Latest / The Nation Podcasts / The Rise of the Far Right in Europe w/ David Broder | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer

Transcript

The Rise of the Far Right in Europe w/ David Broder | The Time of Monsters with Jeet Heer · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: The old world is dying, the new world struggles to be born, now is the time of monsters.
• 0:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: With those words, very loosely take it from a graph sheet, I welcome you to the time of monsters podcast.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm G.T.
• 0:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: here of the Nation magazine.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: This podcast is sponsored by the Nation and widely available in all podcasting platforms.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Today, the particular monsters I want to take out are actually very aproposal of grumps you there, these sort of grandchildren of the monsters that grumps you were able to vote.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm talking about the European populist so-called populist right, these sort of people who take up anti-system politics and have made real headways in Europe as they have in the Western Hemisphere.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: and I can't think of anyone better to talk about this than my guest, David Broder, who is European owner of Jacobin, author of a book called Whistle of these grandchildren, which is about fascism in contemporary Italy, and who wrote a very fine piece in the New York Times about both the rise of anti-system redwing politics in Europe,
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: But also more crucially, the role that centrist governments have played in trying to fend it off unsuccessfully and perhaps in some cases planting the seeds of their own destruction.
• 1:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: So first of all, David, very happy to have you on the program.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Hi, gee.
• 1:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, thanks for inviting me.
• 1:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm very glad to be here.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: So yeah, let's just take a broad survey before we look at place-specific countries.
• 1:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So how would you describe these sort of broad parameters of what is happening in European politics right now?
• 1:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I start the piece by saying that about 10 years ago, there was a lot of discussion of the idea of this wave of populist electoral upsets.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: I challenged the language of populism, but there was this idea of, after the financial crisis,
• 1:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: voters are unhappy and they're choosing to protest vote.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's this kind of moment of electoral upset.
• 2:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: So of course combining things also like Trump's first election, Brexit, some of the advances for the Front National and France and so on.
• 2:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in a certain sort of liberal centrist telling, this moment produced many sort of horrible episodes, but then kind of with the pandemic, people looking
• 2:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: then of course the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
• 2:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: People got frightened and the populist wave started to ebb.
• 2:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: A lot of these parties actually did suffer some electoral setbacks including, for example, the alternative for Germany, Marine Le Pen never actually made it to be president.
• 2:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there was a certain kind of reassuring
• 2:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: narrative the grown-ups are back in charge, also because of Biden coming into power, all of shorts, winning the German election in 2021, Keistarm as election in Britain.
• 3:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: So from a certain sort of centrist standpoint, the tide might have been seen to Ebb.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And now what we're seeing is that they're wrong.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: These, this wasn't just a single moment.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's not just a protest vote, far right parties are across Europe, including in its richest countries and the ones which are most central to the European project.
• 3:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: These far-right parties have established themselves as a permanent part of the, at least, electoral scenery, right, and countries like Germany, France, as well as ones like Italy, they're getting, you know, a quarter or a third of the vote, and now backed by, you know, Trump back in charge, of course, promote Baylor Musk and so on.
• 3:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: these parties kind of seem closer to power than ever and it's not just on the periphery of the European Union, it's in some of the core countries.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: So this leads to a discussion of courses, how radical and destabilising actually are these parties.
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Are they just going to be kind of integrated in a way that, for example, many bandits would say the Italian far right has been into a kind of systemic politics of European Union membership supporting NATO supporting Ukraine and so on.
• 4:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what I'm really questioning is whether they're these parties acceptants of these institutions, the fact that they're seeking to play a role in them, shows that they've been sort of defanged and deradicalised or whether there's actually something deeper going on in terms of the direction of those institutions.
• 4:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because as some of your listeners may have guessed from my accent,
• 4:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And often after the Brexit vote in 2016, a lot of people thought the kind of model for far-right parties might be to try and lead their own countries after the European Union, right, to split into the EU to go off in a nationalist direction.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think what we're actually saying instead now is something different, which is that these parties like Mirin depends front
• 5:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: like George and Melania's party in Italy and so on.
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're actually looking to change Europe from within and are succeeding in doing so.
• 5:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're succeeding in pushing their own policy agenda, also want to more mainstream, conservative forces, and getting policy wins, including on things that are core planks of the European project, such as the green transition.
• 5:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think you know compared to maybe five years ago when it might have seen that European Union leaders had sort of learnt some of the lessons of the post financial crisis period that it was sort of politically more stable.
• 5:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that that kind of idea of a return to normal is now seriously in trouble and if we look at the
• 5:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: cases of France and Germany traditionally the two sort of main powers in the European Union.
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: In each case the rolling sort of center to center right forces are doing pretty badly.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I know.
• 6:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean it might be useful to like look at each country and I sort of case by case Example and I think that maybe France is a good place to start because I do actually think you know like as you're coming out of From the first victory and Brexit the victory of a Macaron in France was initially held as you know like showing like you know That centrist liberalism could still speak to the issues of the time could still rally the population against the start of the right
• 6:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: and be victorious.
• 6:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: But you know like approaching nearly a decade after that, I think Macron's project considerably less successful.
• 6:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you want to like just what's what's happening in France?
• 6:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, for a certain type of observer, Emmanuel Macron was the ultimate in anti-popularism, centrism, bringing together the best of left and right, and was seen as a disrupter of the party political system, which in a way he was in his first election.
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I think that, you know, looking
• 7:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: more closely at what's really happened is that he managed to unite around himself to begin with both parts of the centre-left and centre-right establishment, partly using a sort of certain version of electoral anti-fascism morning against Le Pen, but he's a vision that he set out when he became president.
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: was, I'm going to undermine the support for Le Pen by answering the basic grievance that she's tapping into.
• 7:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Macron, in a sense, correctly understood that the
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: fundamental reason for the success of the populist right or far right isn't just about identity or immigration, but more fundamentally rooted in like a loss of confidence in the future, institutions, in the future of prosperity.
• 8:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Macron had his own idea of the way to go about
• 8:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: solving that, which was to use his presidency to start dismantle the previously existing French social model at a faster rate even than previous governments.
• 8:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right, so he promised to make France in a famous phrase he used, of course, Macron often says one thing and the opposite as well, but he said it fairly consistently.
• 8:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, he tweeted an English, he wanted to make France into a start-up nation.
• 8:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what he understood, which I think is correct in an abstract sense, is that the way to deal with the front national wasn't to sort of meet them halfway or meet their demands, but actually to show through his leadership that there actually was a better path to prosperity.
• 8:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, so his solution was basically cut back the welfare state.
• 8:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: free up wealthy France by cutting wealth taxes, and these as a ultra-free market here recipes would like unleash a spirit of creative dynamism, get the economy moving upwards, and then people would see that actually centrist mainstream politics does have the solutions.
• 9:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I should mention like he's working in a specifically French context and trying to harness this kind of like, you know, a gallist tradition of the president as a figure that is beyond left and right that stands for the nation that can be a kind of leadership figure and so so so that's also part of the program of creating a new dynamic futurist vision of presenting himself as the, you know, Jupiter who presides over this this country.
• 9:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, exactly, because of course, what he was actually promising was to enact reforms that he knew people wouldn't like and which, they said, you know, it's not like people often accused Tony Blair in his day of like ruling by focus groups.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, Macron explicitly said he was going to do what's administered painful reforms that people wouldn't like, but then they'd see the positive benefits and
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: reward him electorally.
• 10:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: And then the reality is that in particular the cutting tax for the super wealthy has not so magically generated growth as it happened of course the pandemic era spending by the French state which was far less of a recipient of co-EU funds or yeah yeah the French day had to pay a lot more for its own to post pandemic recovery plan which also of course wasn't just
• 10:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: welfare distribution scheme but was spending to prop up private business that has massively increased the French states budget deficit and therefore it's debt.
• 10:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so now we're in the position where even after implementing a whole bunch of austerian reforms that didn't work, Macron is pushing for even more cuts to social welfare in the name of the balancing the state budget at the same time, of course, as massively expanding military spending, not without a good reason from the perspective of important French business interests for answering one of the world's leading weapons exporters.
• 11:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, so what we are essentially in is a situation where a government which delivered its program with a kind of performative arrogance and so no at all attitude, completely ignoring protests from the layer from unions and so on, faced with its, faced with its program, has basically continually shed support and in the process has also started to, and not just recently,
• 11:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: really since Macron's to narrow a reelection in 2022, his government has tried to lean into increasing the right wing identity politics as it's preferred mechanism of competing with the far right.
• 11:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And actually if you look at the people who are from Macron's camp,
• 11:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: who are hoping to stand in the next presidential election against, you know, as the mains are centrist or centre-right candidates against the foreign national, all of them are basically competing to outdo each other on taking anti-immigrant attitudes, talking about civilizational decline,
• 12:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: adopting kind of parts of the international's program basically out of the idea that while people shouldn't risk it by voting for a far right party, but perhaps they should try voting for a centre-right politician who says some of the same things, but who's a bit more sort of reliable and business-like.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so this results in this kind of de-politization where where they basically say that their reason for
• 12:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: not agreeing with the front national ultimately amounts to issues of kind of competence and so on.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So you know in France we've already seen a lot of the sort of traditional goalist party, the Republicans increasingly even leading members defecting to Le Pen's party or proposing electoral agreements with it.
• 12:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've seen a lot of the sort of business establishment, media,
• 13:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: and even leaders of private businesses starting to sort of recognize that Le Pen's party is something they can manage and work with.
• 13:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think overall what we've seen is a kind of legitimization of the far right and we're looking increasingly to be in a kind of situation where backgrounds and popular policies have both sort of created an open political open goal for the far right.
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: through his own popularity and the protests against what he's done in government, yet at the same time, in terms of what might have been the issues on which he would have fought the far right, actually legitimising their agenda, meeting them halfway, and even, for example, as I mentioned in the article, even on immigration reform, his government has actually relied on
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in many different ways macrons presidency, far from sort of undermining the financial or giving people reason to hope again or stopping the monetary to vote for it, really it's been a big process of sort of paving the way for a potential for our national government next time.
• 14:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I mean, I think it's exceptionally cogent presentation.
• 14:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I think the pattern that we should pay attention to, which we see elsewhere in Europe, and in North America as well, is that the proposals that you can sort of defang the far right by adopting their anti-immigration policies, doesn't end up being successful.
• 14:37
  [SPEAKER_01]: It just legitimizes their agenda by saying, well, you know, like this is something that everyone agrees with, the mainstream parties also agree with this.
• 14:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then in that situation, if you're unhappy with the status quo, then why would you buy this argument that the mainstream parties will do the far right agenda more confidently since you don't even trust their confidence.
• 14:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: So so you are basically, as you say, paving the way for the far right success.
• 15:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: How is this dynamic playing out in Germany?
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I mean, in, you know, Friedrich Mats, who's now the Chancellor, Christian Democrat, leader, I'd want to take over as leader of the party.
• 15:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: He in many ways tried to distance himself from the legacy of Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor, and so partly sort of playing into the the idea that, well, you know, she let loads of Syrian refugees come into Germany and Europe, and that was a mistake, and he would be a more sort of hard line right-wing authentically
• 15:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: Chancellor.
• 15:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in some ways it's an approach we've also seen of other sort of mainstream centre-right parties attempting to combat the far right, by sort of again, so a leaning into part of its agenda, talking tough for on immigration, the role of Muslims in European societies and so on.
• 15:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: However, that didn't score all that amazingly in the federal election, this February,
• 15:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: his Christian Democrats who had been in opposition came first place in the election, but with only 28% of the votes and had to make a coalition with the social Democrats, which even to get sent to right and sent to left together another grand coalition where both the historic mass parties who used to add it up.
• 16:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: they used to get like four fifths of the vote right now barely half if that.
• 16:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the sort of main mass parties that sort of blocks on which the Federal Republic has always been based since 1949, those kind of center forces or mainstream forces let's say are sort of huddling together for warmth in a way which I think also is actually very damaging for even the kind of right-wing project which
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: right because ultimately the alternative for Germany, the far right party, well, they just say, well, this is just yet another, you know, they say the government's left wing, because it's going to social democratic ministers, right?
• 16:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, the, the, well, I mean, I think that's a national unity government discredits the establishment in general, because it actually confirms the argument of anti system people on the right, and actually on the love as well, they're like, the establishment parties, they're, there's a difference between them.
• 17:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: they're all in casuits together, they all have the same agenda, so you're basically verify the critique of anti-system forces.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think like what's, and we've seen it also, we've seen this example before, note to very notably Italy, which is you mentioned earlier, it's the country I've were most.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: But the thing is, when the reason the political contest between the major
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: What that also allows a party like alternative for Germany to do is to kind of occupy the whole space of opposition.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 17:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So on the one hand, so I think like a good example and a good key to understanding this is the popularity of the AFD will tend to for Germany in the former East.
• 17:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, it's true that the AFD talk a lot about the abandonment of East Germany, the sort of incomplete and unsuccessful reunification of Germany, and they mobilise a certain type of identity politics of easterners who were overlooked.
• 18:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: or it's kind of like they're nostalgic for some sort of welfare, it's a more something.
• 18:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: But actually what they're saying is something very different, which is like, we want to be as rich as the West, we want the success we were promised, but hasn't been delivered, and instead immigrants are getting that promise, not us.
• 18:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the AFD as a party actually includes all sorts of different economic claims and positions, but which are, I think, we can say encapsulated by the idea of a sort of unfair meritocracy, right?
• 19:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: We want to succeed in the market.
• 19:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: We want the promise of neoliberalism, but it hasn't been delivered.
• 19:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in a way, they do exploit to resentment like low wages or the sort of abandonment of services in small town East Germany.
• 19:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: But that's also allied to a desire for a more effective free market economy, which is just a way to have absolutely no problem with being totally hostile to green policies and so on, which they say are destroying growth.
• 19:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, and at the same time, I mean, one of the main ways in which centrist parties try to attack AFD is to say, well, they're against the remiliterization, and we all need to build our defenses against Russia, but the AFD are against supporting Ukraine.
• 19:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: And yeah, it's true that the AFD are against supporting Ukraine, they're against the sanctions on Russia, and they say that that's the reason why Germans energy bills are so high, but actually they do also want
• 20:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: they want European collective borrowing to invest in German military industries.
• 20:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're all in favour.
• 20:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that the advantage they have is that faced with both the major parties sort of failing to satisfy because social demand on which they're historically based,
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: The AFD is able to build quite a broad oppositional coalition of voters.
• 20:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, we should be clear.
• 20:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's hardly the case that they speak for all or even most working-class people or easterners, but in some groups they have accelerated very quickly, particularly among young men, for example, the AFD is really dominant.
• 20:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, I think that this government, and actually even the previous social democrat leg governments, you have tried to do things like harshening refugee policy, promising more deportations, they actually have deported more people.
• 20:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's kind of unable to satisfy the demand that AFD offer, which is a constantly rising pitch of demand for more and more to be done, not only to stop a new immigration, but even actually to send back people who already live in Germany and perhaps even people born in Germany.
• 21:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I mean, that is one noticeable thing about the whole sort of immigration debate that the sort of mainstream of the anti-immigration position has just further radicalize the right that they have up their demand so that now the cries are re-migration.
• 21:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's to say the sort of ethnic cleansing of society, including a people board in Germany or even in the case of Turks people who's like, you know, might have been in Germany for several generations now.
• 21:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: It does seem like the centrist parties to the extent that they themselves are accepting the framing that we are the upholders of the status quo and we're even willing to align the center left of the center right together and this is sitting the ground of an alternative.
• 22:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it is validating the actual title of the far right party.
• 22:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: They are the alternative for Germany.
• 22:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: Because you have a very narrow kind of status quo that even seeds or concedes, many of the complaints of the far right by accepting the idea that immigrants are the cause of social problems, but present themselves as we are going to maintain or uphold the status quo with competence and I don't think like in the long run that's a very compelling argument at all in some ways it's a discrediting argument.
• 22:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, for certain.
• 22:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I mean, it's, the fun news is that now we have increasing the situation where even central left parties, including kids, Thomas, Labour Party, and Britain, say, well, the problem with the previous Tory government is that it said it would reduce immigration off to Brexit and didn't.
• 22:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's this far right, or what was a far right, meme called Boris Wave, which is to say that when Boris Johnson was Prime Minister, he opened up the floodgates for a massive wave of immigration.
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: to say, well, you know, the Tories weren't competent.
• 23:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: They weren't stopping people coming.
• 23:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's what we're doing.
• 23:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the problem is, as there's good else, kind of the garden that the day I had this church, talk about this, we just like, well, the problem is, is that by saying the problem is about stopping people coming.
• 23:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: is totally dishonest about labor shortages or indeed the reasons why people set off moving in the first place and just sort of indulges this fantasy that what we could do is just like shut down the borders and stop anyone coming.
• 23:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know, I think that's a good occasion to like just take up a broad overview of the United Kingdom, which is like the, you know, other major example as you're suggesting where this dynamic is playing along.
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: And it's kind of a curious one because unlike, you know, in Germany or France, where this, you know, the center of parties are in a sort of precarious position, have to negotiate.
• 24:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: like, you know, labor in the UK, as like as, you know, a super majority, like they have in a parliamentary system where like, you know, the governing party, if they have a majority, could, like, has actually quite a bit of sway.
• 24:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, it's a bit curious to see, like, in that context, a government that is not governing with confidence, but is really sort of playing.
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: But what's your sort of analysis of what's going on there?
• 24:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, I think that people like Kyestama or the advice of Morgan McSweeney or Rachel Reeves who's the Chancellor.
• 24:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: These people are geniuses of like internal labor movement machine politics, right?
• 24:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: They performed brilliantly in helping to wreck the kind of Corbin era and labor party.
• 24:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And afterwards, alsting the left from the party, almost without a fight from the other side.
• 24:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, they are brilliant maneuvers.
• 24:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: They think that political geniuses a lot of them are actually people who sort of grew up politically as kind of student activists during the sort of Tony Blair years.
• 25:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, they think that basically the one trick to have amazing electoral success for a left wing party is to be really right wing on everything.
• 25:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so this is kind of confirmed in their eyes by the election result.
• 25:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Only last July, 17 months ago, which was, you know, kissed on a one, I think the biggest labor majority in history, right?
• 25:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: If two thirds of the seats in the House of Commons, right?
• 25:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: They did that with only one third of the vote on what was also a historically low turnout.
• 25:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Since then, they have lost more than...
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think I'd like less votes, or maybe a smaller percentage, and like Corbin, I've gotten years earlier, yeah.
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what they would say, the defense of the storm, I would say, well, okay, but Corbin might have got more votes, but he also motivated more like anti-label votes, whereas like storm is a kind of pragmatic centrist.
• 25:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: lots of people who are quite right-wing, wouldn't really care if he took power.
• 26:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And basically, the problem is that that mode of doing politics is basically kind of, and it's again, it's a little like the MacRound thing, which is like, well, what we need to do is to show that we're really sensible and that, you know, even if we do unpopular things, like, for example, reducing the winter fuel allowance, which helps pay for pensioners heating,
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: or cutting benefits for disabled people, even to people who are working, those are like tough choices, but also they kind of performatively indicate that we're like careful with the public money.
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: And if we don't invest, if, as indeed they have done, if they cut back their plans for sort of green investment, then actually that will pay off in the long run because the bond markets will trust us.
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: and then growth would eventually return and when growth happens, then people will come and thank us.
• 26:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the problem with that kind of perspective is since the election last July, Labour has lost about half of its support in polling.
• 27:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the tin most polls, they aren't even at 20% of the vote in some of their as low as like 14 or 15.
• 27:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: In response to my article, I'd just say, most of the comments on the New York Times website say, well, you know, what I'm saying is that people are voting for the far right because left wing parties aren't left wing enough, like what an absurd thing to say.
• 27:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: My retouch to that would be either to say that
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: A part of the Labour Party has to mobilize its own supporters, right?
• 27:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: You can't appeal to everyone.
• 27:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what it needs to do is to mobilize the maximum number of people who are even conceivably going to vote for it.
• 27:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And to do that, it has to show them that it's able to act in their interests and in ways that conform with their moral values and expectations.
• 27:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So if Labour has lost half its votes in one to half years,
• 27:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: That doesn't seem to me likely to be because half of its voters have suddenly warned to Nigel Farage or consider that the main problem faced in the country is to slash immigration so they become far right.
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: Actually what's happened is that most of them have switched to the green party and also a big chunk of them just tell pulsars that they weren't voting anymore.
• 28:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, you know, what I am saying is, well, if Labour has, you know, two-thirds of the seat in Parliament is actually still wet into the first half of its term in office.
• 28:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: then actually it should be doing radical and bold and progressive and interventionist things and it isn't.
• 28:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: Instead it's trying to fight against Nigel Farage and reform his party by saying that he kind of has a point but he says what he says in two races the way and actually as I mentioned in the article that we've also had this very strange thing where
• 28:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Kyrstheimer has sort of adopted very sort of tough language in condemning previous labor governments, including even the Blair government, for example, saying mass immigration had caused incalculable damage to British society.
• 29:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, or, you know, for example, switching between saying that Farage's party has racist policies and then kind of backtracking.
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So, I think that Labour has sent a very confusing message, which kind of admits half of reform UK and Farage's point, and promises to resolve it in a more competent way, which is essentially to take sort of a showyly punitive measures against migrants,
• 29:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: confiscating refugees, valuables, to show that they're really tough on immigration, while also failing to take the political initiative on other areas where it might build alternative coalition of support.
• 29:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: So of course they're not going to appeal to everyone, but what they need to do is build political dividing lines and to politicize issues like the economy, like the taxation
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: Of course, voters who are drawn to the far right aren't particularly likely to consider that to be their main interest and action on that isn't necessarily going to win them back.
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: But what a centre left government has to do is build a coalition of support with interests with values mobilised around a kind of collective project for the direction the country is going to go in for the next, not even this government, but for decades.
• 30:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in that, the Green Transition, Green Reindustrialization, and also services, jobs connected to that, is absolutely fundamental, and it's just failing to make it an issue.
• 30:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's basically just talking about immigration all the time, and so I think that it's shown a real lack of leadership and while a lot of the sort of prayers you've supported the Stunt Project, kind of congratulate themselves and how brilliant and competent
• 30:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: judging by voters, choices, and polling, and so on, very few people are buying it.
• 31:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, I mean, I think that's exactly right.
• 31:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: They really did.
• 31:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: It does seem like the strategy by would say, one, you know, they're very impressive.
• 31:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: Victory, that was a demobilization strategy, which could only work if you had like an already discredited Tory party, who's on what is where discouraged.
• 31:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: And so therefore, you know, like running to the center, you know, not frightening the right wing voters allowed you to win that.
• 31:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: But that's not going to be the case forever, especially if like, you know, the right moves away from the Tories and coalesce is around, like a, you know, a more dynamic anti system party and then presents a social turn to them.
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: In that case, your strategy of demobilization is not only like ineffective, you're actually like creating all the preconditions for like a victory of the radical right.
• 31:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: Like it just seems like, I can't imagine like if your actual goal was, you know, to bring a deal fascist party into power of the United Kingdom, I can't imagine like doing anything more than labor is doing right now.
• 32:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: both legitimizing anti-immigrant sentiment, demoralizing your own voters, preaching the left from your party is like it all seems like a pointing in one direction.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, because I think the people like Starmer and so on, they have in their head, the Corbin thing, the Corbin leadership was disastrous.
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would be very good with it myself in lots of ways, but his perspective is kind of like, well, the thing that worked so far up to the point of election was punishing the left, attacking the left, showing Tory voters that they wouldn't be worried about us, so that's what we should keep doing.
• 32:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: And yet, then, but now the parties at like 18% in the polls probably even on average, and so it's like the, you know, certain of the ideas that were very strong on the Corbynite left, very much suffered from the impression that they were sort of vague ideas for the future that were sort of technocratic or as a big white elephant projects that didn't conform to reality.
• 33:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: The green transition stuff, I think very much suffers from this in terms of voter perception.
• 33:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: As like always, it's all very nice to say by 2050, we'll do this, but where's the like practical thing happening now, which shows that this actually isn't a threat to my interest that this actually is a necessary path to prosperity.
• 33:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: And with the majority of the Labour government has now,
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: it has an enormous opportunity to take the lead on that and make it real, because it can win every vote it likes in the comments, right?
• 33:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's just totally fading to do that, which was a guarantee is that the issue is going to be buried because also because it's now very likely that the next
• 33:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: government in Britain will be digital for art and reform UK.
• 33:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: That said, I do think that one of the possible sort of positive exit routes in the British case, more than in the French and German, is like there is a serious possibility that Kyrs Dharma will fall and that in a vote among the Labour membership for his replacement, a more left-wing candidate would win.
• 34:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: I actually think that given the appalling state of your party, the new party launched by Corbin, that some sort of recomposition of the Labour party remains a central necessary strategic horizon for the left.
• 34:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.
• 34:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: I think that makes sense especially, you know, like within that parliamentary system, where oftentimes real politics takes place within parties.
• 34:34
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's just between parties.
• 34:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, like, if there's a change within the labor party itself, then things could become very different.
• 34:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: But I mean, to sort of like flesh out, you know, the final part of your argument, like it's not just enough to say that these centrist, the centrist project of the last decade, like is clearly failing and, you know, in the three, three of the major European countries looks to be on the road to like far-right governments.
• 34:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: but also to like map out what a plausible alternative is and in your article you do site the examples of Denmark and Spain where central left parties have found a measure of success not just by co-opting anti-immigrant sentiments but by offering like real alternative in terms of economic policy.
• 35:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes, so when my, when my, at certain New York Times was asking me, we're moving to discussing this article as to winst at the idea of, like, finding positive counter examples because they're not great examples.
• 35:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have to say, but they're very telling.
• 35:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think the telling examples, but they're not just like good, uh, modeled to follow.
• 35:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the Danish one, I think, is really key because the Danish example is seen by a lot of sort of post-lipperal type thinkers in Britain.
• 35:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have the blue labour current.
• 35:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Danish example is often held up as a model for the British labour party.
• 35:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: And actually in the recent
• 36:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Denmark is explicitly cited by the government itself, even on the official government website, never mind, as a public media, Denmark is cited as this great example of social democracy that won back the work in class.
• 36:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the story goes a bit like, the social democrats started losing support to the Danish people's party, a far-right party, which in the mid-2010s was getting as much as a quarter of the vote.
• 36:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: The social democrats, led by method of Frederickson, pitched hard to the right on immigration in the late 2010s, saying, well, refugees, actually we don't want to integrate them like a stay for a bit, but then they'll be sent.
• 36:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Sent to where again, introducing this kind of performative cruelty, like the confiscating of valuables and so on.
• 36:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think a lot of people on the StarMur wing of the Labour Party is what it's going to pollute Labour current, which is a one which says, you know, let's win back the working class by being tough on immigration.
• 37:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: Something I write about a lot is this kind of increasing tendency to only talk about the working class as a political subject, specifically insofar as it's right-wing.
• 37:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, yeah.
• 37:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: So as an example of my point, it would be very, it would be very unlikely for the New York Times to run an article that said that a strike in opposition to a pension reform was an example of working class attitudes.
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Whereas protests against migration are almost always coated in the language of working class rust spell left behind all of this.
• 37:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: So there's kind of identity politics which is working class people are right-wing and don't like immigration and deep working class people aren't immigrants.
• 37:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: So in Britain this has become a very powerful force and this Danish example is used to illustrate it right?
• 37:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So Meta Frederickson, she became Prime Minister, Social Democrat in 2019,
• 37:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: In 2022, she won re-election with a slightly increased vote and it was actually a rare case of a social democratic party in power that increased its vote and the far right greatly diminished, right?
• 38:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: They're now in like single figures.
• 38:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: So what I am actually talking about in the article is that I think it's actually a myth to think that the immigration
• 38:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: policy is the reason why that happened, right?
• 38:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's true that Fredrickson moved much the right on immigration that Denmark has a particularly unwelcoming policy on refugees among all European countries.
• 38:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: However, if we look at the reasons why voters say they vote, what they said their priorities are, then the top issues in Denmark are inflation, cost of living, climate and energy.
• 38:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right?
• 38:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And Denmark, including under Frederickson's government, particularly her first government, which relied on left-wing party support, Denmark has world leading and particularly European leading green transition policies.
• 38:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Right?
• 38:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Massively invests in renewables, production, Denmark is the biggest oil producer in Europe and has committed to phase out production as the biggest oil trader in the world to set a legally binding date on a stopping oil drilling.
• 39:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: So,
• 39:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: What I'm saying is actually that those policies which haven't been politicized in Britain by the Labour Party actually were decisive in Denmark.
• 39:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: In Denmark, in Paris since 2022, her second government, Fred Rookson, has relied on coalition with centre-right parties,
• 39:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Actually, not unlike the current Grand Coalition, we haven't Germany, but this is the other way around.
• 39:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: So social democrats leave it with centre and centre to write our lives.
• 39:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: And her party support has fallen, and left wing parties are rising.
• 39:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I guess what I'm thinking is interesting and the Danish example is that what it's often used to illustrate, well, the social democrats saps the far right vote by being tough on immigrants.
• 39:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: But what I see instead is actually that a broad spectrum of parties increase their share and the far right declined.
• 40:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: because of a change in the economic picture and because of the rising prevalence and interest in green policies.
• 40:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's also true that they were rising other far-right forces who are against the green transition and mobilise around it.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, right.
• 40:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's inevitable.
• 40:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's an issue that is bound to be a reason for conflict.
• 40:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: But what left wing parties have to do is to, I think, show that the green industrialization agenda is a necessary part of future prosperity as well as being fundamental in terms of preserving the conditions for human life.
• 40:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: What it has to do is reconcile the demands that that transition involves with cost of living.
• 40:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that includes all sorts of problems.
• 40:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: But in the Danish case, it's actually a relatively successful example of that in practice.
• 40:55
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, no, absolutely.
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then I would add also that the green agenda has to be showing to be serving the working class.
• 41:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: As you say, you will get polarization on this issue.
• 41:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: But it seems like a more favorable battle ground to pick your battle, to fight on then on immigration.
• 41:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're certainly running out of time, so we don't have much to say.
• 41:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: But maybe a sense or two about Spain as well,
• 41:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I mean, I think so Spain is also, you know, alongside Denmark, probably in European social democracy, Denmark and Spain are the sort of opposite parts, right?
• 41:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, head of the socialist party there, is both the longest serving centre-left Prime Minister in Europe and probably also the most left-wing.
• 41:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: So the Spanish government, which has also, for the last five years, almost six years, in fact, are also included parts of the radical life that came out of Podemas and his period.
• 41:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: It will need there.
• 42:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so that government has, through its seven years and office, has increased the minimum wage by 50%.
• 42:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: has capped energy prices, has carried out a major revision of labor law unlike in other countries actually undoing previous neoliberal counterreforms and you know there's a strong bipolar politicization in Spain between a broad left camp and a broad right-wing camp.
• 42:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: So unlike other countries where there's been ran coalitions in Spain, the main centre left party has allied with forces further to its left, created the first left or in coalitions since the Spanish Republic that preceded the Civil War.
• 42:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that government has all sorts of problems, right?
• 42:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: Corruption scandals, a very hostile media environment, very hostile and politicized judiciary, but you know, Sanchez has maintained working-class support for the Spanish Socialist Party.
• 43:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: in a way that's broadly on true of other social democratic parties in Europe.
• 43:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: The general election in 2023 was widely expected to lose, particularly after the very poor local and regional election results that just preceded it.
• 43:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: But he succeeded, I think, because he both sort of warned against the far right threat and vox the nationalist party there, but also had a real record of material achievement.
• 43:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Since the reelection in 2023, he no longer has a parliamentary majority, the governments had a really hard time passing a budget doing anything really.
• 43:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's probably been more to the detriment of his left wing allies than the socialist party itself.
• 43:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I think that it's the Spanish case illustrates what has moderately left populist version of social democracy looks like.
• 43:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I don't know, and again, it's willingness to like at least the offer and alternative and to positively polarize on its behalf very much in contrast to the examples that we've seen in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.
• 44:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, yeah, I mean, I think you're article and what you've just talked about, like, really does show, like, there's an alternative path available and some of the stark choices.
• 44:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: And particularly some of the citrus forces that are presenting themselves as the alternative to the fire rate are actually doing a service to the fire rate, or at least for you for the way for them.
• 44:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's a lot more we could say about this link to the article.
• 44:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's very rich, but we'll have to leave this for now.
• 44:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, once again, I want to thank David for being on the program.
• 44:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: Well, thanks a lot for having me on a enjoyed discussion.