Corbyn is following in the footsteps of the French left

Spectator

8 hours ago

Labour has reacted with scorn to the news that Zarah Sultana has resigned from the party to create a new movement with Jeremy Corbyn. It's reported that the MP for Coventry South, who has sat as an independent since July 2024, is still discussing the details of the new party with Corbyn – who is yet to comment on the new outfit – but whatever its form, Labour is unfazed.
Gurinder Singh Josan, the MP for Smethwick, mocked Sultana for returning to 'the irrelevance of the far left'. Another MP, David Taylor said it was a case of 'good riddance' and suggested any other Labour MP opposed to the proscription of Palestine Action should 'follow suit'.
Labour's crowing might come back to haunt them. One suspects Sultana and Corbyn have been hatching something for a while. They may have been inspired first by the success of Jean-Luc Melenchon's la France Insoumise (LFI), and, more recently, the stunning victory of Zohran Mamdani in last month's Democratic primary for mayor of New York. Mamdani's defeat of Andrew Cuomo was celebrated by Melenchon, who wrote of the victor on X:
Opposed to the genocide of the Palestinians, he is obviously already accused of anti-Semitism. He won against a figurehead of the centre-left backed by the local leaders of the cheating Democratic party.
As in France, continued Mélenchon, it is now the radical left and not the 'traditional' left which represents the people.
Melenchon is on good terms with Sanders and Corbyn, a trio of ageing Marxists (their combined age is 232) who have not mellowed with the passing of time. Melenchon met Sanders when he visited New York in April this year to give his first address to an American audience. He also found time to endorse Mamdani.
The Frenchman's association with Corbyn stretches back many years. In a 2022 interview with a French magazine, Corbyn's biographer, Tom Bower, described the pair as ideological 'cousins'.
In 2015 the New Statesman interviewed Melenchon shortly after Corbyn had been elected leader of the Labour party. A delighted Melenchon described Corbyn as 'unique in Europe' because his was the only case where an 'alternative has arisen within a socialist party and won'.
Melenchon's own political career was flagging a decade ago. An outcast from the Socialist party, he had witnessed the bulk of France's white working-class vote for Marine Le Pen in the 2012 presidential election.
Melenchon's problem was that on several issues his views barely diverged from those of Le Pen: the pair were Eurosceptics and protectionists, and also opposed to the wearing of the burka in public. 'To walk in the street entirely covered is a denial of the human right to see someone's face,' Melenchon told the New Statesman. He also reiterated his support for French secularism. 'We're secularists and we're attached to the secularism of the French state: no politics in religion, no religion in politics,' he said. 'I don't have a position on Islam just as I don't have a position on Catholicism, Judaism and Protestantism…because I'm elected for all French people.'
These remarks weren't forgotten by some on the British left who opposed the invitation extended to him to attend the Labour party conference in 2018. They needn't have worried because by the time Melenchon arrived in Liverpool for the conference, he was a different man from the one of 2015.
His Damascus Road experience began in 2016 when he founded la France Insoumise. A year later he polled 7 million votes in the first round of the presidential election (three million more than he'd managed in 2012 as leader of the Left Party). Melenchon was only 600,000 votes shy of Marine Le Pen, who lost to Emmanuel Macron in the second round run-off.
How best to close that gap? Le Pen was the champion of the white working-class so Melenchon chose to become the figurehead for the demographic that the Western left regards as the oppressed of the 21st century: Muslims. Given that there are over six million Muslims in France, it was a canny move. In the 2022 presidential election, Melenchon increased his votes to 7.7 million and was now just 400,000 votes behind Le Pen.
At this point, Melenchon may have realised his age and ethnicity were a brake on his ambition. He needed a young, charismatic Muslim to speak to France's minorities. Step forward Rima Hassan, who was elected an MEP for LFI in last year's European elections, a campaign in which 62 per cent of French Muslims voted for the party.
The 33-year-old was born in a Syrian refugee camp to Palestinian parents. Before 2024 no one in France had heard of her. In a recent poll in Paris Match, she was ranked 44th on the list of most popular personalities.
The right loathe the keffiyeh-wearing Hassan, as they do LFI in general. They wave the Palestinian flag in parliament, describe Hamas as a 'resistance movement' and organise marches to decry 'Islamophobia'.
In 2010, Melenchon described the hijab as 'repugnant and obscene'; now he accuses those who object to it as 'racist'. Jordan Bardella, the president of the National Rally, refers to LFI as 'La France Islamist'.
When Melenchon attended the Labour party conference in 2018 as a guest of Jeremy Corbyn, he acknowledged the similarities between the two and Sanders. He described the 'paradox of an older man representing a cause that has been powered by millions of young people'.
That in itself wasn't enough to win elections. There was a missing ingredient. Melenchon has found it in Rima Hassan and Sanders is an enthusiastic endorser of Zohran Mamdani.
It makes sense for Jeremy Corbyn to team up with Zarah Sultana who, like Hassan and Mamdani, is in her early thirties. 'Magic Grandpa' is in his 77th year and his powers are beginning to fade. But he remains a figurehead to many, particularly the Bourgeois Bohemians, those left-wingers with luxury beliefs who pay good money to go to Glastonbury. Sultana appeals to another demographic, the growing Muslim population.
Melenchon has talked of creating a 'New France'. One imagines that Corbyn and Sultana have similar plans for Britain.