A Personal Take On The Euro Elections 2024

On 13/06/202425/06/2024 By JacIn Europe, European Union, Globalism, Russia, Wales, World Economic Forum27 Comments

It might seem odd for me to be writing about elections to the EU parliament 8 years after Wales voted to leave the EU, but I’m doing so because these results are important, and will have repercussions for us.

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THE BIG PICTURE

There was a swing to the right across the continent, but of course the media found it almost impossible to engage in honest reporting. There were crude references to the 1930s, or even suggestions that the swing was largely due to a low turnout.

Watching the exit polls and the early declarations on Sunday night, on the BBC, CNN, and Euronews, I was struck by the way commentators used terms like ‘centre’, ‘centre left’, ‘socialists’, even ‘green-left’, but never ‘far left’.

While on the other side there’s rarely a ‘right of centre’; that side of the spectrum begins with ‘right wing’ or ‘far right’, even ‘hard right’. (Yeah, well hard!)

There’s also the ‘populist right’, whatever that means. (Answers on a post card.)

I got the impression that some of those misinforming me would have liked to slip into Antifa black bloc and yell, ‘Nazi!’, ‘fascist!‘, and ‘transphobe!’ Displaying commendable restraint the Beeb limited itself to images like this, linking Austria with Germany (Anschluss), and showing raised arms. (Nudge, nudge.)

When it came to Gorgeous Geert Wilders, there was an early attempt (Netherlands voted on Thursday) to suggest that his Party for Freedom PVV had somehow tanked, even though projections had it increasing its representation in Brussels from 0 to 7 MEPs. (As it turned out, the PVV won 6 seats.)

Done by making the rather silly comparison with the national election last November, which the PVV won.

The talking heads were almost united in bemoaning the swing to the right, but chose to focus on the personalities, or the possible line-up in the EU parliament, rather than address the reasons for the upheaval they were witnessing.

Those reasons being unsustainable levels of immigration and the hardships being imposed by the completely unnecessary drive to net zero.

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THE VIEW FROM THE EAST

The picture across the continent is too big and complicated for me to look at every country. What’s more, the picture in the east, from Finland to Romania, is coloured to a greater or lesser degree by the war in Ukraine, and attitudes towards Russia.

For Finland was ruled by Russia until 1917, then Stalin invaded in 1940. Anti-Russian sentiment is widespread in the Baltic States. Poland borders Ukraine. Hungary tries to play the honest broker. Many Romanians fear Russia will push west, towards and beyond Odessa, to link with Transdnistria, where there is already a Russian military presence.

So I’m going to focus on Central and Western Europe. Where results are marginally easier to read, and then, due to the size and influence of some of the countries involved, the consequences will be felt beyond those countries’ borders.

I should also point out that in a number of countries the EU elections were held on the same day as local or national elections. Which can confuse the picture, and also influence the result of the EU poll.

I’m going to focus on France, but I’ll also zip around a few other countries; including of course, Germany. Once the economic and industrial powerhouse of the continent . . . but then came net zero.

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LA BELLE FRANCE

As I’ve suggested by focusing on France, the big story of the elections was that Macron got his ass kicked by Marine Le Pen’s protégé, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella.

Marine Le Pen fought hard for National Rally (NR) to shake off the worst of her father’s legacy, but no matter what did she was stuck with the name. Bardella, of mainly Italian background, but also having an Algerian great-grandfather, has no such problem.

I know what you’re wondering, and you should be ashamed of yourselves! Ach y fi! Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Also in the mix, almost unnoticed, was the Reconquête! party. It linked with a few others to fight under the La France fière banner, got 5.47% and 5 seats. Founded as recently as 2021 by Éric Zemmour, the son of Arabic-speaking Berber Jews from Algeria.

I mention this because Zemmour is usually said to be further to the right, and more hostile to Islam, than NR.

The map below shows that NR came top of the poll in every départment other than Paris. A reminder of a problem found across the West – the disproportionate influence of a metropolitan elite.

By which I mean, politicians, the media, self-styled ‘progressives’, academics, countless thousands in NGOs and similar gangs living off the public purse.

In response to his drubbing Macron has gone for broke and called a parliamentary election. His job won’t be up for grabs, but he’ll be there to undermine his party, and the liberal left more generally, by reminding French voters he’s now a lame duck president.

An example of a weak man acting tough. And it invariably ends in disaster.

Something that cost Macron and his party votes was his call for what sounded very much like war with Russia. This Spectator article from March 10 suggests Macron made his remarks about intervention in Ukraine to combat NR’s 10% lead in opinion polls ahead of the EU elections.

This cunning plan was so successful that the eventual gap was 16.2%, with NR getting 31.4%, to Macron’s Renaissance getting just 15.2%.

The plan to give Putin what for was not well received by his neighbours and allies. (‘”Follow me!“, he cried, sabre held aloft . . . then looked back and saw he was alone.’)

Incidentally, the French Communist party got just 2.36%. Now if that don’t warm the cockles of your crypto fascist heart, missus, then I don’t know what will.

Back in the days of Gladio there was a real worry, in London and Washington, that France (and Italy) might actually elect a communist government. How times change!

Macron is now urging the French to ‘say no to extremes’ in the elections at the end of the month. Rejecting his brand of banality, mediocrity, and incompetence, does not make people extremists.

Wise up, mon ami – your bateau has sailed.

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A ROUNDUP

Next door to France, in Belgium, there were also national and regional elections. With a turnout of 87.42% for the federal election. The big winners in the regional elections for Flanders were Eurosceptic Flemish nationalist parties, though Vlaams Belang – the ‘separatist’ party – did not perform as well as expected.

On the national stage, the same two parties topped the poll. Other, mainly francophone parties, trotted in behind them.

As in France, the big loser was the party running the national government, but unlike France, there was also a national election, which the ruling coalition lost. This resulted in prime minister Alexander De Croo handing in his notice to the king. But he’ll hang on until a new coalition is formed.

Belgian politics is ‘messy’. A small country divided by language and regional rivalries, with its capital, Brussels, also serving as the EU capital.

In Italy, there was no big surprise. Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, heading the national government coalition, came top. And although the usual suspects call her the ‘heiress to Mussolini’ and a neo-fascist, I fear she may be little more than a political chancer with a real talent for self-promotion.

An example would be her visit to Albania just before the EU elections, to inspect the centres where would-be migrants will be held while Italy vets their claims. This Rwanda-style deal seems to be pissing off many of the comrades, so it has that in its favour.

And those whose applications fail will presumably be recruited by Albanian gangs and end up over here tending cannabis factories. Everyone’s a winner!

We can’t ignore Germany, the largest member of the bloc in terms of population and just about everything else. As in other countries we’ve looked at, the results were a disaster for the party or parties running the national government.

Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats, who head up the ruling coalition, came a poor third with just 13.9%. The big winners were the Christian Democrats (with their Bavarian ally) on 30%, and to the right of them, the AfD on 15.9%. The Greens came fourth with 11.9%.

Catching up on reports as I wrote this I came across something that indicates how the political focus has shifted to the right.

Associated Press is one of the most reliably Globalist mouthpieces. A joke as a news organisation, it can be relied on to spout the Davos-UN line on climate, ‘refugees’, etc.

Normally, AP would be horrified by advances for conservatives, but here it seems to be taking consolation from the success of the German Christian Democrats.

Scholz says he won’t be calling an election, but the decision may be out of his hands.

The BBC found similar comfort in a ‘resurgent’ centre-left in France. Mmm. I’m sure there was a Straw Clutchers party standing somewhere.

Click to open enlarged in separate tab

Next door to Germany, in Austria, it was a similar story. A big surge in support for one of those parties that puts leftists into Wolfie Smith mode.

We’ve looked at France, Germany and Italy, so the other large country in the west is Spain. There, it was a familiar tale, though with a strange twist.

I quote from the Reuters article I just linked to: ‘Alvise Perez, a far-right social media influencer running against what he describes as universal corruption, managed to obtain three seats with a campaign mostly conducted through the messaging app Telegram.’

Here’s a link that might tell you more about Señor Perez, who dedicated his victory to an 81-year-old man who’d been sent to prison for shooting a burglar.

I’d hoped to bring results from Ireland, where there were also local elections. But counting has been slow, and when I was finishing off this article yesterday evening the results for the Euro elections had still not been finalised.

I would also have liked to tell you about the local elections, but that would have meant a lot of digging. The insurgent parties and individuals I’ve mentioned here in recent times are probably included among Independents and Others in the box below

It’s worth noting that Sinn Féin was topping every poll until it became clear that it supports open borders, which hurts its working class base more than other groups.

But I can tell you that John Moran is the new mayor of Limerick.

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YOUNG EUROPE

In order to explain a few more things about Poland, France, the wider picture, and the standard of BBC journalism, I’m using the two clips below.

Polish premier Tusk is a Globalist and Permanent War party puppet, and therefore a favourite with the BBC.

But Auntie disapproves of his rival, the Law and Justice party, so it has to be labelled ‘right wing’. But when there’s another party, even more likely to bring on an attack of the vapours, such as the Confederation party, it must be branded ‘far-right’.

But note, the panel also reveals that this party from beyond the Pale is the most popular among 18-29- year-olds. While the other panel tells us that in France 18-24-year-olds have swung behind Le Pen’s RN.

Across Europe young people are rejecting the parties of the centre, and the greens, to move left and right, with the right gaining far more than the left.

This swing to the right among the young is significant. For we’re not dealing with the ‘gammons’ so beloved of leftists and their media, those sad caricatures nostalgic for a time when white families appeared in TV adverts.

This support from young people is rooted in events of the here and the now. And that’s why I find it so encouraging.

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FINAL THOUGHTS

I see these European elections as a blow for the Globalists. They also see it, and they’ve been quick to respond. The head of the UN’s refugee agency, Filippo Grandi, ‘criticised the politicisation of migration in European elections‘.

Listen, pal, you and your Globalist mates, the politicians you’ve won over, the European Commission, the media you control . . . you all politicised the issue long ago, by doing away with border controls, and by demonising those who oppose your plans.

You are in no position therefore to criticise decent people who’ve had enough of your behaviour. The fightback is underway, both in Europe and the USA.

For the day after he took office, your puppet Biden opened the southern border. Now that his handlers finally realise how unpopular a decision that has proven to be, and with a presidential election looming, they’re back-pedalling like crazy.

Let’s also remember the damage being inflicted by the climate scam. It’s destroying the Welsh countryside, making everything more expensive, while personal freedom suffers from the restrictions it demands.

Which is why, on July 4, I expect a rag-bag of candidates, some of them off the wall, one or two sought by various constabularies; with a back-of-a-fag-packet ‘manifesto’, and a leader used by leftist yobs for target practice, to do rather well.

Because that’s where we are. Think well on’t.

♦ end ♦

Distractions

On 12/09/201916/09/2019 By JacIn Brexit, British Nationalism, Conservative and Unionist Party, Englandandwales, Europe, Labour Party, Plaid Cymru, Scotland, Welsh Independence56 Comments

PLEASE APPRECIATE THAT I GET SENT MORE INFORMATION AND LEADS THAN I CAN USE. I TRY TO RESPOND TO EVERYONE WHO CONTACTS ME BUT I CANNOT POSSIBLY USE EVERY BIT OF INFORMATION I’M SENT. DIOLCH YN FAWR

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FASCISTS TO THE RIGHT, RACISTS TO THE ~~LEFT~~ RIGHT (ALSO)

For various reasons I wasn’t at the Merthyr march and rally last Saturday, organised by YesCymru and All Under One Banner Cymru (but I was there in spirit). To compensate, I’ve had feedback from many quarters. This feedback even includes a copy of the special edition of The National produced for Merthyr.

As someone reminded us on Twitter, this one-off issue was a collaboration between that Scottish newspaper and Plaid Cymru, which explains the Plaid membership application form that came with each copy.

Though, given that the rally was in Merthyr, and Plaid is supposedly trying shake the image of being a party primarily for Welsh speakers, I was surprised to see the Welsh version of ‘Come and join us!’ at the top of the form larger and more prominent than the English version.

Click to enlarge. (It should go without saying that my cheque is in the post!)

The National also contained a series of articles by Plaid Cymru luminaries, and a rather strange contribution from Yasmin Begum, who was unknown to me, and who seemed to fear that the movement for independence might be a front for the Ku Klux Klan, with the Merthyr rally perhaps organised by the Dowlais branch of the Broederbond.

A strange, hysterical little piece, that also managed to be insulting. Particularly, “Wales has an uncomfortable relationship with colonialism and the slave trade which is yet to be fully explored and unpacked”. Wales was England’s first fucking colony and has been exploited ever since, but this woman wants to load onto us the crimes of the British Empire so we’ll feel guilty and be more receptive to her fatuous and self-serving drivel.

As I say, I had no idea who Yasmin Begum was . . . and then I checked her Twitter account, and was not surprised to learn that she is obsessed with thoughts of race. It seems that she thinks about nothing else. (Unless it’s ‘non-binary’ sexual identification.)

Entirely predictable then that she considers AUOB Cymru to be dangerously white and almost certainly infiltrated by fascists.

Though I was glad to see her retweet the news that Paddington Bear is a liberal. I was beginning to have my doubts about that furry little bastard, what with him being foreign and all.

Going back to the title of this section, I suppose all fascists are racists, but are all racists fascists? Discuss. (Because these things really concern me.)

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PRO EU BUT ANTI EUROPEAN

Something else I noticed about the rally – and this can be applied to the wider independence movement and Plaid Cymru – was the obsession with staying in the EU and thwarting the dastardly plans of Boris Johnson. (Or, if you prefer, Dominic Cummings.)

I wasn’t the only one, a friend who was in Merthyr reminded me of the attacks on Brexit-supporting Plaid Cymru stalwart Emrys Roberts, and sent me a copy of his letter published in Llais y Sais, responding to Wales for Europe. Which, predictably, is just the Welsh branch of People’s Vote.

Despite being pro EU the left is generally anti European, and too many on the left are anti Western. They want to do away with the capitalist system and replace it with societies in which nobody works but we’re all supported by taxing those who are no longer making any money because there’s no economy. It’s clever stuff. Too clever for me.

Though in fairness, such a system might have its plus points. It should help the environment because nobody’ll be making anything – except ‘artisans’ using hand tools – and only the most important comrades will be allowed to travel. Rewilding will occur naturally as veganism is enforced and livestock farmers are summarily executed. Their animals will then be released into ‘the wild’, which will further reduce the stock of humanity; for those of us that don’t succumb to malnutrition will be trampled by roaming herds of feral cattle.

This liberal elite and its foot-soldiers – the far left, the woke and the reverse-racists – is critical or dismissive of European civilisation. It seeks to undermine the social and economic frameworks of Europe; it has always sided with the enemies of the West, from communism to ISIS; it believes in open borders; and of course it rejects Christianity, which has done more than anything to shape Europe and the West.

Whereas I, on the other hand, admire European civilisation and values, on both sides of the North Atlantic, and from Argentina to Australia. I’m proud of the Europe peoples and their achievements. And like Burke, I understand the compact between generations past, present and future.

Which might explain why I am opposed to the European Union. But I will always be European.

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CHAOS

The Merthyr rally took place to the backdrop of a prorogued parliament and a minority government hanging on for dear life. On the other side we are presented with an unseemly coalition rejoicing in two victories: the first, over a no-deal Brexit; the second, from denying Boris Johnson the chance to call a general election before Hallowe’en.

Alternatively – and this is how I see it – those who never accepted the 2016 referendum result are now close to stopping Brexit altogether; while denying us the opportunity of giving our opinion on the matter in a general election they fear they’ll lose.

(Though of course the Scottish National Party will win a handsome majority, and push on for independence, but Scotland is now a different country.)

Make no mistake, what we are seeing in Westminster is a victory for Remainers. Over the past three years they have done everything they could to undo the 2016 result. They may have achieved it now partly thanks to the clumsy chutzpah of Boris Johnson, and partly due to Jeremy Corbyn being forced into a position he would never have adopted had he been free to make his own choice.

Somehow, a liberal elite and its supporters has managed to unite the white working class with Old Etonians, with many in the areas that voted for Brexit prepared to support an English nationalist party led by Nigel Farage in the upcoming general election. And that also applies to Wales. This is a remarkable achievement.

Words would be superfluous, just click to enlarge if you want a better look at these buffoons.

And it explains the reluctance in parts of the Labour Party and sections of the trade union movement to have a general election, for union bosses are far more attuned to the mood of the lower orders in Sunderland, Stoke-on-Trent and Swansea than the denizens of Islington (or Cardiff Bay) will ever be.

Which leaves Labour’s electoral support reduced to a rump white working class, middle class liberals, supplemented by migrants and minorities. Not enough to win an election, certainly not with Corbyn in charge and Labour in Scotland all but a memory.

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DANGER AND OPPORTUNITY

For it can’t be stressed enough that the 2016 vote was decided in the ‘Rust Belt’ areas of southern Wales and northern and central England, and settled largely with the votes of poorer white people. Many of whom saw the referendum as a chance to express their anger towards an arrogant elite, based largely in London, that they believed cared nothing for them and their communities.

I’m repeating this because there are many out there who gave little thought to the European Union or European unity before the 2016 referendum. Since losing that referendum they have managed to turn a bureaucratic construct they never fully understood, and rarely thought about, into the most precious thing in their world.

The far left in Wales has adopted the EU enthusiastically since the referendum because it gives the comrades the chance to portray the opposition as ‘far right’, or even ‘fascist’, and the left is never happier than when confronting the forces of darkness.

And if real fascists are a bit thin on the ground (which of course they are) then anyone they disagree with can be envisioned in jackboots. Plaid Ifanc, Undod, certain elements of YesCymru, Yasmin Begum and other individuals (so many of them members of my fan club) bear this out . . . with mind-numbingly monotonous regularity. There are no half measures with these absolutists – contradict them or highlight their idiocies and you’re a fascist.

That would be bad enough, but mainstream politicians have caught the same virus and now demand that we remain in the EU . . . irrespective of what poor and stupid people think.

Though the SNP is playing a canny game of stirring things up in Westminster while at the same time preparing Scots for a second independence referendum – ‘Will ye no look at that shambles doon in London, Wullie!’ (Did you see how I slipped into the vernacular there?)

Plaid Cymru on the other hand has thrown itself single-mindedly into ensuring that Wales remains in the EU and the UK and, eventually, Englandandwales. And there will be a price to pay in the shorter term. For at the imminent general election, that will be dominated by Brexit, the Remain vote in Wales will go to Labour and the Lib Dems, while Plaid will lose Brexit-voting nationalists.

And for what?

The new independence movement is making the same mistake, and by so doing threatens the movement’s cohesion and potency. All because liberals and leftists believe the EU is ‘progressive’, and must therefore be defended.

The UK is falling apart, and civil unrest – if not worse – is on the horizon. We should be preparing to guide Wales towards the safety of independence. But instead, Labour and Plaid Cymru have rushed headlong into an English civil war, aligning themselves with external enemies and Seoinín, from which Wales can only emerge seriously harmed. If we emerge at all.

Premised on the belief that those with whom they have allied themselves give a fuck about Wales. They don’t, and they’ll betray us at the first ‘difficult choice’.

It could all have been so different. We could have exploited this chaos, this English culture war, to Wales’ advantage. But that was impossible when we have politicians and activists who burden the national cause with their pet obsessions and vanity excursions, piling on new and ever more absurd distractions to compete with the old and discredited abstractions.

There is no hope for Wales until we can build up a strong enough body of people determined to focus only on Wales, and to demand what is best for our people and our communities. Wales has no future if it’s left to dilettantes and local allies of the metropolitan elite preciously fighting someone else’s battles.

I happen to believe that decent homes and jobs for our people in a prosperous and independent Wales is more important than obsessing over the EU, or gender, or gender reassignment, or race, or sexual orientation, or . . .

There must be a seat for everybody on the Independence Express; but no group must be so noisy and demanding of attention that they drive other passengers off at the next stop, or bring the train to a halt.

♦ end ♦

The left and Europe, Brexit, independence

On 15/01/201915/01/2019 By JacIn Europe, European Union, History, Welsh Independence, Welsh Labour43 Comments

I felt compelled to put finger to keyboard because I’m tired of hearing arguments for the EU but against the totality of Europe. The kind of people guilty of this are now taking an increased interest in Welsh independence.

To re-state my position – in June 2016 I voted to leave the EU. My reasons for doing so were set out in ‘EU Referendum: Why I Want Out!’ and a few days later, after the result was known, I followed up with ‘Brexit, Wexit: Things Can Only Get Better!’

What I hope to explain is that despite being a Brexiteer I regard myself as a European, and that’s because I see Wales as part of a wider European civilisation. This being so, Wales cannot leave Europe, we can only exit the European Union.

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THE LEFT AND EUROPE

For me, there are two main variants of the left. On the one hand we have the hard left, or old left, some of whom may even be ‘tankies’, still mourning the demise of the USSR. Then we also have the soft or new left, who like to view themselves as ‘progressives’, but who I often view as the ‘butterfly’ left, flitting from one colourful issue to the next.

Another difference would be that, unattractive as it was, the old left, the Marxists and the Trotskyists had a coherent ideological basis in the writings of assorted philosophers and political theoreticians.

By comparison, the new left is almost without form or ideological substance, being made up of those who believe that what’s important to them, or the latest popular issue, is of vital importance to humanity (whether humanity is interested or not). Which often makes the soft left appear to be nothing more than a loose alliance of single-issue groups – ‘We’ll support you if you support us’.

The Labour Party contains both varieties, with the old left perhaps in the ascendant under Corbyn, but Plaid Cymru is very much home to the latter.

In the good old days of the Soviet Union the hard left had an example to hold up as an alternative to the Western model. An idyll exemplified for me by Peter Sellers’ shop steward in I’m All Right Jack, who dreams of Russia as, ” . . . all them corn fields and ballet in the evening.” A line that never fails to make me smile.

” . . . all them corn fields and ballet in the evening.” click to enlarge

The economic collapse of the USSR discredited the hard left’s alternative model, and opened the door to the soft left, with no obvious political agenda beyond changing the West from within through social and cultural pressure.

Even in the good old days of the Soviet Union, among elements of the left, hostility to the capitalist model spilled over into a rejection of the achievements of ‘decadent’ Europe and its offshoots.

As with the old, so with the new, which often dismisses centuries of human achievement as being all about ‘dead white men’.

Yes, these achievements often went hand in hand with colonisation, exploitation and even slavery, but millions of Europeans were also enslaved, by Turks and North Africans. How many today have heard of the Sack of Baltimore in west Cork? Communities from Cyprus to Iceland suffered from Muslim slave-raids.

The Crimea, the fate of which now so vexes Western governments, was taken by the Russians in 1774 to stop the peninsula being used by its Tatar population to export thousands of captured Russians and Ukrainians into Turkish slavery every year.

By even using the term ‘European civilisation’ I will have had a few leftists reaching for their smelling salts (or whatever they use), for it will have conjured up images of wicked capitalists, oppressors and colonialists, pith helmets and shackles.

Their chosen interpretation of Europe is as distorted as their view on almost everything else. It’s chiaroscuro without the light. In its distortions the touchy-feely left can ignore the genocide being practised by China against the Uighurs yet hold up something said by a politician of the right as a crime against humanity.

This comment (possibly to a piece on Nation.Cymru) refers to Steve Bannon. Now I accept that Bannon is not everybody’s cup of tea, but remarks like this display a myopic ignorance of history that is truly worrying. Click to enlarge.

For them, crimes can only be committed by white men. When it comes to global warming it’s rapacious white men destroying the planet, never developing economies with their coal-fired power stations, or third world countries destroying vast areas of forest every year.

This ‘blame Whitey’ approach betrays another dangerous failing of the soft left, and that is the refusal to accept that the past is another country, they did things differently there; which results in them judging people from previous eras by contemporary mores.

The fact that someone in 1887 was homophobic makes them a creature of their time, not a monster to be vilified by immature individuals who are easily outraged. I’ll let you in on a little secret – back in 1887 most people were homophobic.

To conclude: I’m proud to be a European. I reject the European Union.

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THE LEFT AND BREXIT

The hard or old left has usually been hostile to the Common Market and then the European Union, the ‘Rich Man’s Club’ as Marxists were wont to call it. But the real reason for the hard left’s hostility was the same as my original enthusiasm – we both saw the EU as a bulwark against the Soviet bloc.

Three decades after the demise of the USSR the comrades of the hard left still have a lingering affection for Russia. The fact that Putin is viewed as a threat by the West goes some way to explaining the hard left’s ambivalence towards the EU, and Corbyn’s refusal to take a stand on a second referendum, or anything.

The other consideration for the hard left, and Jeremy Corbyn, is that Labour voters from Sunderland to Stoke to Swansea voted for Brexit. They also voted against out-of-touch elites, so Labour really can’t afford to be perceived as aligning with the metropolitan elite.

Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters need to hold on to their middle class support, their ethnic minority support, and their white working class support if they are to form a government. And the largest of those three constituencies remains the white working class in post-industrial areas.

Generally speaking, the soft left wants the UK and Wales to remain in the European Union. This they regard as the only option for ‘progressives’. This is why we hear them berating Brexiteers as ‘gammons’, ‘racists’, ‘Nazis’, and calling for a ‘People’s Vote’.

The soft left can afford to be openly hostile to Brexit and those who support it partly because these ‘progressives’ are free of electoral concerns and partly because they have ‘disengaged’ themselves from the white working class they regard as irredeemably stupid and reactionary. For the reasons already given, Labour and the old left behave differently.

Whether or not they had achieved this status before the Brexit vote, the new left, the ‘progressives’, have certainly become the patronising metropolitan elite those who voted for Brexit wanted to punish.

I outlined earlier the soft left’s largely negative view of Europe and its history, culture, and contribution to humanity, so why is it supportive of the EU? I can only assume that in their minds there must be some disconnect between the Europe of the Borgias and Wagner with the European Union. For isn’t the European Union Napoleon’s (even Hitler’s) dream realised?

Apparently not.

And that’s because the soft left regards the EU as ‘progressive’. The EU is perceived as breaking down national barriers, welcoming migrants, and generally being a force for good in the world.

Which is fair enough, and entirely consistent with the soft left’s wider – dare I say, globalist? – outlook, but perhaps inconsistent with support for Welsh independence.

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THE LEFT AND INDEPENDENCE

As I hoped when I voted for Brexit in 2016, the utter cock-up that politicians are making of the process has both increased the demand for Scottish independence and the likelihood of Irish reunification.

Wales has not been immune to this counter-London shift in public opinion, and now we see a marked increase in support for Welsh independence. This has taken a number of forms including the formation of Ein Gwlad, a new, Wales-focused nationalist party, and also YesCymru, a group campaigning for independence.

YesCymru now seems to have been joined by other groups. One being IndyCymru and, more recently, Undod, and it’s on the second of these I wish to focus. Undod is a socialist grouping, perhaps formed following a failed takeover of YesCymru.

I have no problem with Undod being socialist, as far as I’m concerned, the more the merrier, with just one proviso – the desire for independence must transcend all that divides us.

Which is why I was disappointed to read on Nation.Cymru the old-style sloganising about, “international solidarity . . . unfettered capitalism . . . foreign capital . . . rising threat of the far-right in Wales and beyond . . . excesses of Tory rule . . . “.

A disappointment compounded by seeing no reference to the Labour Party that has mis-managed Wales for two decades. Admittedly, in its conclusion, the article says, “Devolution has shown itself to be incapable of protecting us against the excesses of Tory rule”, without mentioning that devolution could have done more – as it has in Scotland in recent years – had it not been for the Labour Party.

And the dismissal of “foreign capital” I find odd. Given the traditional neglect of Wales from London (whichever party was in power), and the cowardice and incompetence of the English Labour Party in Wales in its managing of devolution, had it not been for companies and capital from Germany, the USA, Japan, France and other countries investing in Wales we’d have been in an even worse mess.

I’m at a loss to understand how a socialist Wales, which I assume would be hostile to both indigenous entrepreneurialism and foreign investment plans to sustain us. Answers on a postcard, please. (But for God’s sake, don’t tell me it’s state-owned industries!)

Even so . . .

I have said it before, and I will repeat it here – I would accept a Welsh socialist republic if that was the route to independence. I say that because for me, independence is the priority, everything else can be worked out later.

Obviously I would not be happy in a socialist republic and I would seek to make changes, but after we had won our independence; and in the meantime I would defend that socialist republic against all external threats.

Finally, we must consider Catalonia. Over the past year or so I have noticed members of the soft left advocate independence for Wales, remaining in the EU, and support for an independent Catalonia. I’m unclear how such a position can be intellectually rationalised, but some obviously have no problem with it.

From where I stand, anyone belonging to a small European nation within the EU, and seeking independence for that nation, should have been disgusted both by the Spanish state’s treatment of Catalan political leaders and also by the EU’s silence.

You can read here what the great Breton singer Alan Stivell recently said. I feel the same. (For those too young to remember, here he is singing Tri Martolod.) Like me, Stivell wants a Europe that respects all identities. Not a Europe that promotes homogenisation and tolerates or encourages state terror.

The new/soft/touchy-feely/butterfly/’progressive’ left is wrong about lots of things. Certainly wrong about Europe, and the European Union. Despite this unpromising start we can only hope that its approach to independence is more clear-headed, and sincere.

But I want to make this absolutely clear: anyone imposing ideological preconditions on the kind of Welsh independence they will accept is clearly more concerned with ideology than with Wales, and therefore does not truly believe in Welsh independence.

♦ end ♦

Jac o' the North

Category: Europe

A Personal Take On The Euro Elections 2024

Distractions

The left and Europe, Brexit, independence