Jacobin Radio Folgen

Two interviews on the results of the May 26 European Parliamentary elections, which did not cleanly match predictions that there would be a further shift to to authoritarian hard-right parties. The biggest losers across the continent were the center-right neoliberal mainstream parties, but the shift to the Right was not as pronounced as feared. First, Sebastian Budgen, contributing editor for Jacobin, analyzes the election across Europe, especially in France, where the failed policies of the center were critical in understanding the results. We also get his take on the continuing protest and promise of the gilets jaunes social movement. Then Kevin Ovenden takes a deeper look at the vote in Great Britain, where the upset couldn’t have been more pronounced in the wake of the repeated failure by the Tories’ Theresa May to implement Brexit. The Conservative Party had its worst result in history, but Labour also lost votes, as Jeremy Corbyn tried to bridge the divide between those in favor and those against Brexit. The newly created “Brexit” Party of Nigel Farage took first, with the center Lib-Dems in alliance with Scottish and Welsh nationalists and Greens doing very well.

The radical left has been unable to electorally capitalize on the Yellow Vest movement, a massive revolt against a vicious, unequal and alienating neoliberal order. Instead, French electoral politics has pit an insurgent far-right against a zombie liberal center that presents itself as a bulwark against the nationalist tide. Dan interviews Sebastian Budgen and Danièle Obono, a member of the National Assembly with La France insoumise.Check out War over Peace: One Hundred Years of Israel's Militaristic Nationalism by Uri Ben-Eliezer ucpress.edu/book/9780520304345/war-over-peaceSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig

Brexit has so dominated UK politics that it has put the Labour Party in a profoundly difficult and perhaps untenable position of strategic ambiguity toward how to handle the never-ending matter of leaving the EU. Today, in part two of our five-part series on European politics, Dan discusses this all with Grace Blakeley, Maya Goodfellow, and Richard Seymour.Thanks to Verso Books, which has loads of great left-wing titles at versobooks.comGo to the Socialism 2019 conference in Chicago July 4-7! Register now at socialismconference.orgSupport this podcast with your money at Patreon.com/TheDig