Monthly Archives: July 2023

Have Labours strategists achieved the impossible? Not only is the party 20 points ahead and in with a shot of winning four by-elections, but, perhaps even more impressively, its leader finally appears to be shrugging off his custardy sheen of squareness. According to a recent Politico profile, Keir Starmer has a dark secret: he once tried to raise some cash by illegally selling ice creams on a lads holiday in France. And yet, as Labour starts to behave like a party on the brink of power optimistically hoping to finalise its policy platform later this month all might not be as it seems.

Though Starmer appears to be doing well, his lead is soft, with less than a quarter of voters rating him as good. This is partly because his success is born of Tory failure rather than any great love for Labour and its policies: there is not much difference between his popularity ratings and Rishi Sunaks, and only around 40% of voters think the Labour Party has the nations best interests at heart.

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This may not matter if Starmer only has to fight the Conservatives, but as he shores up the centre, he is at risk of leaving the partys Left flank vulnerable to the sort of populist insurgency the Tories have been dealing with for a decade. Labour is headed to power, like the Tories 10 or so years ago, with a centrist vision that leaves their more demanding supporters wanting more.

And so, a populist insurgency today is far more likely to take place on the Left than the Right. This isnt too surprising: in the current political climate, a party made up of largely disgruntled Tories would struggle to establish a new brand, would still be tainted by an association with the current administrations failings, and would struggle to pick votes from the Left, where about half the electorate now sits. Equally, it would not enjoy the policy influence that Ukip had in its heyday, when along with the Brexit Party it could knock off five or so points from the Tories polling.

Through the 2010s, this meant the difference between being in Downing Street or in opposition. As a result, the Tories were forced to keep them sweet by offering concessions, most obviously the EU referendum. But this kind of strategy would not work today. Given their dire performance in the polls, the Tories are likely to be defeated in the next election regardless of whether they lose votes to the Right. So, even if they do make concessions to an insurgent party, they will be in no position to enact them. Moreover, the Tories will be wary of any Right-wing coalition that might scare off moderate voters in the Lib Dem marginal seats in the south and east of England. In other words, now is evidently not the time for another Right-wing insurgency.

The situation on the Left, however, is very different. To form a government, Labour needs to win big and win across the country: an almost unprecedented electoral task. A Leftist party perhaps drawn from a few disgruntled MPs, outrider commentators and a celebrity or two picking up between 5-10% of the vote could cause a huge amount of damage without even winning any seats, especially if it gave the Tories the upper hand in some of the tightest marginals. In this instance, Starmer would be forced onto a civil war footing.

Moreover, there is a clear ideological gap for the Leftist insurgency to occupy. Starmers weakness is that on crime, on culture, on social issues and even on economics he is cautious about leaning into populist ideas. Not wanting to scare potential supporters, he talks little of nationalisation, seems sometimes beholden to identity politics and is squeamish about things such as reducing immigration to protect workers. But when it comes to economics, a large proportion of voters sit to the Left of Labour, especially Starmers version of it.

If one dares to look beyond Rachel Reevess sensible economic credentials, there is real scope for more radical economic policies to capture the public imagination, from ramping up tax rates to imposing rent controls. There is currently mass support for the nationalisation of energy something that Labour has been careful to step back from as well as for nationalising trains and water supply. A clear majority of British voters dont think the rich pay enough tax, and so a cost-of-living response that embraces some form of Universal Basic Income or increases taxes on the very richest would also go down well. Starmer, who knows he must appeal to the middle ground, wont dare to go down this path but a firebrand might.

All of which might start to sound a little like Corbynism rehashed, but the difference is that any successful Left-wing populist movement would have to be rooted in a patriotic vision that reflects the views of the British people. It could not be on the side of Stop the War or identity politics but would fly the flag and sing the national anthem. The new party would also embrace the Leftish vision of leaving the EU that appealed to many Brexiteers in left-behind regions: strengthening worker protections, for example, would be a popular policy with even Tory voters opposed to things such as zero-hours contracts and fire and rehire. It could also take a tough, Left-wing stance on crime and immigration, wresting these from the Right by portraying them as issues which protect the poorest.

Could the British Left learn from their European counterparts? Across the Continent, insurgent Leftists have recently achieved success by capitalising on the failure of both Right and Left and focusing instead on populist demands. Support for the centre-Left party Syriza surged in Greece after the financial crisis thanks to their anti-neoliberal, anti-globalist rhetoric; in Spain, while Podemos emerged as an anti-establishment option with Left-wing economics. Though these parties have now started to wane Syriza trailed nearly 23 points behind the conservative New Democracy party in the countrys elections this is no reason to discount their initial success (if anything, its a lesson in what happens once they start to stray from their initial pledges). A British Left-populist party could follow their example, first by developing a popular alternative to the old-Left establishment, and then by broadening their appeal towards big-tent populism.

Of course, electoral success would be harder to replicate here because of our first-past-the-post system but its far from impossible. At the very least, a new party could introduce itself to voters in next years general elections, and seek to capitalise on their results in 2025s locals. There are lots on the Left who seem alienated from Starmers centrism, especially those who espoused a sort of soft Corbynism. None yet seem committed to forming a new party, but it might serve them better in the short term than trying to wrestle the levers of Labour from him.

Forming a Left-wing populist party would not be easy. It would face the same hurdles as any other new party finding the funds, the supporters and the platform to get off the ground. Equally, it would have to find a way to delicately navigate policy traps that the Left has long struggled with, particularly surrounding the issues of immigration and social liberalism. But that doesnt make it impossible.

Farage and the various parties he led achieved their goal on Brexit because they parasitically latched onto the power of the Tories. Now that host is exhausted, but there is space for a Leftist visionary to take advantage of the rising Labour party. After all, the Conservatives won in 2019 by targeting Leftish voters who had grown tired of Labour, galvanising them both around Brexit and a more interventionist economy. This fell flat in government, but showed how populism could reach new electoral coalitions especially in disenchanted regions. Arguably, the SNP and Plaid Cymru have already succeeded in advancing some form of Left-wing populism, albeit framed around civic nationalism.

In a time of great political flux, where the main parties have been untethered from popular opinion, the opportunity for radical Left-wing thought has always existed. So far, it is unclear who will seize it, but that doesnt mean the conditions arent ripe for an insurgency. Politics can often act as a pendulum, and while Labour delights in the decline of Britains Right, they would do well to keep an eye on the rebirth of the Left.

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Starmer should beware a Left-wing insurgency - UnHerd

Okaz, Saudi Arabia, July 6

The end of the war in Europe in the late 1940s spawned a reconstruction process throughout the continent, led by France, which urgently needed labor. This necessity resulted in a large influx of Moroccans into the French job market. As the French economy experienced a recovery, the demand for this labor only increased. Many of these immigrants intended to stay in France temporarily, yet their stay eventually lengthened. These people lived in run-down neighborhoods close to the capital of Paris and other large cities. They formed a distinct community that posed a challenge to local urban areas. Consequently, the decision was made to construct social housing to concentrate these individuals in one place. This move created a barrier between immigrants and mainstream French society, plunging second-generation immigrants into marginalization and alienation. With their parents clinging to ties to their countries of origin, members of this new generation had no homeland to which they could truly belong other than France. Later generations of immigrants sought equality with their French counterparts, but the states efforts to improve the suburbs, however commendable, were not sufficient, particularly in terms of economic policy. As the 1990s marked the end of the Cold War, resurgent populist right-wing parties ushered in a new era of the nation-state. Consequently, the citizenship state that had emerged from the ashes of World War II began to gradually decline. Even greater identity, economic, and social crises increased populist support, culminating in right-wing groups coming to power in Italy and Austria. This right-wing ideology has even been adopted by traditional parties, such as the Conservative Party in Britain, leading to Boris Johnsons rise to power with his populism-driven rhetoric that enabled the adoption of Brexit, with all its negative consequences for Britons. Now in France, the situation has not changed. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the far-right has become essential in the French presidential elections. What is even more concerning is the fact that traditional parties have begun being influenced by this same far-right extremism, as long as it holds appeal in electoral contests. This has subsequently led to a normalization of xenophobic and racist discourse, as numerous politicians and public figures have attempted to establish their presence by exhibiting increasingly extreme views. ric Zemmours participation in the most recent presidential election is perhaps the most glaring example of this growing symbiotic relationship. Hate speech has found outlets in the media, creating a barrier between a significant section of foreign-origin French society and the populist right. Worst of all, these sentiments have seeped into security services, resulting in tension and distrust between youth in the suburbs and security services personnel. This pressure has been intensifying every day and reached new heights with the killing of the 17-year-old boy Nahel Merzouk, which has sparked riots in cities across France as well as the town of Nanterre to the west of Paris where he grew up. The extreme right is on the rise in France, transforming the state and society to an alarming degree. This transformation is coming at the expense of immigrantsa price that is too heavy for them to bear. Rami Al-Khalifa Al-Ali (translated by Asaf Zilberfarb)

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The French Far-Right Tsunami Is Coming - The Media Line

This sudden uptick of support for far-right parties is happening all over Europe. In Germany, the Alternative fr Deutschland (AfD) is surging. It scored 22% in a recent national opinion poll and 34% in the region of Thuringia, where, for the first time, its candidate won a district mayoral election in June. In Austria, meanwhile, the Freedom Party (FP) is consistently polling above both the centre left and centre-right parties, at around 30%.

In France, where riots that centred on poor, ethnic minority communities shook Emanuel Macrons presidency last month, the political winner has been Rassemblement Nationale (RN). Its leader, Marine Le Pen who called for a crackdown on the protests has approval ratings on 39% compared to President Macrons 33%.

In the Flanders region of Belgium, the Vlaams Belang a far-right separatist party with a fascist past is on 22%. In Portugal, Chega, another openly racist far-right party, has doubled its 2022 election score to poll 12% and 14% for most of this year. In Greece no fewer than three far-right parties entered parliament in the June general election with a combined score of 12%, the largest of them overtly aligned to a jailed neo-Nazi former MP.

Meanwhile, in Sweden, Finland, Hungary, Poland and Italy, right-wing populist parties are already firmly ensconced in government. The price democracies pay for that was shown in Finland last week when deputy prime minister Riikka Purra, who leads the far-right Finns Party, was revealed to have bragged: If they gave me a gun, thered be bodies on a commuter train, referring to an incident with migrants. Her defence was that it happened in 2008 and that unlike her fellow minister she had not made any public jokes using the phrase Heil Hitler (the Hitler guy resigned).

Joe Mulhall, director of research at Hope Not Hate says: There are a series of elections due over the next five years where, apart from Germany, all the major countries in continental Europe could either end up with far-right governments or a far-right party a ruling coalition. When Austrian far-right leader Jrg Haider was elected in the 1990s, or when Le Pen did well in 2012, there were demonstrations everywhere and conniptions across the global media. Today theres just a sense of relief that they havent won.

Whats driving this new surge of right-wing populism? First, the cost-of-living crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine, which has plunged the euro area into an inflationary recession. Though the negative GDP numbers were slight minus 0.1% GDP growth for Q4/2022 and Q1/2023 the inflation figures were big: 6.1% across the Eurozone, with Latvia, Slovakia, Poland and Czechia all on 12% and Hungary on 21%.

Theres an increasing sense, for people across the continent, that the status quo isnt working, says Mulhall, and whenever we get into one of those crunch points, with economically deprived communities that are already susceptible to far-right politics, people turn round and ask, electorally: Why not look elsewhere?.

Florian Ranft, of Das Progressive Zentrum, a centre-left German thinktank, says this is particularly true of the AfDs surge in Eastern Germany. In Sonneberg, a picture-postcard town close to the Czech border, Ranft tells, me, the AfDs winning candidate only campaigned on national issues. They had thousands of posters about closing the borders, or ending the war in Ukraine, which had nothing to do with local politics. Its a protest vote.

The second factor, experts believe, is the unique situation of a rise in trans-Mediterranean refugee traffic, alongside the arrival four million refugees from Ukraine. Youre getting the idea of the deserving and undeserving refugee, says Mulhall: There are white Christians from Ukraine and then people who the far-right stigmatise as single male economic migrants of fighting age: all the primary narratives across the European far right concern the idea there are non-white people coming over to invade us and change us demographically.

But underlying these trigger factors is the deeper demographic divergence between the life experience of young, educated, skilled and urban people and those in older, ex-industrial small towns. Paul Hilder, CEO of Datapraxis, a strategic advice and research company working with progressive parties across Europe, says:

As worldviews and experiences diverge, and the system is increasingly seen as failing to deliver consistently for people, issues such as immigration and crime function as common vectors of alienation. Wherever we poll in Europe, there is either large minority or majority support for the position that all immigration, legal or illegal, should be stopped.

The cost-of-living crisis, says Hilder, has made voters go in search of immediate change and practical answers: Where the populist right are winning they often seem to attract swing voters who are experiencing insecurity in their daily lives and want something better for themselves and their families. These voters are often losing faith in mainstream politics, wanting change, and looking for any port in a storm and they will vote despite the extremist ideology of the far-right parties, not because of it.

Hilders polling shows that in France, Sweden and Italy, twice as many voters switched to far-right parties because they hoped they would change things rather than because they thought such parties have the best policies.

Another factor boosting the far-right vote is the mainstreaming of its ideology via social media, which increasingly forces the mainstream media to give it a platform. Weve had an object lesson in this process with GB News and the National Conservatives conference in the UK with one feeding off the other to legitimise anti-trans, anti-drag and white victimhood ideas. But elsewhere in Europe, the process is on steroids.

Paulina Frhlich, who heads the democratic resilience programme at Das Progressive Zentrum, says: The AfD has more than three times as many Facebook followers as the ruling SPD. They understand social media and use it to good effect. For example, they deliver their speeches in the Bundestag in a YouTube-friendly way. Within a few minutes, the video is edited and uploaded. The speech was not addressed to the colleagues in parliament, but to the partys followers beyond.

Experts believe the AfD does not need the traditional media any more because it has built up its own mass media online, where it doesnt have to deal with context or critical questions from journalists. Without social media, the AfD would not even be in parliament.

A signal moment in the evolution of the European far right came with the de facto inclusion of the Sweden Democrats in a conservative-liberal coalition last October. Though they did not get any ministers from the deal, the SDs who have well-documented origins in neo-Nazism co-signed the coalition agreement, which calls for a crackdown on gang crime, the reduction of immigration to a legal minimum and a demanding programme of cultural integration.

There was no need for Swedens mainstream parties to admit the Sweden Democrats: they could have sought to govern as a minority, or in coalition with the Social Democrats. So it was a conscious, strategic choice and gave permission for the direct absorption of the Finns Party into the government in Helsinki this year, whose neo-Nazi gaffes have now triggered a political crisis. Few doubt that, if the PP and VOX can form a majority government in Madrid after next Sunday, they will.

The underlying problem is that the ide fixe of modern fascist ideology the Great Replacement Theory has begun to structure the thinking of both the populist and the conservative right. The idea that Muslim invaders are coming to enact white genocide against the population of Europe, encouraged by an army of human rights lawyers, feminists and drag queens is of course ludicrous; but its an order of magnitude more dangerous than the routine racial prejudice of the 1970s and 80s.

Because its practical conclusions are alarming. First, it has begun to frame all politics to the right of traditional conservatism around the myth of a coming inter-ethnic conflict. Second, it elevates misogyny and anti-LBTQ+ prejudices to the same status as racism within far-right folklore opening up recruitment pathways for young men. Third, it swirls through, and collides with, an amorphous cloud of online conspiracy theories. Fourth, it maps more effectively on to the widespread anti-systemic sentiment among voters.

So, for the French far right, the recent uprisings by minority ethnic communities in response to the police murder of an unarmed teenager are no longer simply cited as a justification for ending migration or tougher policing: they are framed as a rehearsal for Day X when liberal democracy erupts into a global inter-ethnic civil war.

And the critical forums where the text of far-right populism gets mixed with the subtext of outright fascism are online, says Hope Not Hates Mullhall:

Alongside the far-right parties you have a miasma of post-organisational far-right networks involving thousands of individuals operating across national boundaries. These networks are like synapses, that allow information, ideas, rhetoric, tactics to move around the internet, creating memes and content and pushing it towards wherever the next target is.

Everybody I spoke to about the far-right surge pointed to the paralysis of liberal, green and social-democratic parties in the face of it. Mulhall warns that sudden, local radicalisations, which grab the attention of party strategists weeks before elections, are often the produce of decades of local work by far-right activists. The Spanish left and centre left, meanwhile, had to scramble together messaging for the snap election they triggered, in the case of the radical left producing a whole new party, slogans and programme.

Paul Hilder of Datapraxis offers a handful of to-dos for parties of the progressive mainstream in the face of the right-wing populist surge.

Meet voters where they are, which is struggling with inflation in their daily lives; make bold, practical and credible offers on these issues. When it comes to drawing a contrast with the right wing populists, its not about calling them fascists or Putin backers its about connecting their extremism to life getting worse and not better. Progressives need to attract a diverse electorate, ranging from those who agree with them on social issues to those who dont. Finally, its about execution: making sure that clear, effective messages are reaching the right people.

Does this mean we should stay away from woke politics, I ask? Hilder, who has worked with some of the most progressive politicians across Europe and the Americas, does not mince his words.

Many marginal voters take the position that ordinary peoples daily lives are more important than social or ethnic minorities. That doesnt mean being anti-woke. If your disposable income has dropped by 10 or 20% in the past year, thats what you want politicians to be focusing on, rather than how many genders there are.

In the run-up to Sundays vote, the Spanish socialist party has been laser focused on the cost of living, campaigning on its record of getting inflation down to 1.9% by using price controls while in government. We will see whether that cuts through the tsunami of hate coming from the right.

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Can Spain hold back the right? - The New European

Around the world emerging new exclusionary politics are generating deepening inequalities, jobless growth, climate chaos, and social division. These processes have been intensified or exposed in many places by the Covid-19 pandemic and responses to it, but they are not new. Since 2017 the Emancipatory Rural Politics Initiative (ERPI) has used engaged research to better understand these destructive dynamics, and the social and political processes in rural spaces that are generating alternatives to them. We aim to provoke debate and action among scholars, activists, practitioners and policymakers from across the world who are concerned about the current situation, and hopeful about alternatives and resistances.

Today, these questions remain urgent, worldwide. Yet organised movements and actions in and from rural areas have contributed to changing the political trajectories in many countries: the (qualified) success of the Indian farmers' protests; the electoral victories of left-wing parties in Chile, Peru and other countries in Latin America; the repositioning of the Workers Party in Brazil and more. Other tensions and dynamics are playing out in many other countries: from Turkey to Tunisia, Mozambique to the United States of America. In some places regressive populism has turned into outright authoritarianism, as in Myanmar. How do we make sense of all these changes and continuities?

Engaged researchers have published timely collections on these issues: (a) Routledge book 'Authoritarianism and the Rural World' with 20 chapters and edited by Ian Scoones, Saturnino M. Borras Jr., Marc Edelman, Ruth Hall, Lyda Fernanda Forero, Ben White and Wendy Wolford (Open Access ebook); (b) Special Issue of Sociologia Ruralis onauthoritarian populism in Europeedited by Natalia Mamonova, Jaume Franquesa and Sally Brooks; (c) Special Issue ofJournal of Rural Studieson North America edited by Antonio Roman-Alcala, Garrett Lovelace-Graddy and Marc Edelman; (d) aspecial forum ofLatin American Perspectivesedited by Daniela Andrade and Sergio Coronado and e)A View From The Countryside, co-published by TNI, FIAN, and ERPI by Katie Sandwell, Anglica Castaeda Flores, Lyda Fernanda Forero, Jennifer Franco, Sofia Monsalve Surez, Andrea Nuila and Philip Seufert.

This edition of the Agrarian Conversations Webinar Series will showcase these relevant and urgent publications, discuss recent events, and assess the progress of struggles in and from the rural areas in relation to right-wing populism.

Speakers:

Moderators:Ruth Hall(PLAAS) andKatie Sandwell(TNI)

Background reading: Preface of Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World, pages xv-xxi,https://library.oapen.org/handle/20.500.12657/49632Languages: English, Spanish, French

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Populism, authoritarianism and agrarian struggles - Transnational Institute