The Referendum, Europe and Nuits Debouts

The Nuit Debout movement in France

Steve Jefferys reports from France

Where do Europe’s fascist-origin, populist and nationalist political parties stand on Brexit?

Jumping for joy! They are lapping up the forward march of Leave in UK opinion polls.
Until now they thought Cameron’s blatant electioneering manoeuvre to win voters away from UKIP was just that. The UK was certain to vote to remain but now it looks less so.

Only a year before the presidential elections of 23 April and 7 May 2017 French polls suggest Marine Le Pen will get through the first round of that election – whoever stands for the mainstream parties.

To win the second round Le Pen will need to win over Conservative and Centre Party voters. She also needs to win over all those who put their xenophobia before their fear for democracy.
A month ago opinion polls reported that 56% of French voters considered the National Front was a danger for democracy, and only 25% believed Marine le Pen would make a good president.

The most important political issues for French centre-right voters are: fighting insecurity (76%); immigration and national identity (73%); Brussels being too powerful (61%); and how the EU is being built (57%).

This is why Le Pen is now saying ‘Call me Madame Frexit’ and is demanding a referendum on France’s membership of the EU.

If Brexit and its promise of new border controls around Island Fortress UK happens, it would hit all the spots. It would legitimate the National Front’s sugary xenophobia even more than Marine’s expulsion of her fascist father and the NF’s possible adoption of a ‘cleaner’ name.

Elsewhere in Europe the growing extreme right is also calling for national referendums to take place on the EU, the Euro, on stopping immigration and on refusing the building of new mosques.

Denmark’s Danish People’s Party (DPP) got 21% of the vote in 2015. It is strongly anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim. In December 2015 it led the successful campaign to vote NO in the Danish referendum on signing up to EU justice and home affairs policies. Its slogan: ‘More EU? No thank you’.
Denmark’s second largest party, the DPP was strengthened by that referendum. On April 12 2016 Denmark’s parliament passed a law to confiscate the valuables of refugees entering the country to pay for their stay – with the Social Democrats supporting the DPP’s xenophobic line. The DPP says it will wait to see what happens in the June Brexit vote before calling for a new Danish referendum on EU membership, while other Danish nationalist parties are already calling for one.

Austria’s Freedom Party (FPO) is strongly anti-immigrant and calls for barbed wire walls around Austria. In October 2015 it won over 30% of the vote in Vienna, and entered the regional government of Burgenland. It argues the ‘democratic’ case for an Austrian Euro referendum.

Hungary’s Jobbik party got 20% of the poll in 2014. It is anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant and anti-EU. Its presence has led the government nationalist party, Fidesz, to steal many of its clothes including its barbed wire borders.

In Finland, the anti-immigrant and anti-EU Finn’s Party got 18% of the vote in last April’s 2015 General Election. It is now part of the coalition government but losing some popularity since being identified with little change in immigration or European policies. Before joining the government as Foreign and European Affairs Minister, its populist leader Timo Soini called for a Finnish referendum on membership of the Euro, and Brexit would give the Finn’s Party the opportunity to renew its referendum campaign.
Sadly, the list of xenophobic nationalist parties that would welcome Brexit as giving them a huge boost to justify their own nationalisms and borders extends way beyond the five EU countries cited here.

Many on the left in the UK who will vote to Leave reject xenophobia. They make the argument that standing on the same platform as Cameron and Blair is as revolting as being in the same camp as Farage and Johnson. They consider it is the principle of a capitalist European market arrangement that must be opposed, as in 1975.

But is it? What about the principle of international solidarity?

A million Syrian refugees have entered economic crisis-hit Europe amid austerity and falling living standards. Weak trade unions and largely neo-liberalised Labour and Social Democratic parties have been unable or unwilling or ineffective in resisting the spread of xenophobic fears.

What will happen elsewhere in Europe if on June 23 there is a Brexit vote for Fortress Island UK? All the evidence suggests it would lead to a new explosion of support for Europe’s extreme right parties. That’s why they are all in favour of Brexit.

Sometimes the more immediate principle must trump the longer-term one.
To support those fighting Marine Le Pen and all the other neo-fascist and nationalist anti-immigrant parties has to mean voting to Remain in the EU in June.

Liberté, Egalité, Humanité is the principle I saw yesterday captured by street art at Nuits Debouts in the Place de la République here in Paris, where the CRS police presence also confirms it is a place not just of memory but also of struggle.