I hear what Owen Jones has to say about France and, as a French national living in the UK, I can only agree that in the last 20 years, far-right ideas have slowly but surely taken root in French public opinion and politics, and that only a united left may revert this, not Emmanuel Macron (A win for Macron will not be a complete defeat for France’s far right, 20 April).
That Macron said Philippe Pétain was a great soldier is an inadequate case in point though. Pétain was a first world war hero – that’s the uneasy truth that Macron was acknowledging.
I also wish Jones had drawn clearer parallels with the UK and exposed how, since Brexit, the far right has infiltrated British (English?) public opinion, the Conservative party, the government and its policies – think immigration, the report on racial disparities, attacks on the right to demonstrate, the BBC and Channel 4, etc. In effect, the far right is already in power in the UK.
Compared with Boris Johnson, Macron is a liberal and a centrist – far too centre-right for the French left, that’s for sure. But Jones should bear in mind that, unlike the British, the French are very good at complaining about and protesting against their governments, and that, unlike first past the post, their voting system – which they do not shy away from using – allows them to express that clearly, for better or worse.
Angèle David-Guillou
London
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