With total disregard for the results, yesterday’s man, Barnier, has arrived at the Matignon as prime minister, almost two months after the second round of legislative elections. The message of the second round was clear: the majority of people who voted expressed their desire to block Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN, National Rally) and gave a relative majority to the New Popular Front.
By deciding to rule out the possibility of a government formed by the NFP, Macron chose to install the RN as the arbiter of whether or not a right-wing government should be maintained. He is appointing an old hand in politics, from the party with the fewest MPs, who has served in anti-social governments and unelected European institutions. Barnier has always worked to guarantee budgetary orthodoxy—in other words, the destruction of public services and social rights. He’s not going to repeal the pension reform and raise the minimum wage to €1,600!
All this has concrete consequences: first of all, it strengthens the position of the RN and the reactionary obsessions that form its programme. The RN has announced that it will not censure a government that puts the ‘issue of immigration and security’ at the heart of its policy. Two days after the deaths of 12 people, including a dozen young women, in the Channel, Barnier—who was the Brexit negotiator responsible for tightening the conditions for migrants arriving in the UK—is a threatening figure. We have not forgotten his violently anti-immigrant stance during the 2022 presidential campaign. In reality, Macron is in the process of appointing a far-right government with the smooth, well-mannered facade of the grand bourgeois, Barnier.
All those who are committed to opposing the far right and its policies, and who have wanted to express the urgent need to break with the neo-liberal measures that destroy our social gains, must realise the extent of Macron’s denial of democracy, made possible by how the institutions work. There is a pressing need to impose the agenda of meeting social needs. Only social and political mobilisation is capable of doing this: the repeal of the pension reform and the return to retirement at 60 years, a general increase in wages starting with the minimum wage, and the repair and extension of public services to protect the vital needs of human beings and nature are urgent issues that must be imposed through strikes, demonstrations and, if necessary, the blocking of the country.
The NFP’s (New Popular Front – left coalition) responsibility is to bring together all the political, trade union, and community organisations that were involved in the election campaign, to prepare these mobilisations and bring them into the workplaces, schools, and neighbourhoods by organising local NFP committees.
September 7’s mass demonstrations will be the first step in warning Macron and Barnier that the censure of the government is being prepared in the streets.
Montreuil, 5 September 2024.
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The UK state is not unitary from the point of taxation. There is significant fiscal devolution – council tax and its equivalent is devolved to all four polities, and property sales taxes devolved in Cymru and Scotland. Scotland has significant influence over income tax rates and bands, but the ability to create new taxes is largely controlled by Westminster though a Tourist tax has been approved. Interestingly, Corporation Tax was devolved to the Northern Ireland Assembly by the Tories (largely to encourage it to match the very low rates in the 26 county Republic of Ireland state). However VAT, National Insurance and many other taxes are UK-wide (not just “Britain”) and controlled by Westminster.
The STUC has identified measures https://www.stuc.org.uk/news/news/stuc-launch-tax-proposals-to-save-scotlands-public-services/ under current devolution arrangements that could be used to tax wealth more by the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Greens have in the last few days introduced an exemplary measure into the housing bill at Holyrood to remove the exemption on the monarch’s properties being taxed in Scotland (he owns 80), a symbolic gesture but not politically insignificant, and have proposed a new council tax band for mansions. The Scottish Socialist Party has long proposed removing the regressive council tax and replacing it with a redistributive Scottish Service Tax.
This is all in advance of the devolved Scottish Parliament elections in May 2026. Polls tell us voters in Cymru strongly support the extension of the fiscal powers devolved to the Scottish Parliament to Senedd Cymru, as a minimal demand, and also elect a new Senedd on a new PR system in May 2026.
The campaign for a wealth tax will therefore have a totally different character and demands in the different parts of “Britain” (which has not been a fiscal or economic unit for 225 years by the way). There are no Anglo-centric “one size fits all” fiscal solutions, even within the current form of the UK state.