http://www.redpepper.org.uk/breakthrough-of-the-left-front-in-france/ Red Pepper Wed, 18 Sep 2013 17:39:37 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.6.1 http://www.redpepper.org.uk/breakthrough-of-the-left-front-in-france/#comment-56588 Michael Kenny Thu, 07 Jun 2012 12:50:37 +0000 http://www.redpepper.org.uk/?p=7493#comment-56588 What’s actually happening, slowly but surely, is that the traditional left v right dichotomy (which dates from 1789!) is giving way to a centrist consensus, with populist parties to the right of it and left socialist parties to the left of it, those two extremes having far more in common with each other than either care to admit. Basically, the centrist coalition will govern and the extremes will act as a check on it by “bellyaching”, a role whose importance in a functioning democracy should not be underestimated, and by launching new ideas, considered radical or unrealistic when they first appear but which gradually come to form part of the centrist consensus. That’s why the PCF doesn’t want to enter government. By doing so in 1981, the “bellyacher” vote, of which it previously had a near monoploy and which is always “against” the government, regardless of who that is, went off to the Front National. Melenchon was to be the “useful idiot” for that purpose but so far, he has beautifully shafted the communists. If he succeeds in driving the communists into fianl irrelevance and reduces the size of the FN vote, he will have done a good job.

]]>