Before the recent French and British elections fade from the headlines, and before the maelstrom of our own unending political war, let’s take a moment to reflect on what happened in Europe.  

Britain

On the surface the election in the United Kingdom went as predicted, but there are some interesting tidbits to glean from the vote at the granular level. First, look at the relation (or lack of it) between the popular vote and the seats won in Parliament. For those of us who are sick of the Electoral College contradicting the popular vote in this country, think how you’d feel if you were a disciple of Nigel Farage and his Reform UK party.

 

Consider: The Liberal Democrats won 12.1 percent of the vote and 71 seats in Parliament. The Reform UK party won 14.3 percent of the vote and 4 seats! A general election in the UK is a process of electing 650 members of Parliament, each one representing a separate constituency. So if your party gets a respectable share of the national popular vote by finishing 2nd or 3rd in many constituencies, you could end up with 4 seats — less than 1 percent of the seats open. Your vote wasn’t concentrated enough. Therefore, the meager 4 seats that Reform won does not spell their certain demise. If they learn to concentrate their efforts in constituencies that they have a good chance of winning, they could have a much greater presence in Parliament. 

 

On the other side of the ledger, Labour won 33.9 percent of the vote and 410 seats, or 63 percent of the seats in Parliament. Such a strong showing gives Labour a wide majority in Parliament. It means that the ruling Labour majority can and should be able to pass legislation without the support of other parties. If this happened in the US, it would be comparable to the Democrats winning the House and Senate by comfortable margins while also holding the presidency.

 

Note, however, that the Tories and Reform UK together took 37.9 percent of the popular vote. In the words of The Economist, this “was not a popular victory” for Labour. In fact, Labour received fewer votes than it did in the last election in 2019 when the now-reviled Jeremy Corbyn was the party’s leader. It was the lowest popular vote percentage to take the government since World War I. So despite the absolute majority in Parliament, the Labour government will have some work to do in order to maintain or boost its share of the popular vote. 

 

Look for incoming Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to steer a course that bears little resemblance to the one taken by the Labour party of Clement Atlee or Harold Wilson. He is scarcely the Socialist that Atlee was. His options are also very limited due to economic constraints. I anticipate that both domestic policy and foreign policy will not stray too far from the policies of outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. The former PM pursued a policy on immigration that was designed to shield him from attacks from Reform UK. It included the highly controversial plan to send asylum seekers to Rwanda while their claims were adjudicated. Tony Blair has already publicly warned Starmer not to ease off on Conservative immigration policy for fear of providing fodder for Nigel Farage and his followers. 

 

I don’t expect seismic change from the Labour government. 

 

France

Emmanuel Macron gambled and lost. It didn’t happen the way many observers expected — with the National Rally winning a majority of seats in the lower house of Parliament. No, it happened because the parties of the left (The Popular Front) united to oppose the National Rally. And surprisingly, they emerged with the most seats. 

 

The left united under the banner of the New Popular Front. This party is composed of the following: the French Communist Party, France Unbowed, the Socialist Party, and a group called “Les Ecologists”, which you may have guessed is the Green Party. In the second round of voting these four parties worked together. They strategically pulled out all but one candidate of any of the four parties in each legislative constituency so that voters on the left wouldn’t split their votes among four leftist alternatives. They thus gained 49 seats for a total of 180 in the new legislature. 

 

Finishing second was Macron’s party, Ensemble. It won 163 seats but that was 82 less than they had before the snap election!   So Macron was rejected significantly. 

 

In the end, the National Rally party of Marine Le Pen won 143 seats, a gain of 54. So, although National Rally finished third, they increased their seats by the largest number of any of the political parties. They can still feel bolstered by the results.

 

France is now left with 3 parties sharing power in its legislature. Both the Popular Front and the National Rally despise Macron and his party. And of course, those two parties on the left and on the right despise each other. How can they work together to do the things that France, with its $3 trillion debt, must do to avoid financial catastrophe? Early in June Standard and Poor’s downgraded French debt, predicting it would grow from 109 percent of GDP to 112 percent by 2027. While this percentage of national debt to GDP is lower than, for example, our US debt/GDP ratio, the financial world is poised to push the alarm button when it looks at France’s debt situation. Gridlock in the French legislature could lead to further downgrades, causing the cost of French borrowing to rise, and that would be a dangerous situation. .

 

So, two men — Rishi Sunak and Emmanuel Macron — gambled and lost. In the UK the gamble may not put the nation at risk of political turmoil, but in France the prospect is much more likely. Snap elections have consequences.

• Top