Can France's centre-right be revived?
On Sunday, Bruno Retailleau was elected president of Les Republicains – France's mainstream centre-right party. Just a few years ago, his election would have drawn significant attention across Europe, as the rise of a new leader within a major European political force. Today, however, Les Republicains are the shadow of their former selves: a diminished political party on the right fighting for survival.
In the 2022 presidential election, the party suffered a catastrophic result, receiving just 4.78 per cent of the vote – an all-time low for the party of De Gaulle, Chirac and Sarkozy. Today, polls show the party barely averaging 10 per cent support ahead of the 2027 presidential election, regardless of the candidate. Squeezed between Marine Le Pen's ascendant National Rally and the fading remnants of Macronism – and challenged on the right by the insurgent Éric Zemmour – Les Républicains struggle to find a viable path back to power. It has now been 13 years since they last held the Élysée.
Retailleau faces a seemingly impossible task. A senator from Vendée, he is a seasoned local politician and skilled parliamentarian. He is also a capable orator, at least within the gilded and frescoed walls of the upper house of the French parliament. He
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26 minutes ago
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It's time to ban the caravan
The French government has banned smoking at the beach, a performative gesture for a government that's incapable of doing anything about a €3 trillion deficit, uncontrolled borders and lawlessness. As it's in the mood for banning things at the beach, it should listen to me and ban caravans. Here in the Deep South of France, just by the interchange of the A9 motorway and the departmental route 13, is a sprawling prairie containing thousands of dead, rotting caravans and camping vans. It's like an abandoned suburb of Dante's inferno. It's the Hotel California for these mobile pollution factories. The damned things check in, and never leave. The graveyard has been there for at least 25 years, steadily expanding, and I cheer every time I see it. The only good caravan is a dead caravan. Unfortunately, as one dies, another is born.
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30 minutes ago
- New Statesman
The lost futures of Stereolab
Photo by Joe Dilworth Nikolai Kondratiev was born in Russia in 1892. An influential theorist of the New Economic Policy under Lenin, in the 1920s he pioneered the idea that would define his posthumous reputation. Capitalist economies, he argued, underwent predictable cycles of about 50 years' growth followed by stagnation. In 1938, Kondratiev fell out of favour and was executed under Stalin's Great Purge. But after his death, his theory found acclaim in the West, memorialised as 'supercycles', or the Kondratiev wave. One small ripple from this theoretical legacy came in the summer of 1994, on the fringes of the British Top 40 singles chart. A basic schooling on the Kondratiev wave could be found in the lyrics of 'Ping Pong' by the avant-pop band Stereolab, a catchy, three-minute single sung in French-accented English, and built around sultry electric organ and sparkling, understated guitars. The release peaked at 45, mounting no threat to that week's imperial Wet Wet Wet chart-topper. 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Born in 1968, Sadier grew up in the eastern suburbs of Paris, interrupted by long stays in the US following her father's corporate job. Sadier briefly joined McCarthy before the band split in 1990. The pair then moved to south London, signed on to the dole, and plotted an entirely new project. By the Nineties, rock had amassed so much past that would-be musicians could pick a spot in virtually any niche of its history, and burrow there for a whole career. Stereolab's early releases were in thrall to the Seventies Düsseldorf duo Neu! and their propulsive, defiantly minimalist 4/4 beat. A rotating cast of musicians came and went around an unchanging nucleus of Gane, Sadier and the Australian guitarist Mary Hansen, whose bright, volleying harmonies with Sadier were the emotional centre of the band's sound. What set them apart was their politics. Gane wrote – and largely produced – the music, leaving lyrics entirely to Sadier. Delivered in a conversational but strident voice, Sadier sounded like a compelling sociology lecturer suddenly taking flight. On the single 'French Disko', which was performed on late-night TV's The Word, Sadier called for acts of 'rebellious solidarity' before a chorus of 'La Résistance!' But her lyrics tended towards affirmation rather than polemic. There was 'Ping Pong', with its Kondratiev chorus, and the playful 'Wow and Flutter', which does not on first listen sound as though it is questioning the supremacy of the IBM and US imperialism, but somehow pulls it off. In interviews, her political declarations were measured and playful, pondering to Melody Maker in 1993 what exactly to do about 'people like John Major' come the revolution. ('Do we kill them? Do we brainwash them? Do we get them to mop the streets?… That's a hell of a responsibility.') Through punk, the postwar Situationist International – a revolutionary Marxist alliance of artists and intellectuals – for a time held an outsized influence on pop music. You could detect their influence in Stereolab's fusing of anti-capitalist lyrics to the sounds of American consumerism, with their sincere adoption of Sixties bubblegum pop, easy listening and elevator Muzak. In the Eighties and Nineties, leftist bands as varying as the Style Council and the Manic Street Preachers practised entryism, smuggling leftist ideals through catchy pop. That was not Stereolab. 'I would go so far as to say we were avoiding going overground,' Sadier told the New York Times in 2019. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Instead, Stereolab protected their independence – releasing on their own Duophonic imprint – and got better. Between 1996 and 1999, Stereolab came good on the critic Simon Reynolds's declaration of the band as part of the 'post-rock' wave – meaning guitar bands who had been energised by the arrival of hip-hop and dance music. Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Dots and Loops and the sprawling Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night, released consecutively, were among the finest alternative albums of the 1990s, coming at the exact moment Britpop ran out of road. Suddenly, this DIY indie project encompassed glitchy German techno, rhythmic Brazilian jazz, sleek and severe 20th-century minimalism and a collagist approach that beat hip-hop samplers at their own game (later, rap producers including J Dilla, Tyler, The Creator, and Pharrell Williams would sample and praise specifically this era of the band). 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After reforming for what appeared to be a slightly awkward, financially necessitated reunion in 2019, something seemed to stick: Stereolab have toured whenever possible since. The first sounds on Instant Holograms are one minute of silvery, arpeggiated synthesizers, introducing the record like some long-lost Eighties television ident. 'Aerial Troubles', the first full-length song on the album, opens with Sadier's declaration – her voice deeper and richer – that 'the numbing is not/it is not working any more'. This is an album uniquely concerned with consumption, greed ('an unfillable hole, insatiable') and 'dying modernity'. Stereolab are back, and they've never sounded so disappointed. On first listen, it surprises that the bubblegum colours Stereolab painted in during the Nineties have been drained to a slightly more parched canvas. On repeat listens, this is to the album's benefit. If Instant Holograms is largely a retread of former Stereolab sounds – and it is – what is different and manages to convince, is its more downcast mood. 'Ego skyscraper, erect and collapsible', mourns Sadier on the mid-tempo, gently exploratory 'Immortal Hands', 'nihilistic and vulgar'. More than any other Stereolab release, Instant Holograms does not leave the subject of life under capitalism. The strange romantic songs or surreal asides that were once part of the band's coalition are this time absent. This could all be a bit much, but what separates Sadier from a bad case of what we might call the 'Ian Browns' (specifically the one-time Stone Roses frontman's dire Covid-sceptic barkings about 'masonic lockdowns' and '5G radiation') is the glacial, cool manner in which she delivers them. It is also the way that the music appears to offer solutions, glimpses of possibility. 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an hour ago
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France is a case study in how we approach stopping far right
As Reform UK attempt to break into Holyrood through the Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election, mainstream politicians have responded with a strong sense of principle. John Swinney has warned that Reform would use a Holyrood seat to undermine the Scottish Parliament itself. Labour, the SNP and many civic voices are drawing a line – saying, in essence: not here, not now, not like this. It's a moment that feels almost quaint – a democratic reflex that has eroded elsewhere in Europe. And yet, watching this from both within Scotland and with the eyes of someone who has lived through the French experience of far-right normalisation, I can't help but feel uneasy. Because I've seen this before – and I know how quickly it can fall apart. In France, we used to take similar pride in our collective ability to shut the door on the far right. The barrage républicain – a decades-old reflex to unite across ideological lines to block the far right from power – was once a moral constant. You held your nose if you had to, but you voted against Le Pen. And for years, that worked. Jean-Marie Le Pen lost in 2002. Marine Le Pen lost in 2017 and again in 2022. The far right made it to the second round, but never through. READ MORE: Nigel Farage's Scottish conspiracy theories fit Reform's agenda. Don't fall for it But what's happening now is different. The barrage has become tired – almost theatrical. It's invoked automatically, and less convincingly. More and more voters on both the left and the right are now saying : 'Not this time.' On the left, people are exhausted from being the adults in the room. Tired of being told their only political role is to vote for someone they loathe in order to stop someone they fear. Tired of voting for a centre that governs with the right and delivers austerity, repression and a deepening sense of democratic emptiness. Emmanuel Macron, in particular, has made the barrage part of his brand – presenting himself again and again as the last defence against chaos, while dismantling labour protections, weakening the welfare state and cracking down on protest. On the right, the moral urgency around Le Pen has simply faded. For some, she no longer seems dangerous. For others, she seems necessary – a reaction, even a correction, to what they perceive as the cultural or political excesses of the left. In the 2022 snap parliamentary elections, we saw just how fragile the barrage had become. The French conservative party – Les Républicains, ironically – didn't even call for it. Members of Macron's government hesitated. Only the left was clear: in constituencies where its candidate had less chance of beating the far right, it stood down and supported the remaining non-far right candidate. The barrage still exists as a phrase, a reflex, a gesture – but it feels increasingly like a relic. A ritual that no longer carries the weight it once did. Now, the French left is reckoning with the very real possibility that the far right could win the presidency, by reaching a second round where the traditional barrage républicain no longer holds. Whether the candidate is Marine Le Pen or Jordan Bardella – increasingly seen as her likely successor following her recent suspended sentence in the EU funds case – the threat is growing. If centrist and right-wing voters refuse to rally behind the left, or if abstention continues to rise, the firewall could fail. That fear is part of what drove the creation of the Nouveau Front populaire – not in a presidential context, but in response to Macron's decision to dissolve the National Assembly and call snap legislative elections in June 2024. At the time, the far right was predicted to win outright. And they did win big. But the united left – despite immense pressure and rushed negotiations – performed better than expected and helped prevent a full far-right majority. The NFP stirred hope, but it was also born of desperation, a last-minute attempt to salvage the barrage and prevent the far right from locking in long-term power. It may succeed in holding the line this time. But even if it does, everyone knows the barrage cannot keep holding forever. Because when the only argument against the far right is that they are worse – and not that we are better – the ground begins to give way. The Hamilton by-election, triggered by the death of SNP MSP Christina McKelvie, is drawing attention in part because of the question hanging in the background: how well will Reform perform? Not because Nigel Farage is especially popular – polls suggest most Scottish voters still strongly dislike him – but because more and more people feel politically abandoned. And that's where the risk lies. People know who Reform are. They know what kind of politician Farage is – and still, they listen. Not out of ignorance, but because they've stopped believing the mainstream parties have anything left to offer. Because the firewall is being guarded by parties that many no longer trust. What happened in France is that voters – especially on the left – are under the impression that some politicians now use the barrage as a kind of shortcut. It becomes a way to avoid the hard ideological work of building a compelling alternative. Rather than doing the patient work of articulating a vision for social justice, public investment and economic dignity, they simply ask people to 'do the right thing' and vote against the far right. In the centre, the strategy is even more cynical – and in France, it has become outright dangerous. Macron built his political brand on opposing the extremes, but his government has consistently borrowed from the far-right's playbook. READ MORE: Douglas Ross slapped down by Holyrood Presiding Officer after FMQs ejection Ministers like Gérald Darmanin have openly echoed its talking points. The government's 2023 immigration law – shaped in part by pressure from the Rassemblement National – was a turning point, enshrining exclusionary and punitive measures that Marine Le Pen could have proudly authored. Far-right ideas are being mainstreamed not accidentally, but deliberately, in the hope that voters will continue to support the 'least-worst' option. Scotland's political culture remains distinct – and in many ways, admirable. There is a strong civic nationalism here, rooted in values of openness, equality and a belief in collective responsibility. There's still a public discourse that values immigration and diversity. There's a deep emotional connection to the idea of a progressive European future. But none of that is permanent. If the parties defending that culture continue to offer little beyond managerialism – if Labour offer no political direction, and the SNP slogans without delivery – then the space for something darker will grow. And the tools to resist it will weaken. The response to Reform so far has often relied on shaming voters: reminding them that Farage is vulgar, dishonest, racist. And he is. But people know that. They're not stupid. The danger isn't that they don't understand who he is. It's that they no longer believe anyone else is fighting for them. What people want is not a lecture. They want a politics that speaks to their lives. To the reality of low pay, high rents, collapsing care and stretched public services. They want someone to say: 'Yes, we see you. And we have a plan.' If the only message is to vote tactically, to hold your nose, to protect what we have – eventually, people will stop listening. Many already are. It doesn't have to end this way. Scotland still has the opportunity to respond to this moment not with fear, but with ambition. Not just by resisting Farage, but by making him irrelevant. That means hard political work. It means putting forward a real programme for investment in housing, for rebuilding social care, for taxing wealth, for redistributing power. It means giving people something to vote for, not just something to vote against. And it means believing that voters don't want to be rescued from themselves – they want to be treated as people whose aspirations still matter. Right now, Scotland is still holding the line. But we shouldn't confuse that with security. The barrage, whether in France or here, is not a political vision. It's a reflex. And reflexes weaken if they're not attached to something deeper. So let's be honest. The threat is real. Farage isn't going away. And shaming him – or his voters – won't be enough. We need to speak less about him, and more about what kind of country we want to live in. We can still beat the far right. But only if we stop trying to outmanoeuvre them – and start out-imagining them.
