Bring Back The Old Songs

There are a number of reasons why I've never been a fan of the song Good Old Arsenal, such as the use of the bumptious Rule, Britannia! tune and the fact that Jimmy Hill wrote the lyrics. But the main reason is that it sounds so anxious: "while we sing this song we'll win the game". I'd prefer a song in which victory wasn't dependent on the fans ruining their vocal chords. The most anxious football fans are not those who follow teams at the top or bottom of the table. Despite the best efforts of the media to make the final day of the season a festival of jeopardy and uncertainty, the end results were largely predictable. Manchester City held off Liverpool, as they have done for months, while the relegation of Burnley, along with the already-relegated Watford and Norwich, was long foretold. Leeds managed enough of a bounce after sacking Marcelo Bielsa to reach safety, in no small part because their small squad has some talented, young players, while the Clarets's decision to ditch Sean Dyche couldn't arrest their decline simply because they remained his team: obdurate and ugly but ageing and lacking quality. No, the most anxious fans are those in between because their teams tends to flirt with either ascension into the upper strata or collapse into the lower depths. If your team manages to do both in the same season, then you may need medical support. 

It's fair to say that Arsenal's season has been a curate's egg. From bottom of the table after a calamitous opening run of three defeats to peaking at 2 points behind Chelsea in third in April. That we were pipped to fourth and Champions League qualification by Spurs was down to many factors during the run-in - injuries to key players, a lack of depth, the naivety of a young squad - but really it all came down to the month of April, which served as a microcosm of the season. Three defeats in a row against Crystal Palace, Brighton and Southampton suggested mid-table obscurity, but then a superb counter-attacking win at Stamford Bridge and a battering of Manchester United at home suggested a bright future. Had we turned one of those three defeats into a victory, we would (mutatis, mutandis) have finished fourth, a point ahead of Tottenham. We might even have been sufficiently confident that Arteta could have played a more defensive game at White Hart Lane and come away with a draw, or even nicked a win, instead of going toe-to-toe and coming up short.

Broken down into thirds (games 1-12, 13-25 and 26-38), the season record is a bell curve: 20 points, then 28 and finally 21. Despite that purple patch in the middle, Arsenal only rose from fifth to the giddy heights of fourth, though it also saw their goal difference improve from -4 to 12. This points to a wider story of mediocrity among the chasing pack, with Manchester United, Spurs and West Ham also culpable. It's worth remembering that after 12 games Chelsea were top by 3 points. By game 25 they were third and 16 points behind City (albeit the eventual champions had played 2 more games by then). The overall tale of the season then is obviously one of two elite teams, City and Liverpool, racing ahead of the pack. The final gap between second and third was 18 points, the gap from first to third 19. In contrast, 19 points down from third takes you to between West Ham United in 7th and Leciester City in 8th. 

What this means for Arsenal is that a realistic target is third. Having moved from a final position of 8th in 2021 to 5th now, that's certainly achievable, but it will require a significant improvement not only in the playing staff but in game management. As the youngest squad in the league, with the youngest manager, there's every reason to believe that we can advance on both fronts, and there is a palpable sense of support for "the process" both among the club hierarchy and a fanbase hitherto known for being particularly grumpy and fractious. This new harmony is perhaps best reflected in the adoption of Louis Dunford's The Angel as a terrace anthem. The lyrics aren't much better than Jimmy Hill's ("North London foreva, whateva the wevva"), but at least they're optimistic. While the voluble support and engagement of the fans has obviously owed something to the lifting of the pandemic restrictions, it's also clear that we've passed a watershed in the post-Wenger transition phase. The underperformers and mood-hoovers that Arteta inherited have been moved on, even if this has stymied us short-term by depleting numbers. The incoming players have been of variable quality, but White and Tomiyasu are likely to be mainstays in future while Lokonga will probably improve, particularly if he gets to play in the Europa League. Whether the chaos-agent that is Nuno Tavares can improve is another matter.

The eruption of youth has caught the eye, but what's particularly promising is how mature those younger players are, both on and off the pitch. It is the older players, like Xhaka and Cedric, who have at times proved hot-headed and panicky, not the likes of Saka, Smith-Rowe or Ødegaard (deservedly wearing the captain's armband of late). Not for the first time, Arsenal's tally of 4 red cards (only beaten by Everton's 6) owed much to some dubious refereeing decisions, notably against Gabriel Martinelli in the away game at Molineux. The tally of 60 yellows was eighth lowest - respectably mid-table. The one exception to the image of level-headed youth is Aaron Ramsdale, who seemed to get more jittery as the season advanced (perhaps recalling his previous relegation with Sheffield United), however this is probably part and parcel of a personality that has proved popular with the fans and should be indulged to a degree. I'm firmly of the old school belief that great goalkeepers are essentially odd-balls. I also suspect he's still pinching himself over how much progress he has made since signing for Arsenal: first-choice and an England cap. 

So the future looks bright. Attention now switches to the all-important work of Mikel Arteta and Edu Gaspar, the Technical Director, in acquiring the right new players to either give us greater depth in key positions or to fill some obviously gaping holes. The former is largely about greater resilience in defence. Assuming William Saliba makes his long-awaited debut and someone like Aaron Hickey comes in, we should be stronger, though I suspect Arteta may want further cover if Cedric leaves. In midfield, the question is whether to hope that Partey stays fit and Lokonga matures or to invest in another player. This will ultimately come down to whether Xhaka stays or goes. As ever, it's impossible to predict which way he will jump, though the crowd on the final day against Everton certainly gave him plenty of appreciation. Up-front, we remain blessed with exciting wingers and support strikers but have a massive hole where Aubameyang used to be. Pepé looks like he's in the departure lounge, along with Alexandre Lacazette, though I doubt we'll recover more than a fraction of his club record fee.

What's not clear at this stage is what Arteta wants in a forward, given the various names we've been linked with, or whether he hopes to keep Nketiah in the squad. If Eddie leaves on a free transfer, we'll need two strikers and that will be difficult given the likely cost. My guess is that Nketiah will re-sign and we'll go all-in on a proven goal-scorer who can play a similar poaching role. That would point to someone like Gabriel Jesus, rather than a more traditional spearhead like Dominic Calvert-Lewin (whose "audition" on Sunday at the Emirates Stadium proved that he has learnt a lot from Duncan Ferguson, though not all of it technically qualifies as football). An outside bet would be Olly Watkins, who looks like a player on an upward trajectory. That he is a Gooner is nice, but such sentiment will have little bearing on the decision. Jesus is the younger player and arguably moving into the peak years of his career (he's only just turned 25), as well as being someone Arteta and Edu both know well from their time at City and Brazil respectively. Anyway, it would certainly prompt hilarity when Ramsdale gets a straight red from Michael Oliver for farting and the new boy has to go in goal.

In summary, it has been a season of both promise and disappointment, though the latter is largely a consequence of the former. My prediction after that horrendous opening was that we would recover and steadily march towards sixth. What I didn't predict, but perhaps should have, was that our course would be more erratic than steady. What I'm really hoping for next season is not only a further improvement on our league position, and perhaps some better runs in the cups, now that we've got three to compete for, but a calmer, more reliable progress. I've enjoyed the highs - the home defeat of Spurs, the away win at Chelsea, the victory over Machester United - but the lows have been pretty horrible. I can put up with games we lose but compete in, such as the undeserved home defeat to a very fortunate Manchester City, but our continuing tendency to screw up in away games against very modest and umabitious opponents is maddening (in the loss to Southampton, we had 76% possession and managed 23 shots - only 6 on target). It's a tired cliché (because there's no smoke without fire, you know) but what we really need is consistency. The real mark of progress will be when opposing fans start singing "Boring, boring Arsenal" again.

On Notice

While Keir Starmer's promise to resign if he is fined by Durham Police may actually be a covert admission that he wants out of the job as Leader of the Labour Party, the media reaction has seen it as either an out-of-character gamble or a cunning ploy that will heap greater pressure on a shameless Prime Minister. Both interpretations focus on personality, which seems to have become the entire domain of British politics in recent months as the Conservatives run out of ideas and Labour seems unable to get beyond defining itself solely in terms of "Not Corbyn". The local election results have likewise been interpreted in these terms: the Conservatives going backwards due to disgust at Boris Johnson's behaviour and Labour struggling to advance in its target Red Wall seats (Scotland and Wales have received less coverage than Northern Ireland). But this imposition of national political narratives on hyper-local contests is unhelpful. For example, Labour's advance in Cumbria, its huge reversal in Tower Hamlets and its long-predicted victories in Wandsworth and Westminster all spring from different sources.

If there are broader lessons to be drawn from the results they amount to little more than the traditional observation that incumbents tend to be vulnerable and that the Liberal Democrats remain a repository for disappointed Conservatives in rural and suburban areas. This hasn't stopped the usual suspects cherry-picking to suit their priors, thus the Blue Labour contingent at The Guardian insist that more must be done to bridge the gap between the graduate elite and the white working class (a term that Julian Coman delicately avoids using by instead regaling us with anecdotes about football fans). Predictably, Labour's victory in Barnet has been cast wholly in terms of moving out of the shadow of you-know-who (the Jewish Chronicle has decided to stop naming him, preferring euphemisms such as "toxic brand"). In contrast, the media coverage of Labour's setback in Croydon, which it won in both 2014 and 2018, has tended to ignore the corruption and incompetence that contributed to it declaring bankruptcy in 2020.

Insofar as last Thursday was a judgment on national politics, the message appears to be one of frustration at the government's failure to address the growing cost-of-living crisis, but equal frustration at Labour's inability to offer more than limited amelioration. That the press has been full of nonsense about cake, beer and curry for weeks isn't simply down to partisan bickering and a preference for the theatre of moral squalor. It reflects a lack of substance in our politics, both in terms of the Tories' legislative programme and Labour's alternative. Today's Queen's Speech was a grab-bag of administrative tinkering, reactionary gestures and empty rhetoric. And while many commentators have strained to cast Labour's policy proposals as progressive and serious, few can remember what they are, beyond a hazy Green New Deal. The terms of debate may well have shifted as a result of the pandemic, making government intervention and spending respectable again, but the reluctance to pursue this vigorously - consider the swift decline of levelling-up and Labour's timidity over tax -  suggests that we remain trapped in the discourse of austerity that emerged after the 2008 banking crisis.

Simon Wren-Lewis made this explicit in a recent blog post entitled, 'How Austerity created Brexit, and the economic and political decline of the UK'. The common thread he espies is a refusal to listen to experts, which is obviously special pleading but does have some plausibility: "In this sense austerity was the first central policy move that ignored the wisdom of experts. Brexit was the second, and government actions throughout the pandemic have been the third. But the links between austerity and Brexit may be rather more causal than that. This is the thesis of an AER paper by Warwick economist Theimo Fetzer ... What Fetzer suggests and shows is that the impact of austerity was strongest on those with few qualifications, and as a result support for UKIP grew. In other words support for UKIP started to grow in areas with significant exposure to specific benefit cuts. It was the threat from UKIP that led Cameron to promise a future referendum. More importantly, as support for UKIP is closely correlated with support for the Leave side in the referendum, then Fetzer uses his estimates of the impact of austerity to suggest Remain would have won in the absence of austerity."

But what is the mechanism here? Why would specific benefit cuts lead to growing support for UKIP and indirectly Brexit, rather than say growing support for Labour? Let us return to Wren-Lewis: "What this does not show is why cuts in welfare and other support led the less skilled to vote for UKIP, rather than some other opposition party. However that gap is not hard to sketch in. First, in many voters’ minds, Labour were at least equally to blame for austerity as the Coalition government, in large part because of the highly successful (and largely uncontested) lie put out by the Coalition government and their press that the Coalition were clearing up the mess that the Labour government had left. Second, the Coalition and its press used immigration as a scapegoat for much of the impact austerity was having, yet the Coalition also failed to bring immigration under control. For many, therefore, UKIP was an obvious choice."

I don't find this entirely convincing, given how much UKIP's support was driven by older voters, many of whom were protected from the worst effects of austerity by the introduction of the pensions triple-lock in 2010. And the "lie" about Labour's responsibility for the crash was effective both because there was an element of truth in it - i.e. the failure to adequately regulate the banks - and because the narrative of public debt being bad was well-established long before 2010. Labour were elected in 1997 on a promise of "prudence" and matching Tory spending limits. However, I think it is more persuasive to argue that a stronger anti-austerity line by Labour in 2015, and perhaps even a challenge to the anti-immigration rhetoric of the time (those infamous mugs), might have prevented an outright Conservative victory and thus the EU referendum (though whether this could be put off indefinitely is another matter). 

Of course this is a counterfactual, so unknowable, but it does highlight an important point which is that the electorate has not been offered a clear choice in a general election this century with the exception of 2017 (and that was more mood than substance). You can argue that 2019 was a clear choice, in terms of manifesto commitments, but the election was obviously decided on the singular arguments of "Get Brexit done" for most voters and "Keep Corbyn out" for those liberals determined to avoid responsibility for the catastrophe of 2016. It is this lack of a clear choice that has marked our politics for decades now. Even the generational change offered in 1997 was more about form than substance, with the famously clear choice of 1983 ("the longest suicide note in history") being held up as a warning for Labour to not diverge too far from the economic and social settlement established by Margaret Thatcher. 

Is it any wonder that politics has descended into a contest over virtue? Just as in the early 1990s, the convergence of the leading parties (e.g. Labour insisting that Brexit is a done deal and we must move on) has caused the political space to be filled with tales of sleaze and bad behaviour, from breaking lockdown rules to watching porn on the job. The difference between then and now, which the Blairites have repeatedly emphasised during their recent 25th anniversary celebrations, is that Labour's current leader cannot represent youthful hope. At best he is "Mr Rules": the embodiment of integrity and probity, and thus a massive turn-off for most voters. But to focus on Starmer's personality void, and to imagine that a fresh face like Wes Streeting would make all the difference, is to repeat the error of assuming that what the electorate is crying out for is more tone (if not more Tony), rather than more public spending or help with rising prices. 

Labour is going nowhere fast because at a time when the government is bereft of compelling ideas, and apparently powerless in the face of the country's economic distress, it is incapable of "taking back control" of the political narrative, to coin a phrase. The sight of Starmer putting himself on notice is a bathetic example of his limited room for manoeuvre in a landscape devoid of any serious debate over economic policy. The lesson of 1997 was that at a time of relative economic security for most voters, the electorate was prepared to give a hearing to the novel and different. Labour isn't offering any novelty now, either in Starmer's attempts to channel Hugh Gaitskell or Rachel Reeves's attempts to resuscitate New Labour, but more pertinently it isn't offering any clear route to that economic security beyond pabulum about being on the side of business and aspirational, hard-working families. Most voters are worried that they'll soon be unable to afford a takeaway curry, not that the leader of the opposition might have had a cheeky korma. 

New Labour, Old Labour

Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of Labour's general election victory in 1997. It's also the start of the final week of campaigning ahead of the local elections on the 5th of May, which represent the first real test of the party's readiness to become the next government. With the self-congratulation of the political centre over the re-election of Emmanuel Macron still ringing in our ears, today is a good moment to consider the history and legacy of the New Labour project. Keir Starmer is clearly only a weak copy of Tony Blair: comfortable with the authoritarian and technocratic approach to government but hopelessly inadequate in terms of the ability to enthuse or inspire. In contrast, Macron has proven himself to be the real heir to Blair, not least in his ability to serially win despite being despised by a majority of the population. Other obvious parallels are the unapologetic shift to the centre-right and the suspicion that the electoral vehicle will not survive the end of its leader's time in office. But just as the parallels with France can be overdone, not least by Blairites indirectly criticising Starmer, so the comparison of the current and former Labour leaders can ignore the wider historical context.

An example of this can be found in the latest rueful memoir by Neal Lawson, the Director of the centre-left think-tank Compass, which appears in Prospect. His analysis captures the received wisdom of the New Labour years: that the win-at-all-costs strategy led to political compromises that undermined the possibility of truly radical change. As he puts it, "New Labour tried running up the down escalator of neoliberalism. They were at best naive about a project designed not just to privilege capital over labour, but to extinguish even the thought of mild social democracy. In so doing, it chose a path that was always doomed to fail." Lawson is typical of many centre-left commentators in characterising New Labour as a "formidable political project" and yet also strangely naive and guileless, which would be a startling paradox if true. The error here is in tying the "project" too closely to the personality of the leader, and in giving that individual the benefit of the doubt in terms of motivation. My own view is that Blair was the most cynical politician ever to inhabit Number 10. The current occupant doesn't come close. In other words, he knew perfectly well what he was doing. There was no naivety.

Another apparent paradox in the historiography of New Labour is the idea that it was at once a watershed, representing a clean break not only in Labour's history but in the wider political culture, and yet also the culmination of a long, patient rebuild of the party after the 1979 loss. Was it revolution or evolution? Was Blair sui generis or was he simply continuity Kinnockism? Lawson attempts to answer this by placing the project in the context of a challenging socioeconomic environment: "New Labour was a clever defensive move in the face of hostile tectonic structural shifts: from Keynesianism to free markets, from the nation state to the global economy, from the working class to individualised consumers, from muscular unions to rampant corporate power, and from the Cold War to American domination." The problem with this interpretation is that it treats 1979 as another watershed, which obscures just how much of the New Labour project was foreshadowed while Tony Blair was still at school.

The decisive break with Keynesianism occured in 1970 with the Nixon Shock, which marked the end of the Bretton Woods system and was a genuine watershed in postwar history. In the UK, the writing had been on the wall throughout Labour's time in office between 1964 and 1970, with periodic bouts of austerity and the growing media discourse around "welfare cheats". The social reforms of the period, championed by Roy Jenkins as Home Secretary, look in retrospect like the emergence of the neoliberal subject rather than the highwatermark of social democracy. Globalisation didn't happen overnight, but nor did it only start in the 1970s. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade began in 1948. The consumer society was already well-established by the 1960s, while the "muscular unions" of popular mythology reflected a steady erosion of the power of organised labour, not its supremacy. Industrial action in the period was overwhelmingly defensive in the face of inflation and closures. Strikes were a symptom of the breakdown of the social compact, not class war.

As for the shift "from the Cold War to American domination", New Labour reflected the persistence of older thinking rather than the acknowledgment of a new reality. In claiming that "Blair signed the nation up to the ultimate hubris of remaking the Middle East in the mould of the Washington consensus", Lawson ignores that remaking the Middle East was a long-established British habit that was not interrupted by the start of the Cold War, hence the Suez debacle. The 1983 invasion of Grenada, together with the ongoing Soviet-Afghan War, made it clear that we were already living in a unipolar world well before the fall of the Berlin Wall. Insofar as New Labour reflected the zeitgeist of the late-90s and the millennium, it was in the general air of surrender and acceptance. As Blair famously said in his 2005 conference speech, "I hear people say we have to stop and debate globalisation. You might as well debate whether autumn should follow summer." New Labour was the product of vast social and economic changes that had been underway since the end of World War Two. It wasn't an agent of change but a symptom, and that is why it managed to achieve so little of lasting value during its time in power.

Lawson's belief that New Labour was a missed opportunity leads him to imagine a counterfactual: "It could have invested in alternative media to wean itself and the nation off Murdoch. It could have helped resource the unions to grow again and rebalance the dominance of corporate power. It could have democratised, rather than commercialised, some of the public sector. It could have given back real power and money to councils. It could have grown the Labour Party to become a force for good in communities and not just a leader’s fan club." Any one of these on its own is implausible, but in combination the impression is one of outright delusion. The reason why Blair didn't challenge Murdoch wasn't fear but because they largely saw eye-to-eye. New Labour sought to diminish the unions as independent entities, reforming them as the allies of both the state and capital. It had no interest in democratising public services for the very reason that this would have hindered greater commercialisation. And it certainly had no wish to restore councils as democratic bodies with significant power, as its preference for technocratic mayors and depoliticised managerialism made all too clear.

The idea of re-establishing Labour as a social movement drifts perilously close to Corbynism, and thus highlights just how much the contemporary Labour Party is engaged in a project to reanimate only the worst aspects of the New Labour years, shorn even of the role as a "leader's fan club", while refashioning the party apparatus as a cartel. Since becoming leader, Keir Starmer has been criticised from all directions for his lack of policy substance and his determination to attack the Conservative government almost exclusively on the grounds of incompetence and sleaze, while reassuring business and other vested interests that a future Labour government will change very little. While it is true, as commentators like James Meadway never tire of emphasising, that the party's programme is far more "leftwing" than it is given credit for, this simply reflects the structural changes since 2008 and the current global consensus. Labour has yet to take a bold policy decision outside of ostracising its previous leader. While Starmer's Blairite critics chafe at what they see as his lack of vigour, the "radical centre" has all but evaporated, which should be the chief lesson drawn from the trajectory of Emmanuel Macron.

Though Lawson has a blindspot for the roots of New Labour in the 60s and 70s, he is in no doubt that its baleful legacy will live on: "The Iraq War broke the moral soul of Labour and corroded people’s belief in politics and democracy, helping pave the way for the rampant populism of today. Boris Johnson’s “Partygate” scandal is a disgrace but it has nothing on the degradation of democracy that was the Iraq War." While Iraq was a notable low-point in the governance of this country, Labour was re-elected in 2005. If our democracy was degraded, it was in the low turnout of the elections from 2001 onwards. And that disengagement was clearly the result of a wider corrosion than just the Iraq War. New Labour ultimately failed because it never offered a real alternative to the Tories - just more competent management and fewer sex scandals. That's not necessarily a bad pitch, but it hardly justified the messianic zeal of the true believers. Today's Labour leadership believes that the modesty of its pitch and lack of zeal are virtues and that voters have tired of Boris Johnson and adventurism. Its template isn't New Labour and Tony Blair so much as Old Labour and Hugh Gaitskell.

How To Stop Fascism

The first round of the French Presidential election witnessed a close shave for Emmanuel Macron when Jean-Luc Mélenchon came within 1.2% of beating Marine Le Pen to second place. Though he increased his vote to 28%, from the 24% he scored in the first round in 2017, Macron has clearly not endeared himself to the French public after five years in the Élysée, though he has consolidated his support among centre-right voters, thereby contributing to the decline of Les Republicains and Valérie Pécresse's abysmal 5%. He is unquestionably the President of the rich now. The French political terrain has been fragmented on both flanks for the last decade. Macron's calculation was that a centrist offering both modernisation and a reassuring nationalism would always make the Presidential runoff. His hope, so far fulfilled, was that the second slot would be taken by the far-right, allowing the second round to centre on the defence of republican values and a weak progressivism that would herd leftwing voters into his camp, much as it has done since Jacques Chirac first managed the trick in 2002 (that many on the left remain bitter about the consequences of this is a factor now). 

The danger, narrowly averted this time, was that a fragmented right might let the radical left in, obliging Macron to appeal beyond the centre-right to Le Pen's voters in a runoff against Mélenchon. That Zemmour proved a damp squib was very much to Macron's advantage, even if it has meant the further normalisation of Le Pen as a viable contender on the right. The counterfactual of a left versus centre runoff would have relocated the political discourse, but it would also have legitimised the left, and while Macron has been happy to make gestures towards the far right on Islam and policing, he has been obdurate in refusing to make any concessions to the left on his core neoliberal programme, allowing Le Pen to expand her offer to issues of social protection, such as the cost-of-living crisis. While the far right is presented as a danger to the republic, the left is simply dismissed as illegitimate and its voters, at best, as deluded fools. The corollary of this is the barely concealed contempt in the demand that leftwing voters now rally to the republic and support the incumbent.

While Macron is still odds-on to win the second round vote, the result will likely see Le Pen score over 40%, perhaps even over 45%, certainly well over the 35% she got in 2017. Macron's belief, presumably, is that he can hang on to the centre-right voters he has won from Les Republicains while simultaneously expecting the broad left, from the Parti Socialiste through La France Insoumise to the PCF, to dutifully turn out in his favour. But this is not a coherent political bloc, which emphasises once more that the political centre in France is less than a third of an electorate otherwise divided between left and right. During his tenure in office, Macron has failed to build an effective coalition, partly because of his own "Jupiterian" arrogance and personalism, but largely because the electorate remains divided across a broad spectrum. The continuing fragmentation on both the left and right is evidence of real variety and dissensus, not just the egotism of small party leaders in an electoral system that encourages small parties. But that said, there was undoubtedly an opportunity to create a new political formation five years ago.

The unpopularity of Hollande in 2017 and the centre-right's move to a more conservative line under Francois Fillon created the space for an emergent centrist bloc that combined both left and right. While essentially pushing a neoliberal programme of institutional reforms and a commitment to Europe, Macron was able to appeal to a general progressivism centred on modernisation and individual rights. But that was then. As Stefano Palombarini puts it, "The situation is very different today, even if the hard core of Macron’s programme, i.e. neoliberal reform, has not changed. Now Macron is openly addressing himself to a right-wing bloc: the progressive side of his programme has been buried beneath the police violence he has systematically supported and the liberticidal laws he has pushed through. The project of a bourgeois bloc was thus an illusion, which vanished very rapidly." 

In its place, we see a now-dominant right that is fragmented into three blocs. First, you have Macron's absorption of the traditional conservative centre-right (his strong support among older voters being a clear indication of this). Second, in place of the illusion of social advance that he promoted in 2017 you now have a fear of downward mobility (always fuel for Fascism) among the middle class and "respectable" working class, who are attracted by Le Pen's focus on social justice and economic security. Third, her shift away from vocal Islamophobia has been enabled by the coalescing of a more extreme right under Zemmour. Macron's achievement has been to integrate the Rassemblement National into the mainstream of the conservative right and to legitimise a more moderate Islamophobia as a dimension of "Republican values". The result, as Palombarini notes, is that "If there is still a pseudo-republican barrage in France, it is now against the anti-neoliberal left", hence the strong focus of the media in the first round on blackballing Mélenchon as much as Zemmour.

The media focus on the risk of Mélenchon's supporters abstaining in the second round reveals anxiety, and yet it hasn't led to any softening towards the left. Interestingly, it is this aspect of the campaign - that the centre might be defeated by the far-right due to the indifference of the left - that has been most remarked upon in the UK, more so than Le Pen's absorption into the mainstream and her shift to social and economic issues. Of course, there is no great mystery as to why this has such resonance here. Starmer's treatment of the left has been even more brutal than Macron's while his supporters' insistence than any electoral failure will be the left's fault has been even more strident. According to Ian Dunt, a Le Pen victory would be entirely the fault of the left: "Through a form of sustained political infantilism, it has left the battlefield." The charge of immaturity is a longstanding liberal trope, and Dunt isn't imaginative enough to move beyond it: "Sometimes you have to pick between options which you do not like on the basis that one is worse than the other. That’s a calculation even a child could make. But we live in an age of emotional tribal political divides in which black-and-white thought processes replace compromise and reason .. Infantilism and puritanism have turned whole sections of the French left into de-facto collaborators with fascism." 

There's obviously a lot of projection going on behind the hyperbole, both in the sense that Dunt's track record is littered with infantile judgements and tantrums and in the sense that the collaborators with Fascism are invariably from the centre-right of the political spectrum. Dunt's pragmatic argument, insofar as he's actually making one, is lesser-evilism: "There used to be an alliance against the far-right. Not so long ago, people of integrity and decency understood that you put aside your differences when it came to fighting fascism. No matter how much you disliked the centrist or centre-right candidate, you would proudly support them if the alternative was someone who posed a threat to freedom and equality." The problem, as his assumption that the lesser evil is always the centre indicates, is that this never benefits the left. Dunt was notably loud in his denuciations of the choice on offer in December 2019 and certainly didn't advocate that the political centre should hold its nose and vote for a Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn in order to avoid the hard Brexit promised by Boris Johnson and the Conservatives. His vision of "compromise and reason" was a hung parliament in which the Liberal Democrats would hold the balance of power and immediately call a second referendum. Nothing infantile there.

This scolding of the left is also prominent in the US. In a long piece for The New York Review of Books, decrying the decline of the centre-left in France and its lack of imagination in the face of threats from the far-right, James McAuley dismisses Mélenchon because "he has advocated Russophile positions in the past and, most recently, a withdrawal from NATO, which he has called a “useless organization.”" What he ignores is the French context. First, how the tradition of cultural anti-Americanism produces both the superficial Russophilia of a Metro station named Stalingrad as well as protests against McDonalds. Second, that scepticism about NATO has long been mainstream in France, shared by Charles De Gaulle as much as Georges Marchais. As ever, the lessons being drawn from the French left are really about domestic politics, in this case the lack of focus and plain wrongheadedness of the socialist left, a point that Noah Smith makes explicit. The left will never be respectable enough for the neoliberal centre, and every concession that they might have a point about inequality or public investment will be relentlessly undermined by an insistence that their worldview is warped and they are naive and irresponsible. This is an argument increasingly being made by the centre-left as well, witness the likes of Paul Mason berating the left for its geopolitical naivety and insisting that it must ally with the centre to stop Fascism.

The chief lesson of the first round of the French Presidential election is that while Macron has made inroads on the right, he has signally failed to absorb the left, even in its currently fragmented state, meaning that his political project remains no closer to true hegemony than it was in 2017 when La République En Marche scored only 28% in the first round of the Legislative Assembly elections on the back of his Presidential victory. The runoff nature of the French electoral system benefits the centrist candidate, but it doesn't actually create a sustainable political bloc that commands a popular majority, only a temporary alliance at the ballot box. His hope is that this alliance will persist through to the second round vote, after which he will no doubt continue to cultivate conservative support while turning his back on the political left, on organised labour, and on any social activism that fails to respect his interpretation of republican virtue. If he fails in his objective, it will be the left that will be blamed, not Macron himself or the many conservatives who voted for Le Pen. In the UK and US, this will be held up as evidence that defeating the left is the objectively necessary first step towards defeating Fascism.

Live at the Colosseum

According to Elon Musk, "Given that Twitter serves as the de facto public town square, failing to adhere to free speech principles fundamentally undermines democracy." Musk is as vague about these principles as he is about his plans to buy Twitter, though as a free-speech "absolutist" he is presumably against lifetime bans of the sort handed out to Donald Trump, if not against blocking people who annoy him. He also doesn't interrogate what free speech means in the context of a democracy where voice reflects wealth and power, perhaps because he cannot see his own privilege. Musk's use of the town square metaphor reflects his status as a public figure who has little trouble being heard above the hubbub of the crowd. But there is another metaphor that has been widely deployed by Twitter's critics, one that sees the platform as a zero-sum combat zone. As Renée DiResta put it in the Atlantic, "Twitter serves less as a town square than as a gladiatorial arena." This doesn't make much sense as a metaphor. A Twitter ratio in which a bluetick is widely derided as a fool is not like two men fighting to the death. But the image of the bloody ampitheatre, rather than the boisterous market square, does tell us something about the liberal commentariat. 

There was a good example of this a couple of weeks ago when the Guardian ran a comment piece by Moya Lothian-McLean decrying the malign influence of Twitter's "gladiatorial arena" (natch). Her specific charge, borrowing from Julia Bell's Radical Attention, is that the platform's divisiveness and promotion of rage is not only distracting but debilitating: that "Consensus politics, or even any kind of politics, becomes impossible, because we are too outraged to actually think". The claim that politics has become more fractious and antagonistic is a commonplace in the liberal media, along with the belief that democracy is being eroded by populism, but actual evidence for this is lacking. In fact, political consensus has steadily increased since the 1980s, with the result that there is often little of substance to choose between the main political parties. This is not simply the product of neoliberal hegemony or the self-replicating nature of modern cartel parties. It reflects a steady shift of the political centre to the right, the defining characteristics of which have been the defence of property and the absorption of Islamophobia into mainstream discourse (consider the current French Presidential campaign).

Attempts to draw dividing lines between the parties tend to reveal that fundamental consensus rather than a gaping divide over political principle. For example, the British government's scheme to process asylum-seekers in Rwanda is intended to pick a fight with "lefty lawyers", but while the Labour Party has loudly denounced Priti Patel's plan as unworkable and extravagantly costly it has otherwise accepted that offshore processing is legitimate. This should hardly surprise us, given that the idea was first considered by David Blunkett as Home Secretary back in 2003. One of the reasons why Labour's attacks on the Conservative government have been weak is that on matters of substance they haven't offered any real alternatives beyond amelioration. Even in areas where they should be able to highlight clear policy differences, such as on climate change, they have been tentative and hesistant, or even  bluntly reactionary as in the demand for injunctions against protestors. Keir Starmer's pitch is that he would be a more competent manager than Boris Johnson, hence the repeated use of the phrase "Get a grip". The problem with our politics is not a lack of consensus.

Lothian-McLean's case against Twitter isn't particularly coherent. She starts by saying that "It silos people off into echo chambers in which their interaction with like-minded individuals can vastly change their perception of reality (For instance, at the 2019 election I truly thought Labour had a chance.)" But she then tells us that "Extensive research shows that disagreement – even the well-evidenced, politely delivered kind – does very little to change someone’s opinion". You could reconcile these two claims by assuming that Twitter simply reinforces predispositions (the classic interpretation of how propaganda works), but then "vastly change" is obviously hyperbole. There's also an inherent contradition in the idea that Twitter creates both echo chambers, in which everyone agrees, and gladiatorial contests, in which everyone very loudly disagrees. Thinking Labour had a chance in 2019 was perfectly reasonable - it did have a chance - but to suggest that Twitter obscured the probability only makes sense if you went through the campaign without being exposed to either FBPE propaganda on the need to vote Liberal Democract or the extensive cast list of right-wing Labour types gagging for defeat. 

Most of these critiques of social media end up being about behaviour, with a strong whiff of sanctimony on the part of individuals granted the privilege of a newspaper column. According to Lothian-McLean, "Dissent on Twitter is rarely ever expressed politely: it is gladiatorial. Twitter communities often show up to back their chosen fighter, furthering the sense of “us” v “them”". But impolite partisanship isn't peculiar to social media: it is the very essence of newspaper comment, after all. The difference between Twitter and a newspaper is simply one of access. The reason why the bird site is so popular with the politico-media caste is precisely that it amplifies their own behaviour: trenchant opinions, contempt, bullying etc. But it doesn't create this, any more than the penny post created the intemperate letter to the editor. One thing Twitter has allowed journalists to do is to offshore their self-disgust: "When I am on Twitter, I find myself hating everything and everyone – especially myself – wasting their lives arguing about nothing. I lose my ability to empathise, to see humanity beyond the avatars. Never am I more disconnected than when I am plugged in."

This reluctance to address the nature of the wider media, and in particular the press, is pathological. Consider this: "Existing in a state of constant fury on Twitter doesn’t equate to full-blown extremism. But the obsessive, feverish, zero-sum nature of Twitter discourse certainly contributes to an environment that breeds, at best, suspicion and hostility to opposing worldviews and, at worst, festering radicalisation. Transphobia is an obvious example; Twitter has seen the spread of anti-trans views beyond the confines of niche forums to become a moral panic." But the current prominence of transphobia has little to do with social media and everything to do with the traditional media, particularly broadsheet newspapers that have sought to demonise trans rights activists as a moral threat and part of a wider "wokery" that imperils national identity. Kathleen Stock did not achieve prominence through Twitter - she was promoted by the Times and the BBC - and "niche forum" isn't exactly an accurate description of Mumsnet. 

Despite insisting that consensus politics is made impossible by Twitter, Lothian-McLean has to concede that the evidence doesn't support such a pessimistic view: "The thing is, the extreme division that characterises Twitter is not widespread in society at large. Research by King’s College London’s (KCL) Policy Institute in 2019 found that while people had become more polarised based on their political identities, for example Brexiters and remainers, differences in opinion on specific policies, such as immigration, were in fact starting to converge." We are living in a age of grudging consensus and are consequently ever more determined to argue that other people are wrong. This might lead you to wonder whether these "political identities" have been deliberately accentuated to give the impression of difference. Indeed, perhaps the defining characteristics of Twitter aren't the trolling and the pile-ons but the declarative bio and flag-adorned names. Are we really arguing passionately, or are we simply performing identity? 

Musk may be a vain fool and his vision of the public square heavily biased in favour of those with the loudest voices, but he does at least recognise that democracy is practised as discourse, even if he remains vague on the details. In contrast, the liberal commentariat's choice of the gladiatorial metaphor points to a rejection of discourse in favour of struggle, which is both a reductive view of democracy and a theory of politics as tactical advantage rather than strategic truth (i.e. my side must win not to achieve a particular goal but because my side must win). Ironically, the metaphor works better as a reflection of the opinion economy of the press and TV in which striking a pose is always more important than establishing truth and you are only one bad performance away from career death. Indeed, the idea of "cancellation", which exists more in the fearful minds of the commentariat than in reality, is perhaps just an expression of this existential anxiety: the ultimate thumbs down. What bothers newspaper columnists who've built a career on the bully-pulpit is not the viciousness of Twitter but the proximity of the crowd.