the results in the end of round two? Well, let's say the results of round two were completely unexpected. Uh, they were completely unexpected for me. They were completely unexpected for the pollsters. And they were completely unexpected, I think, for most people in France. And that was that we had the first round, the right wing, far right national rally, got by far the largest number of votes.
In that first round, then we came to the second round, and surprise, surprise, the winner, at least in terms of seats in the National Assembly, the lower house of the French Parliament, has been the left. Something called [01:26:00] the New Popular Front, which is a kind of a temporarily put together coalition of the socialists, the communists, the greens, and a far left party called France Unbowed.
They ended up with 182 seats in parliament, with Macron's bloc, President Macron's bloc, actually in second place with 163. And the national rally, who we thought was going to win, who we thought might even get an absolute majority, ended up with just 143. And Peter, I mean, I love how in France you have the communists and then you have the far left.
But as you said, those were the numbers in terms of seats. But in terms of votes themselves, how did the far right do? Well, in terms of votes, the far right actually did rather well. In the first round, they got 33%. In this second round, they actually got 37 percent of the votes. So they got more votes. While the, the vote [01:27:00] for the left bloc, the new popular front, that actually went down.
Because in the first round, they got just over 28%. This time round, they got They got 25. 8. Really quite perverse, but it just shows how the French electoral system, rather like the British electoral system, doesn't always reflect in terms of seats the, the number of votes that have been cast. So in terms of seats they've won in terms of the popular vote.
Actually, the far right did better than in the first round. Will there be a bit of upset about that? Will people be quite annoyed at the electoral system not reflecting that? Well, let's say the national rally itself is very, very annoyed indeed. Jourdan Bardella, the man who was hoping to become prime minister, Marine Le Pen, who's the sort of essentially the boss of the party.
They've both railed against the electoral system, but there's very little they can do about it. That's just the way that the electoral system works. [01:28:00] What have they been saying? What has the reaction been? Well, the mood at what was intended to be the National Rally's victory party on Sunday evening was very, very grim indeed.
They were expecting to have won this election and when the exit polls came through just after 8 o'clock French time, there was a slightly muted reaction.
The National Rally has today achieved the most important breakthrough in its history. Sadly, the alliance of dishonour and the dangerous electoral arrangements made by Emmanuel Macron and Gabriel Attal, with the parties of the far left Deprive tonight the French of the politics of redress that they had overwhelmingly voted for Putting us first in the European election and after the first round of voting last Sunday with roughly 34 percent of votes casted They had expected, I think, so much to win that, you know, they had put a lot of [01:29:00] serious work into drawing up cabinet.
They'd been behind the scenes, they'd been sounding out people, not just from their own party, but from also, sort of, non aligned people, to serve in what they were hoping would be their first government. Wow. And so, you know, they, they were faced ultimately. It was a slightly odd situation because in terms of votes, they had done very, very well and certainly compared with their result in the previous election in 2022, they'd also increased their number of seats quite considerably.
'cause they'd gone up from just 88 to 143, you know, which by any measure would be seen as being. a great result for any party. But compared with expectations, they've done a lot, lot worse than expected. And Marine Le Pen obviously trying to put a positive spin on what happened, saying our [01:30:00] victory has only been delayed because everyone here is looking forward to the 2027 presidential election because it's the president in France who wields, you know, considerable power.
I'm not disappointed. I've got too much experience to be disappointed. I'm looking at the results kindly, coldly. I see that our number of MPs has doubled. Today, the National Rally is the largest group. The largest party in terms of number of MPs.
So for Marine Le Pen, this is, you know, we didn't win tonight, but this prepares the ground for the presidential election and the next parliamentary election, which will come with it. But for their opponents, this just shows that the national rally can be stopped if everyone else gets together and joins forces against them.
Was it also, partly though, because of Le Pen's party itself that they've lost some [01:31:00] of these seats, you know, the additional scrutiny, the sense that perhaps they hadn't? detoxified their brand enough? Yes, it was. I mean, Marine Le Pen's great achievement, I think, has been that since taking over the party from her father just over a decade ago, she has embarked on this policy of what you rightly call detoxification, which is essentially taking a party that was very much on the fringes of French politics, dragging it towards the mainstream, getting rid of Some of the more unsavory far right characters that used to play an important role in the party, including her father himself, whom she sort of rather brutally pushed aside.
And, you know, that policy over the years has proved an enormous success in increasing in election after election, the share of the votes that her party has got. However, in this election, there were problems because, you know, on [01:32:00] the one hand, they fought a very, very disciplined campaign. They fought on increasing the standard of living by cutting taxes on fuel, essentially.
On household bills, on curbing immigration and on taking a tougher line on law and order. However, a number of their policies on immigration just went too far for mainstream French voters, I think. And then secondly, as is often a problem for parties like the National Rally, they had a number of individual candidates with very, very unsavory views, uh, views that came across as sort of overtly racist, completely unacceptable to mainstream opinion.
These were all picked up by The French media, which is relatively hostile to the National Rally, and that again confirmed the [01:33:00] impression that despite the, the sort of the smiling facade that Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella have put on the party, among the ranks of the candidates, there were some people with just very, very extreme far right ideas.
French left defeats far-right in huge election shock - LBC analysed - Air Date 7-8-24
Marine Le Pen's party came in third place.
Um, she's still got a big block of seats in the National Assembly. So, you know, she's not a fringe phenomenon. But, uh, she's not, she didn't come top, which everyone was pretty much expecting her to do. Instead, we've got the left finger lines at the top, and we've got Macron's centre, which held onto quite a lot of seats and makes him the, his, his group the second biggest.
So that's, that's the look of the National Assembly. What are you most surprised by this morning? Sorry, carry on. Oh, well, I was just going to tell you this morning, we've had the resignation of the prime minister. Now that's a kind of technical event in a way, because he went to the Elysee Palace. He presented his resignation to the president.
The president has asked him to stay on effectively in a kind of care. You know, there's a feeling here that, [01:34:00] um, we are days, if not weeks away from seeing a next government and therefore he's going to be, you know, Occupying that job, but not actually passing any legislation, obviously. Um, what were you most surprised by out of those three results for those three groupings?
Um, I think the order that was what? Struck me and I think a lot of people I mean you should have seen the faces on the Uh of the of marina penn's deputies when they saw the results coming through they were really uh, Taken aback. This was a party. Don't forget that was thought it was about to govern. Um, they thought they'd come top.
They did come top in the first round. France has this two round voting system. And so in the first round, they, they absolutely scooped up first round positions across the country and they were ready. You know, they were talking about who they would nominate as their finance minister, who they put in the foreign ministry.
This was the kind of conversations they were having. And then suddenly they came in that was a shock to them. [01:35:00] Um, a relief to others. And then the left wing alliance doing incredibly well. I mean, I think all it's the order of, of the, of the results that's taken everybody by surprise. Um, important to understand a little more about the French electoral system.
So the second round differs from the first round in that the choice is reduced and even more reduced this time than ever before because of some of the deals that were done before the ballots opened. That's exactly right. So you have this two part, uh, trans system. There's 577 constituencies and it's effectively the second round.
It's a first past the post, but in order to get to the second round, you can be elected actually in the first round. You know, if you get over 50 percent of the vote, Marine Le Pen, she was elected. She got 58 percent up in the north of France. So she was elected outright. A number of people were. But then if you go over, get over a threshold, you go on to the second round.
And what happened there, and what often happens is that you have three qualifiers. But that in between the two rounds, there are kind of [01:36:00] deals, tactical deals done between parties. And in this case, the deals were done between, uh, the centrist, Macron's centrist movement. Alliance. And the point of all of that is to stop the vote being split the anti far right vote being split.
So whoever came third in the qualifier, in other words, was sort of invited stroke, expected stroke, kind of ordered to stand down. And in some cases, that was really complicated. I mean, we, we had a couple of people from government who made it into the second round in their constituencies and Macron actually had to literally, you know, ask them, please, can you now step down?
You're in third place. We've got to let the left wing go through to take on the far right. So you can see how irritating and actually this makes, for the far right, this is. They feel like the choice wasn't really put before the voters, but it was a very effective way of stopping the far right from getting a majority.
So not unlike our [01:37:00] experiences. over here. This is more about rejection than it is about support. I think so. I mean, in a way, I sort of see these two rounds as, as you could almost sum it up as kind of two little referendums. The first referendum was on Macron and people absolutely rejected him. There's no doubt about that.
Uh, the vote vote massively heavily for the far right. But the second one was almost like a little mini referendum on the far right. And this time it was, well, we don't like Macron, we don't like the far right either. And so we've ended up with this hung parliament, which is what it is. With no, no majority, no, no single bloc dominating.
And that's kind of a good reflection of the country. It's a very divided France. Um, how left wing is the left wing grouping? Uh, it depends who you ask. It's an incredibly broad coalition, which goes from the sort of, I suppose the best comparison for the UK would be a kind of Corbynist left that's under this, uh, leader called Jean Luc [01:38:00] Mélenchon, who was once upon a time a Trotskyist and is an absolute kind of radical.
And it goes all the way to the very moderate left, the socialist party. There's a character called Raphael Glucksmann, who is. Honestly, he could be sitting in Macron's party. I mean, he wouldn't like me for saying that, but he could, um, and Greens as well. So it is an incredibly broad church. They disagree on almost everything, everything from sort of NATO to arming Ukraine to, uh, nuclear power.
I mean, it's, it's, it's almost a miracle. Or that they managed to put together this alliance, which they did. And they have, they, and it stuck for the election. But it's because, because they agreed on now they agreed on the importance of keeping lap pen's lot out. That would that be pretty much the only thing that they agreed on it?
Um, yes, but I would say more than that. I would say that they saw this as a chance for them to become a player again. I mean, don't forget that Macron's project over the last seven years in France has pretty much been to crush. the left and crush the right. And [01:39:00] that's been very bruising, especially for a party like the Socialist Party, which was just performed so poorly.
And then suddenly there were they sensed in the, in the, in the, um, after the European elections, which were on June the 9th, they sensed this, this kind of wind in their sails and they really didn't want to let that go. So they saw a chance of them becoming a kind of major player again in, in, in, in French politics.
And, and overrode all the differences between them and they managed to stitch this alliance together very fast. Thank you Sophie. Finally, where does this leave Macron and, and where does it leave his gamble? Because it, it, well, there's a, you could read it as having paid off a bit because the, the, um, far right, the National Rally are not providing the next prime minister, but equally everything looks very messy.
I think that sums it up. I mean, in one respect, he has, he's kept out the far right and that, in that sense, that has paid off. But he [01:40:00] has certainly not emerged stronger as a result of this. He had, the centre hasn't collapsed, but he has lost, um, a lot of deputies, about roughly a hundred deputies. So that's not a good result for him, but his party, his bloc in the centre remains a player in all of this.
And given that no one has a majority, It actually puts them in a position potentially to be the kind of kingmaker, uh, movements, which could determine whether or not there is a majority government in the, in the future. So it depends how you look and how you measure his gamble, but it certainly isn't a disaster that, um, that some people, uh, saw it as being when he first called that snap election.
SECTION B: GREAT BRITAIN
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering section B: Great Britain.
MPs Sworn In To The Commons, Greens & Farage Give First Speeches - Novara Media - Air Date 7-9-24
Last week's election was unusual in a number of ways. One of them is that we have a ton of new MPs. Another is that the opposition now consists of a host. of parties, featuring not just the Lib Dems and the SMP, but four Green MPs and five [01:41:00] from Reform. And of course, it saw Labour win their second largest majority ever, after Keir Starmer's party won 411 seats.
Today saw that latest set of MPs arrive in the Commons to select the Speaker of the House, Lindsay Hoyle. After his selection, party leaders were invited to speak. And first up, Mr Speaker elect, you preside over a new parliament, the most diverse parliament by race and gender this country has ever seen.
And I'm proud of the part that my party has played in that, and proud of the part that every party has played in that, including in this intake, the largest cohort of LGBT plus MPs of any parliament in the world. I want to go over to you on this actually very quickly in a moment, Helena, but I, I find this, I find this stuff strange.
Um, because frankly, and as I said, as somebody who's Afro Iranian, I care about [01:42:00] the background of these people economically, I care about the kinds of jobs they come from. If you say we have a very diverse parliament, but they all come from consulting, they all come from lobbying. Uh, Helena, quickly, am I being unfair?
I think I actually do disagree with you here a little bit, Aaron. I think that broadly having any amount of representation is good, especially when you have a diverse country. Making sure that there is some level of representation is good for social cohesion, I believe, rather than having kind of a single entity only represented, or a single demographic only represented in Parliament.
Regardless, like, When Rishi Sunak became prime minister, my thought was, I mean, it's good that we finally have, you know, an ethnic minority prime minister. I think that's a good thing. It's just a shame that it had to come from the Conservative Party. But of course, that is second, as you say, to the policy and to the ideology behind what they do in government.
But I think that you don't necessarily have to separate those two things out. You can definitely, certainly care more about the latter, but still pay attention to the former. Yeah, I think I was probably being a bit hyperbolic. I obviously do [01:43:00] care, but I just think it's entirely secondary. And on the point of LGBT MPs, you know, I find it concerning when you have anti trans rhetoric policy, and yet people talk about this stuff, and it's You know, again, that's a very large community.
It's not a monolithic community. Anyway, we'll talk about that more later. We'll talk about that for many years to come, I'm sure. Stalmer went on to address one Labour MP in particular. Given all that diversity, Mr Speaker elect, I hope you will not begrudge me for a slight departure from convention. To also pay tribute to the new mother of the house, Diane Abbott.
Who has done so much in her career over so many years to fight for a parliament that truly represents modern Britain. We welcome her back to her place. We welcome her back. No, Keir, you tried to block her from standing again. Fess up! Uh, anyway, he had egg on his face then and he's obviously changed hack now.
Here's how Keir Starmer finished up. [01:44:00] And now, as in any new parliament, we have the opportunity and the responsibility. To put an end to a politics that has too often seemed self serving and self obsessed. And to replace that politics of performance with the politics of service. Because service is a precondition.
for hope and trust. And the need to restore trust should weigh heavily on every member here, new and returning alike. We all have a duty to show that politics can be a force for good. So whatever our political differences, it's now time to turn the page. Unite in a common endeavour of national renewal.
and make this new parliament a parliament of service. Thank you. Powerful message, the idea that politics should serve the people and not the political class. I suppose the question is, is that borne out in [01:45:00] Keir Starmer's actions? Is he for the people or for a small clique of people around him in London?
Helena, what do you think? I think I'm going to echo a sentiment you probably heard quite a lot recently, which is that Keir Starmer looks a lot more comfortable now that he's prime minister. He's certainly not a campaigner. He certainly, as he continues to tell us, was the Director of Public Prosecutions.
And we know that that was a role that he definitely felt a lot more comfortable in, in a role where he's not having to, he's being, you know, there was a brief that he's already got there rather than having to continue to campaign and try and attack people. He was very kind of nervy in the dispatch box when he was the leader of opposition at PMQs.
A couple of bits of hypocrisy though, as you touched on, first of all, like the absolute lies that he told about Diane Abbott and the, desire of the people that he'd subcontracted out within the Labour Party to try and do the selection of MPs, to try and oust her, and then praising her the first thing during his speech in the Commons, and on top of that, coming [01:46:00] off of the back of his statement about wanting to their, to restore trust in politics, to restore trust in politics, when he's then just blatantly going against what he said previously, on top of all of the other lies that he's told up to this point, and what was, as has been described by many people, a very, very dishonest election campaign, and also even, not just from, from Keir Starmer or the Labour Party, from lots of different sectors of our political class, continues to be very dishonest on loads of different occasions, but especially Gaul incoming from Keir Starmer himself.
As Labour Wins in U.K., Ex-Leader Jeremy Corbyn Wins as Independent in Revolt over Gaza Policy - Democracy Now! - Air Date 7-8-24
JEREMY CORBYN: Labour has clearly got a very large parliamentary majority and mandate from this election. There’s no question about that. There are over 400 Labour MPs. However, if you dig into the results, you find some quite interesting differences in this. The actual Labour vote nationally was less in this election than it was in 2019, and much less than it was in 2017. [01:47:00] What’s happened in this election is the Conservative vote has collapsed, and much of that vote has gone to Nigel Farage and his far-right Reform party. They got over 4 million votes, even though I’m not sure they even contested every single constituency. And so, whilst Labour has this huge parliamentary majority, their national share of the vote was only around a third of all votes cast. It’s a very low mandate for a government to govern. And in fact, I think it’s the lowest mandate any government has ever had in Britain. So they need to be cautious about that.
The Labour vote went down in many constituencies, particularly in our urban areas, largely because of the stance on Palestine and Gaza, but also because they don’t think the Labour economic offer really meets the needs of the time. So, there are some huge issues going on here.
On my own case, I, as you know, was leader of the Labour Party until 2020, and [01:48:00] I was denied entry to the parliamentary caucus of the Labour Party after an inquiry in later that year. And so I’ve been an independent MP, but a member of the Labour Party, ever since that time. The party then announced that I was not eligible to even apply to be the Labour candidate for Islington North. Many of my constituents were very angry about this and lobbied me to put my name forward as an independent, and say, “You cannot take this. We cannot take this. Please stand as an independent.” So I did.
And from nothing five weeks ago, we built an enormous campaign and won with 49.4% of the vote, not quite 50%, but almost there. And we had hundreds of volunteers come in from local communities, but all over the country. And we won the election on the principal positions of a [01:49:00] ceasefire in Gaza and recognition of Palestine, on an economic strategy of redistribution of wealth and power by reducing taxation of the poorest, increasing taxation for the richest, and an absolute commitment to a Green New Deal and environmental policies, but particularly housing and stress issues in my constituency. So, we’re very proud that our constituency voted differently and gave me that mandate.
I’m joined now in Parliament by four other independents who were elected in different parts of the country. And we will be holding the government to account. I’ll be speaking out for local issues, but, crucially, we’re going to be establishing a local forum in which I will report every month on what I’ve been doing, but also all the local community campaign organizations will also be taking part. So, it’s a different form of politics. And I’ve now been elected 11 times from my constituency, and we’re very proud of the result we [01:50:00] achieved.
AMY GOODMAN: So, in one of your first acts after your reelection, Jeremy Corbyn, you were out in the streets with tens of thousands of others. I’m wondering your response to the conversation that apparently the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had with Prime Minister Starmer, who reportedly said an urgent need for a Gaza ceasefire but also vowed the U.K. would continue its, quote, “vital cooperation with Israel.”
JEREMY CORBYN: Well, it sounds to me like there’s a contradiction in that conversation. Either you have a ceasefire or you don’t. And if you have a ceasefire, that means an end, surely, to the supply of arms to Israel, because we are complicit, as is the U.S.A., in the supply of weapons to Israel which have been used to bomb Gaza.
Forty thousand people have died in Gaza. Probably half of those are children. And the bombing has restarted again this [01:51:00] morning. And many more are dying from hunger, malnutrition, dying from wholly preventable conditions like diarrhea and dehydration. And so, it is an absolutely urgent need.
And if the new government and the new foreign secretary, David Lammy, and the prime minister, Keir Starmer, really want to bring about a ceasefire, then they’ve got to say to Israel, “We will no longer occasion and supply you with weapons to bomb Gaza, and this ceasefire must be accompanied by withdrawal of Israeli forces both from Gaza and from the West Bank.” Otherwise, what’s going to happen? Is Israel going to start bombing again? Are those troops going to start moving tanks around in Gaza again?
This is a desperate humanitarian crisis brought about by the bombardment by Israel. And I’m not alone in saying this. I’ve had calls from people in Israel, even members of the Knesset — Ofer Cassif, for example — saying they [01:52:00] absolutely agree with everything that we said at our rally outside Parliament on Saturday afternoon. The issue of Gaza has had a massive effect on the general election in Britain, and it’s not going to go away.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, let me ask you about Starmer saying that the Rwanda deportation policy is buried and dead?
JEREMY CORBYN: I’m very pleased that the Rwanda policy is finished. It was always a horrible idea of, essentially, outsourcing our human rights responsibilities to refugees by deporting not all, but some of them, to Rwanda — very expensive deal in which the Rwanda government was given over 200 million pounds to facilitate this. I’m pleased that is over.
But — and this is a big “but” — the language used by some of the Labour front-bench leaders in the election about desperate people crossing the Channel to try and find a place of safety [01:53:00] in Britain and about the issue of refugees in general was very, very unfortunate and very bad. We are in the midst of a global refugee crisis. Surely, the responsibility of the wealthiest countries in the world is to do two things: look at the causes of why people seek refuge, and, secondly, treat them as human beings, not as enemies or unwelcome arrivals. And the language that was used by the far right in France and other places and by Farage in this country is horrible and divisive and dangerous.
But I’m very pleased that the elections in France yesterday at least rejected the Le Pen far right. It doesn’t necessarily mean all of the migration policies in France are going to change overnight, but I think it’s a very important sign that when the left comes together, as it did through the alliance that was formed very rapidly in order to fight the second round of the French elections, they can both offer hope [01:54:00] to working-class communities that have seen their living standards fall — in this case, in this country, by 20% in the past decade or so — and also stand up for human rights and the needs and rights of refugees.
The refugees come from countries where there’s been war. They come from Afghanistan, from Iraq. They come from Syria. They come from Libya. They come from places that have been subject to war and bombardment. And so, we need to wake up. Are we going to allow this decade to go on with wars in Ukraine, in Sudan, in Congo, in — obviously in Gaza, or are we going to be serious about bringing peace? And I would hope that there’s going to be pressure on the NATO summit next week to bring peace rather than more weapons and more war.
SECTION C: MEXICO
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally section C: Mexico.
What Claudia Sheinbaum's historic election win means for U.S.-Mexico relations - PBS NewsHour - Air Date 6-3-4
Geoff Bennett: So how do you view the significance of this moment, Mexico electing its first female president?
Pamela Starr: I think it's enormously significant, especially for young [01:55:00] women who are of Mexican heritage or living in Mexico.
It's extraordinarily important to see someone in a position of importance that is the same gender of you. But at the same time, I don't suspect that Claudia Sheinbaum will be a feminist president, although she does self-identify as a feminist.
She's a traditional leftist. And by that, I mean, she focuses on lifting up all of those who are in this lower socioeconomic strata and not focusing on individual minorities in society, or, in this case, women, who are the largest majority in Mexico, the largest segment of the population.
I do, however, think she's going to put a little more attention into violence against women, which Lopez Obrador didn't, the former president didn't give much attention to, and potentially to things like day care and such.
Geoff Bennett: Well, as we said, she won with a sweeping mandate, more than 58 percent of the vote. Why was she so successful? What was it about her, her background, her overall approach that seemed to resonate with the Mexican [01:56:00] voting public?
Pamela Starr: More than her, it's what she stands for.
She was chosen by Lopez Obrador, handpicked to be his successor. The campaign was run as a continuation of Lopez Obrador's presidency. As she said, she's going to build the second level on the transformation of Mexico that Lopez Obrador initiated. So it wasn't so much a vote for Claudia Sheinbaum as a vote for continuity in Mexican politics.
Geoff Bennett: Let's return to the issue of violence, because these elections in Mexico have been historic for another reason. They have been the most violent. In the run-up to the elections, more than 30 candidates were assassinated. Mexico has one of the highest homicide rates in the world.
What is she aiming to do to address it?
Pamela Starr: Her overall proposal is try to adapt the strategies she implemented in Mexico City, which did significantly reduce crime and violence in the city, to a national situation.
In Mexico City, she increased the wages and [01:57:00] working conditions for the police. She used greater intelligence in police activities, and she more very carefully collaborated or guaranteed collaboration between law enforcement and the attorney general's office. She will try to do something similar at the federal level.
That said, she's not going to return to civilian policing with regard to federal criminal problems, like organized crime. She's going to rely on the militarized National Guard, although she is going to try to expand its size, increase working conditions and wages, and increase their use of intelligence and collaboration with the attorney general's office.
Geoff Bennett: What about immigration, which is a major issue in this election? How does she plan to coordinate with the U.S., and has she articulated a plan for how to deal with the migrants who make their way through Mexico toward the U.S.?
Pamela Starr: She didn't talk about — much about foreign policy in the campaign.
Indeed, there was a debate segment that was focused on foreign policy, [01:58:00] and really none of the candidates spoke a great deal about foreign policy.
In terms of migration, I suspect she will continue Lopez Obrador's strategy of trying to cooperate with the United States while protecting Mexican sovereignty, knowing that cooperating with the United States generates the goodwill of the U.S. administration, and gives Mexico more freedom of action areas of greater importance to Mexico like domestic politics.
Why Mexico Is Militarizing - Bloomberg Originals - Air Date 5-31-24
The Mexican military is composed of three key forces. The Army, the Navy, and the National Guard, founded by AMLO in 2019. The National Guard is a force that President López Obrador created to replace the Federal Police, which he considered too corrupt to function. The gutting of the Federal Police was initially welcomed by some.
When we set up the National Guard in 2019, we came to an agreement. The National Guard is a civil body. But then in 2022, President López Obrador [01:59:00] moved it to the Defense Ministry, essentially making it a military institution. In 2023, the Mexican Supreme Court declared the move unconstitutional and said that it should be reversed.
But in practice, the National Guard still responds to the Defense Ministry. By transferring them, these new functions that belong to civilian authorities were actively violating the Constitution and the Constitution. And we're actively undermining the rule of law. López Obrador views the military as the most trustworthy, least corrupt, and most efficient institution to carry out the large infrastructure works that he views as his legacy. Some data does reflect popular opinion of the military to be good. About 71 percent of Mexicans Say they trust the army and the navy. That's more than the government or the police.
Lopez Obrador is kind of pragmatic leader. He don't like no as an answer. And the soldier is being trained to answer, Yes, sir. That is the kind of answer he's [02:00:00] looking for. What we're having is something that we didn't have in the past. Now we have, uh, business, military elite in Mexico. Since Lopez Obrador came to power in 2018, the combined budgets of the armed forces grew by 150%.
Compared to the federal police that AMLO disbanded, the National Guard has almost tripled the membership, yet it's detaining fewer people and seizing less drugs and weapons. We thought the National Guard will fight federal crimes, narco traffic, organized crime, kidnapping. The rates and the effectivity of the National Guard is so low.
We are talking about 50, 000 disappearances during the López Alvarado administration. Considering the modern history in Mexico, those are the worst numbers. We used to have a kind of state relationship between the armed forces and the government. Now what we are having is a political relationship, which is [02:01:00] really dangerous for our democracy.
The armed forces are, by definition, armed corporations that can use the legitimate violence of the state against any enemy that they define. And having them performing these many functions increases the risks of human rights violations, arbitrary detentions,
president Lopez in a very smart move changed the constitution to force the next president to actually keep on using the armed forces and the military on public security matters until 2028, and that's gonna be very difficult to reverse. Mexico's next president will have to reckon with what López Obrador created, a richer, mightier, and larger military that's more deeply ingrained in private business and government than it's ever been.
Credits
JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at [02:02:00] 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].
The additional sections of the show included clips from Democracy Now!, Owen Jones, Times Radio, LBC Analyzed, Novara Media, The PBS News Hour, and Bloomberg Originals. Further details are in the show notes.
Thanks everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben and Andrew for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift and memberships. You can join them by signing up today and get 20% off your membership at BestOfTheLeft.com/support or through our Patreon page. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads, and chapter markers in all of our [02:03:00] regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with the link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion.
So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington, DC, my name is Jay!, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from BestOfTheLeft.com.
