Emmanuel Macron’s shock decision to call a snap election after the 2024 EU Elections saw an alarming surge towards right-wing extremists does have some logic. To ask the French people what kind of society they want to inhabit and to catch the enemy off-guard. The French general election will be held in stages with the first round taking place just days before the UK’s general election on 4th July therefore the fate of two neighbouring countries are very much in the balance at the same time.
France, like the rest of Europe, witnessed what happened to the UK after Brexit empowered the far right. Marine Le Pen's National Rally [NR] party made substantial gains in the EU Elections amidst an overall predicted swing to the right that has been rather over exaggerated. True, progressive parties suffered losses in these elections but the majority within the European Parliament is held by right leaning centrists who are in ideological terms considerably to the left of the current UK Government. And not every country swung to the right. Poland, after having suffered years of misrule under the inappropriately named Law and Justice Party, bucked the trend under the progressive leadership of charismatic former President of the European Council, Donald Tusk.
Macron does not strike me as irresponsible or stupid. He has however taken a gamble in calling a snap election at this particular time. If he is right then the NR will be diminished but if he is wrong, and NR gain a strong foothold within national government, then his remaining years as president will be pretty miserable. It is to be hoped that Macron’s gamble pays off.
And I am reminded yet again of the UK’s ill-fated 2016 EU Referendum [or the Brexit Referendum as it came to be known] called essentially to settle an internal row within the Conservative Party by former Prime Minister David Cameron. Cameron, unlike Macron, was both irresponsible and stupid with a fair bit of arrogant complacency.
A referendum had already been held on our continued membership of the European Economic Community [the Common Market as it then was] in June 1975 and more than two thirds of the electorate voted to Remain. The second world war, after thirty years, still loomed large in conscious memory. Maybe it was the improved choice of food in the shops that won the day.
Along with almost everyone who followed the unnecessary second referendum, I watched transfixed and in a state of disbelief when the result was announced. This cannot be happening? Cameron surely must do something? Anything! But no. Off he went to write his memoirs after his reckless gamble with the future of the country had failed, humming a tune and leaving others to clean up the mess.
40 years of integration and tens of thousands of pieces of EU legislation regulating our everyday lives to no obvious harmful effect counted for nothing.
Fast forward to December 2019, after what I refer as the ‘basket’ years suffering under Theresa May’s incompetence, there was enough information within the public domain about the likely disastrous consequences of Brexit to make anyone think twice. Calls for a re-run of the 2016 referendum were growing louder by the minute. The triggering of Article 50 had been a drawn out affair, as if no one really wanted to start the process, and the road to Brexit had long felt like a slow motion train wreck heading for disaster but no one had the guts to pull the brakes.
Having endured three years of political wrangling and deteriorating living standards a gaslit population wearily cast their votes for Johnson and Cummings’ rallying call to “Get Brexit Done”.
The slow motion train wreck had reached its final destination. Brexit was sealed. Freedom of movement was gone. Let me outline what loss of freedom of movement means. That, insofar as the EU is concerned, the UK is now to all extents and purposes a ‘third country’. Where we’d once travelled freely there is now no automatic right for Brits to live, work, study or retire anywhere within the EU zone. We can stay within the border-free Schengen Area for no longer than 90 days in every 180 days. Lives have been upended, plans left in tatters, families have been ripped apart. All in the name of “sovereignty” as sold to the electorate in the worst act of deception a rogue government could inflict on its own people. There are no “Brexit benefits". The only person to benefit from Brexit, apart from speculators making gains on our currency’s substantial loss in value, was Vladimir Putin.
The UK is trapped in a doom loop as foreign investment plummeted and sterling lost 20% before spiralling further during the truly crazy Truss period which almost wiped out peoples’ private pensions. After eight years of madness and deteriorating living standards there is a resounding loss of hope that anything will improve.
The career criminals now in government blame the pandemic and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine for the economic crisis that’s seen the cost of everything rocket and a general feeling of malaise. They will never blame Brexit for obvious reasons. But neither does the mainstream opposition that once fought so ineffectively for the train wreck to be stopped.
Brexit is rarely mentioned and anyone brave enough to stand above the parapet to speak the truth is promptly shot down.
Keir Starmer, former shadow Brexit Minister under Jeremy Corbyn and now Prime Minister in waiting, was vociferously critical of the government’s mishandling throughout the Basket years yet on the brink of power blocks all discussion on renegotiation of the appalling deal thrashed out by Johnson in late 2019. The EU-UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement signed on 30th December 2020 will be reviewed in May 2026 and Starmer has so far given little indication that he’d seek to restore the rights and freedoms stolen by Brexit. Indeed he categorically rejects outright any suggestion that the UK might rejoin the customs union and single market.
The Liberal Democrats, the party that pledged to cancel Brexit in the frenzied days leading towards the last election, published in its 2024 general election manifesto a pledge to fight to rejoin the single market. But the messaging up until then was subdued and vague about the party’s position. Maybe something to do with former leader Jo Swinson losing her seat in December 2019. Recent polling places the LibDems above the Conservatives and making them the official Opposition to the Labour Party’s predicted win. Let’s see what happens and let’s hold them to account if they renege on that pledge.
During the turbulence of the post-Brexit era it appears that public opinion has changed. Polling indicates roughly two-thirds of the country wants back in the EU. We are being badly let down by party leaders who behave as though Brexit never happened. Talks to regain our rightful position within the customs union and the single market should be non-negotiable, front and centre of every so-called progressive party manifesto. There have been numerous occasions when I’ve felt embarrassed and profoundly ashamed of this country but none more than when even our ‘progressives’ appear to have accepted Brexit as our fate.
That is why I am standing as parliamentary candidate for The Rejoin EU Party [Hampstead and Highgate] in 2024 General Election on 4th July.