The impact of the French and UK elections on the Maghreb

The late Chou En Lai, former Premier of the Peoples Republic of China, was once asked what he thought where the effects of the French Revolution. ‘Too early to say’, was his considered response. And so it may be, although in a less profound way, with two elections in Europe in the past weeks; France and the United Kingdom. The former has historic and often conflicting relations with countries in the Maghreb. France’s relations with Morocco are more stable and nuanced than they are with Algeria for instance, where memories of the bitter and intensely violent war of independence still run deep. 

President Macron plunged his country into a surprise election. As an unpopular President, he hoped that it would concentrate minds and persuade French voters to show the far-Right Front Nationale the red card, or if they were mistaken enough to embrace it, for it all to unravel quickly and messily, providing French voters with the lesson that they needed. It didn’t really go either way for Macron, but for now at least the nationalist, anti-immigration Right in France have been halted in their tracks. The chances are however, that whoever governs France will be aware of the incendiary issue that migration and immigration have become and act accordingly. But the anti-Muslim sentiment that seems to course through the veins of the far Right will not be translated into Government actions based on prejudice and racism, because it lost. In addition, the commitment given by the Front’s leader, Gabriel Attan, that France would drop its plan to recognize the State of Palestine, has gone the same way as his election hopes. 

In Britain, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party coursed to a landslide victory on a low electoral turn-out, achieving fewer overall votes than his much-maligned predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn did in the two previous elections. This victory was essentially predicated on the fact that voters had absolutely had enough of the ruling Conservative Party and voted against them wherever they could, often tactically. One of Starmer’s first actions in Government was to drop the hugely controversial – and illegal under international law – plan to deport illegal migrants to Rwanda. Not a single illegal migrant has been sent to Rwanda and none ever will be. Labour promises instead to use anti-Terror legislation to try and beat the organized criminals who are profiting from this trade in human life. And having been given a shock by the election of independent candidates in strongly Labour areas on a ‘Gaza ceasefire’ platform and the loss and near loss of some prominent senior Labour scalps, Starmer and his new Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, are expected to begin to re-fund UNRWA and re-affirm a commitment to recognize the State of Palestine, albeit without a timeframe. David Lammy, as something of an innocent abroad, chose Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories for his second major foreign trip.  He will likely rue the day that an official photograph was taken with him shaking the hands of Prime Minister Netanyahu. That the British Foreign Office appeared not to appreciate just how this image would appear to the rest of the Arab World and the global South is incredible. For many this illustrated just how far Britain has come in recent decades from a time when the famous ‘camel corps’ of experienced Arabist diplomats carried influence in British foreign policy, to today, when for many it appears that Israel and the US State Department appear to have something approaching a veto over British foreign policy.

*Mark Seddon is a former Speechwriter to UN Secretary-General Ban ki moon & former Adviser to the Office of the President of the UN General Assembly