The satirically named Ensemble will keep up appearances, but which way will its voters jump? While pre-existing conservative phenomena have been known to ally with Fascism, usually to their own ruin, it is the liberal bourgeoisie that keeps Fascism in reserve for when it might ever face any serious demand to share its economic or social power with anyone who did not have it before the rise of the bourgeois liberal order, or to share its cultural or political power with anyone at all.
In signs of things to come on the Far Right even in Britain, the Rassemblement National has little of the Euroscepticism of the old Front National, while on Gaza and on Ukraine, Jordan Bardella is as useless as Giorgia Meloni; Jean-Luc Mélenchon is also keeping some regrettable company. Nigel Farage is as bad as Bardella and Meloni on Gaza, but with no Workers Party or Left Independent candidate at Clacton, his election would at least contribute to the debate on Ukraine.
Where Farageism remains in the Rightist mainstream is in its lumpenproletarian electoral base, waiting to be mobilised by the centrists against any insoumission. The seat that Reform UK stands its best chance of winning is Clacton, where 50 per cent of the adult population is economically inactive (that is, not even looking for work), and 20 per cent, one in five, has never had a job of any kind.
Reform MPs would disappoint people who'd thought they were voting for someone like Le Pen.
ReplyDeleteOne to watch, indeed.
DeleteMost Reform MPs would disappoint people who'd thought they were voting for Nigel Farage, Ben Habib, or Richard Tice.
DeleteOne to watch, perhaps.
Delete