.
The right-wing parties that govern Sweden with the support of the far right could be defeated on Sunday. In other words, not everything is all doom and gloom, but can we really overlook the triumph the German far right has just achieved in Saxony-Anhalt, the rise of a new Italian far right openly supportive of Vladimir Putin, the entrenchment of xenophobic nationalism in Britain, and the polls which all predict that Mrs Le Pen will be elected by the French on 2 May?
The left has lost its post-war cultural dominance everywhere. The world is leaning to the right, but, like the British two years ago, the Swedes may soon remind us that the centre and the left can win elections in a right-wing world, just as the right used to win them in a left-wing world.
Mrs Le Pen would only win in the second round in the absence of a candidate capable of uniting the two-thirds of the French population who do not identify with her. Her rise is by no means unstoppable, since she would automatically be defeated if this majority—apparently so diverse and currently so fractured—were to become aware of its profound common ground.
Following a summer of heatwaves and the tragedy in Nepal, there is now only a small minority of French people who do not believe in the reality of climate change and who, like the far right, continue to reject the fundamental measures it demands.
An overwhelming majority of French people know that Donald Trump wants to destroy our economy and turn us into vassals, just as he is attempting to do with Canada; that he is our adversary; and that it is the far right – as he himself says – on which he wishes to rely in France and throughout Europe.
The sabotage carried out by the Russian intelligence services in France and across Europe has significantly eroded the support enjoyed by Vladimir Putin. This is so true that Mrs Le Pen and her allies are doing everything they can to make people forget that they once admired him just as much as they did Donald Trump.
Hardly anyone in France is now unaware that our industries might not survive Chinese dumping, and the vast majority of French people realise that we can only meet this challenge by standing shoulder to shoulder with our European partners, thereby strengthening – rather than weakening – the unity of the Union.
Furthermore, across the political spectrum, the French can clearly see that American incompetence is only exacerbating the conflicts in the Middle East and that we must do everything we can, together with our European partners, to contain them before they destabilise us even further.
On the five greatest dangers we face, not only do the left and the centre see eye to eye, but many voters from the far right and the so-called ‘rebellious’ left also agree with them in whole or in part. Mrs Le Pen does not represent the majority, but how, one might ask, can we identify and bring together what constitutes the true majority of the French people?
Two conditions would suffice.
The first would be to acknowledge and state that there are no more differences between the left and the centre than there have always been within the left-wing and centre-right parties. The left and the centre today form what ought to be a federation, or a large democratic party, the emergence of which would marginalise the nationalist far right, the French branch of the reactionary international.
Secondly, this unity of democrats would need to be founded on the left’s formal renunciation of the great revolutionary myths, and on the centre’s absolute rejection of a return to the rule of money and the harsh inequalities between the underprivileged and the privileged.
Whoever were then to stand, in the name of the democrats, to mobilise France against the five threats hanging over it, would surely win. Mrs Le Pen’s rise is entirely preventable, but there are only eight months left to prove it.
