Tagged with Euro elections 2014

Farage wants workers’ votes but offers no workers’ rights

THEYRE NOT ON OUR SIDECompared with its 2010 General Election Manifesto, UKIP’s manifestos for the recent Euro and local elections were remarkably light on detail but long on saloon bar, right wing sentiment – open borders/immigration, leave the EU, allow smoking in pubs and the sort of petty nationalism that allows us to see some similarities – but not exact comparisons – between UKIP and the Poujadism that flourished very brightly, but very briefly, in France in the 1950s.

Pierre Poujade was the leader of a right wing populist movement of the lower middle class and self-employed who rallied against big business and public administration and, of course, the unions. Poujadists shot to prominence in France in the 1956 election with 53 deputies (MPs) but lacking a clear policy other than what it was against Poujadism collapsed within two years. Continue reading →

Podemos – We can!

Darlo Todo means Give everythingOne of the most spectacular – and unpredicted – results in the European elections was in Spain. A 16% swing against the governing conservative People’s Party saw the newly formed left party Podemos (We can) take 8% of the vote and 5 seats in the European Parliament. Additionally the United Left, a broad grouping to the left of the social democratic PSOE, gained four MEPs.

The victory for Podemos was all the more stunning because the party didn’t exist at the start of 2014. Podemos was inspired by the radical left force in Greece, Syriza, which also did well in these elections, topping the poll. It grew out of the mass protests in Spain of the last three years, the Indignados movement. Continue reading →

European elections: A rising left amid the far right danger

TSIPRAS_LAB_POSTER_Zoom1If you base your assessment of what’s going on politically in Europe on the BBC coverage of the Euro elections, you’ll be aware of the massive victory of the Front National in France and not too much else. The parallel rise of the far left was under-reported and where it was covered, the preferred terminology was ‘far right and eurosceptic parties’. Commentators seemed allergic to talking about a left victory. But left victory there was too.

While the big story was the shocking victory of Marine Le Pen’s party – the Front National moved from 6.34% in the 2009 Euro elections to 24.95%, a quadrupling of the vote – Syriza, the Greek radical left party, saw an even greater increase in its support. From 4.7% in 2009, it reached 26.55%, emerging almost 4 points ahead of its nearest rival, the rightwing New Democracy. Continue reading →

EU results confirm rejection of austerity is key issue across whole of Europe

AUSTERITYCommentators continue to misunderstand and misinterpret the EU election results, totting up the far-Right votes in France, UK, Denmark and elsewhere as mounting an almighty challenge to the ‘European project’. They miss the point. The far-Right did not achieve their breakthroughs because their supporters were voting against Europe as such (despite its admitted failures in bureaucratic governance, democratic deficit, remote accountability, agricultural policy, etc.),. They did so because they utterly rejected what Europe under the dead hand of Merkel and her neo-classical economic model is now seen to stand for, being wholly identified with unrelenting austerity.

Otherwise how does one explain that in Greece the radical Left party, Syriza led by Alexis Tsipras, topped the poll 4 points clear of the prime minister’s party (almost exactly the same as in the UK), yet Syriza is not advocating withdrawal from the EU and is utterly opposed to the far-Right? From opposite poles both the radical Left and far-Right were calling for the abandonment of the EU deadweight which has plunged large parts of Europe into near-destitution and spawned the eurozone crisis which is far from over. Continue reading →

Austerity drove white working class to UKIP: why won’t Labour say they’ll end it

Austerity is failingIt’s true there’s rage at the political establishment for the current state of Britain, especially the deeply run-down economy, and that was the real reason for the UKIP so-called surge (though actually a significant fall-back from UKIP’s vote last year). Of course there was constant vilification of Europe and immigrants, but they are merely convenient scapegoats for the real cause of Britain’s current malaise which is four years of austerity and the bitterness, hurt and anger that this has provoked. Continue reading →