Two countries on the brink
Ahead of major elections in the UK and France, what do each country’s politics say about each other and the grim state of migrants’ rights in both the UK and France?
On 22 May, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced he was calling an election on 4 July 2024. A few weeks later, on the other side of the Channel, French President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the Assemblée nationale (French parliament) in the wake of disastrous European election results for his political party. The first round of legislative elections is taking place today with the second round on 7 July.
For those of us (un)fortunate enough to have a stake in the political future of both countries, the options have rarely looked bleaker. In Britain, Keir Starmer’s Labour is doing everything it can to not be Labour in order to court right-wing votes – throwing marginalised communities under the bus in the process – while in France, the ever-nebulous left scrambled to forge an alliance to block Marine Le Pen’s far-right party, the National Rally.
The Tories are the new Front National
The political situation in both countries is similarly dire but not identical. On the one hand, the UK has been subject to 14 years of Tory rule marked by Brexit, austerity, the erosion of key rights, including migrants’ rights, trans rights, and the right to protest, and a general undoing of state services infrastructure — in 2023, 14,000 people died due to waiting times in A&E. In France, the Rassemblement National (previously Front National) has been on a steady rise since the end of the François Hollande presidency in 2017 — the last time France had a quasi-left-wing government. In both countries, traditional left-wing parties have disintegrated: in France, by Macron’s centre-right party; in the UK, by a Starmer-led purge of Corbyn supporters and progressive MPs. But, crucially, in the UK, the Overton window has shifted so far to the right that the Conservative party has now fully absorbed and appropriated far-right ideas (much like the Republicans under Trump) — hence its position on this useful infographic describing “the Sisyphean political cycle of the West”.
![r/Sino - The Sisyphean political cycle of the West r/Sino - The Sisyphean political cycle of the West](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb382d86b-afaf-4f93-811a-55226920494d_640x622.jpeg)
If Le Pen’s party gets a parliamentary majority on 7 July, as its currently projected in polls, Macron will have to nominate a Prime Minister from that party and ask that Prime Minister to form a government. If it were to happen, we might see British and French politics converge at a point very far on the right on the political spectrum.
Immigration policy put foward by the National Rally and Reconquête, Eric Zemmour’s even more fascist party, are unsurprisingly regressive and racist: prioritisation of French citizens over migrants for social housing, limiting family reunification, automatic deportation of foreign offenders, punitive measures for undocumented migrants and tougher pathways to regularisation, limits to family reunion, and revoking the right to France’s national health insurance.
Macron’s government has tried to court Le Pen and Zemmour voters through a school dresscode ban on abayas and anything schools deem similar (including kimonos) and a new asylum and immigration law. This law introduced language and ‘republican value’ requirements for French citizenship, a weaker asylum procedure, and increased enforcement of deportations. It also requires all migrants applying for a visa in France to sign a contract to agree to respecting French values including gender equality (controlling women’s clothing is feminism, actually!) and freedom of expression (nothing says freedom like a contractual obligation).
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This immigration law and Le Pen and Zemmour’s proposals on migration will feel familiar to British readers as they are near identical to current immigration policy and rules in the UK. For the past 30 years, British immigration policy has become more and more repressive: starting with Tony Blair’s New Labour and culminating with the Nationality and Borders Act, Illegal Migration Act, and Rwanda Plan under the Conservative’s Hostile Environment policy. Successive governments have introduced increasingly harsh and racist laws on immigration including: mandatory deportation of migrants who have received a custodial sentence of two or more years; immigration checks and enforcement at work, in housing, and at places of study; cutting off people from accessing public funds, e.g. housing and unemployment benefits, including emergency shelter for survivors of domestic abuse and free school meals; introducing the International Health Surcharge, which forces migrants to pay £1,035 a year to access the NHS; sky-high visa fees and complicated pathways to settlement; and a de-facto ban on people claiming asylum (a right guaranteed under the UNHCR).
The UK is the cautionary tale of what could be if the Macron-Le Pen framework continues to dominate French politics: 30% of children living in poverty, record deaths due to ambulance and emergency waiting times, a housing crisis, and an overall reduction in quality of life for all – both citizens and migrants.
Britain’s repression of migrants has gone beyond the wildest dreams of the French far-right, who hold British Tories like Boris Johnson in high regard. Meanwhile, Starmer, the leader of the opposition now vying for Downing Street, has described Sunak as being the “most liberal” Prime Minister on migration. The state of British politics, especially when understood in dialogue with France’s far-right, is abysmal and catastrophic. For France, the UK should be seen as its neoliberal, decrepit doppelganger. The UK is the cautionary tale of what could be if the Macron-Le Pen (both neo-liberals of different flavours) framework continues to dominate French politics: 30% of children living in poverty, record deaths due to ambulance and emergency waiting times, a housing crisis, and an overall reduction in quality of life for all – both citizens and migrants.
Bilateral disagreements
In addition to ideological confluence, British and French immigration politics are linked in more direct ways too. Since 1998, through a series of bilateral agreements, Britain has paid France over £1.44 billion to enforce the border. This money is spent on police equipment, helicopters, cars, motorbikes, and surveillance equipment including binoculars, drones, and hunting cameras. These agreements also finance police presence on the ground – Britain paying for up to 50% of salaries of police stationed in northern France.
These cops, paid for by the British public purse with little scrutiny, violently harass and disperse people on the move in Calais, Grande-Synthe, and elsewhere on the French coast. The violence of the UK-France-Belgium border has led to nearly 400 deaths, as a direct result of police operations and lack of safe routes to come to the UK, which push many to attempt to reach the border by small boat or lorry.
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Beyond the massive human toll and economic cost, these agreements have failed to achieve what they set out to do: French police have only prevented 50% of all crossings.
As these bilateral agreements are matters of ‘national security’, the public doesn’t have access to the full texts, implementation details, or spend breakdown, and because neither country can flout them as successes, these agreements have gotten limited media coverage. While the Conservatives have made ‘stopping the boats’ a major feature of their immigration policy, the mechanics of making this happen are kept voluntarily obscure and have barely come up in the lead up to the elections. Even amongst migrants’ rights organisations and activists in the UK, the extension of the UK Hostile Environment into France through these agreements isn’t widely known.
Understanding French and British immigration politics in dialogue with each other is not just a useful analytical tool, it’s also a necessity. The lack of awareness in the ‘migrants’ rights sector’ of British complicity in the deaths of nearly 400 people at the UK-France-Belgium border reveals the inability to think beyond borders to understand the domestic — at the expense of transnational solidarity-building.
Regardless of the electoral outcome in the UK and France, the British Hostile Environment policy is already extended into France and French far-right ideology is already integrated into British mainstream politics. Both these realities should serve as an urgent rallying call for transnational resistance and action wherever necessary, especially outside of electoral politics, to fight fascism regardless of its location or political label.
Regardless of the electoral outcome in the UK and France, the British Hostile Environment policy is already extended into France and French far-right ideology is already integrated into British mainstream politics.
N.B.: Part of this article is based on an article I wrote for Novara Media in 2022 in the wake of the French presidential elections. Last month, I wrote to Novara asking them to take down my article from their website. This request follows comments made by Novara co-founder Aaron Bastani on far-right media outlet GB News justifying No Recourse to Public Funds and Novara’s response to Mohammed El-Kurd’s public statement on 15 April 2024 calling out Bastani’s complicity in the arrest of three women of colour, including one Palestinian, for terrorism at a Palestine march in London. You can read more about that case here: https://medium.com/@presscampaigncontact/on-the-conviction-of-three-pro-palestine-protesters-for-a-parachute-emoji-b60bccff13ee
I know that individual journalists don’t represent their publication, but in the case of Bastani, who has been repeatedly called out for peddling right-wing ideas, and Novara’s consistent support for him, I don’t want to be associated to their platform.
Novara Media positions itself as an independent outlet for ‘the Left’, but I don’t believe it can do that while its co-founder continues to share harmful and dangerous ideas for clout. As people who believe in and fight for justice for all, we must hold each other to account and expect better.
Recommendations
Things have been a bit all over the place over the past few months, but here are some things I’ve been listening to and reading (or plan on reading):
NPR Code Switch episode about white Christian evangelical Zionism: https://www.npr.org/transcripts/1197956512
Leah Cowan and Lola Olufemi in conversation about feminism and abolition on the Verso podcast:
Jules Gill-Peterson on transmisogyny also on the Verso podcast:
For some reason Soundcloud does this automatically? Hopefully the links show up for you but if it doesn’t you can find both wherever you listen to podcasts!
“The Zionist use of homophobia and sexuality” by Dr Abeera Khan — especially relevant as Pride Month comes to a close! https://thecontrapuntal.com/the-zionist-use-of-homophobia-and-sexuality/
“Capitalocene, Waste, Race, and Gender” by Françoise Vergès: https://www.e-flux.com/journal/100/269165/capitalocene-waste-race-and-gender/
“Being irreconcilable in ESEA contexts” by Pear Nuallak: https://pearnuallak.com/2024/06/05/being-irreconcilable-in-esea-contexts/
Some personal updates
I took a break from writing from end of April until mid-June because of a family emergency, which meant I had to cancel and move a lot things around at very short notice. Things have been quite difficult and stressful but I’m feeling more settled now so I hope to write on a monthly basis again!
In other news, the LSE History blog recently published an exhibition I’d curated for the LSE Library about the concepts of race and empire in political manifestos (cancelled due to Covid-19) as a blog here: https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/lsehistory/2024/05/29/shifting-notions-of-identity-race-and-empire-in-british-general-elections/
I’ve been freelancing for different charities — working on access to health and on the Covid-19 Inquiry. I’m always on the look out for part-time/freelance work in campaigns and advocacy and I’m also working to get more writing published! So if you hear of any opportunities, please send them my way :D I would really appreciate it!
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