Ed Miliband’s visit to Paris is a remarkable coup after just two years as leader. Neil Kinnock was humiliated by Ronald Reagan’s White House in a poorly organised effort to up his international profile. John Smith astonished European socialist leaders when he abruptly left a conference where he was due to be a star speaker to return to vote for a minor Commons division.
Tony Blair spoke American and French fluently, but even he took bad advice when he schmoozed the CDU leaders of Germany just when they were about to be ousted by Gerhard Schroeder.
In the country of semiotics the decision of François Hollande to come out on to the steps of Elysée to be seen shaking hands with Miliband is a deep signifier. Ever since Blair left office the French have lost interest in l’Angleterre, as they insist on calling the United Kingdom. The crash of 2008 and the subsequent nightmares of the European economy are blamed on the financial system put in place by ‘les Anglo-Saxons’ – a catch-all description which covers ‘Sir’ Alan Greenspan to the fraud and criminality of Barclays and HSBC. The City is seen as a bigger on-shore version of the Cayman Islands and the insistence of successive British chancellors on no-touch regulation is blamed, rightly or wrongly, for current economic ills.
When Hollande came to London recently a French radio interviewer – the John Humphrys of Paris – asked me how the meeting between the French president and the British prime minister would go. He called our prime minister ‘James’ Cameron and when I gently pointed that was the name of the director of the movie Titanic I could sense a Gallic shrug of the shoulder from the Paris studio. Dave, James, who cares? The UK is seen a poorly performing state mired in recession with none of la gloire of the Blair or Thatcher years. Le Figaro gives big space today to ‘Cameron’s former right-hand man being charged’ as the headline describes the Coulson news yesterday.
While Europhobe Tories think they can threaten Europe with a withdrawal referendum unless they get a different EU rule-book for Britain, the French left and right just yawn. Being threatened or patronised by English Conservatives is something France has got used to over centuries.
Hollande himself has always liked Britain. His calm, pragmatic, consensual social democratic outlook is more in the British left reformist tradition than the rhetoric and posing of many on the French left including the absurdist Jean-Luc Mélanchon who was given such a ridiculous build-up by the Guardian and others whose judgement on European politics is idiosyncratic to say the least.
Hollande admired the way Labour kept winning elections. The French socialists have never managed more than single five-year terms of control of the national assembly and government. Now that the French presidency has been reduced to five years Hollande has to work out the politics of winning re-election in just four years and 10 months’ time.
Of all the top French socialists I met in government, and then when they went into opposition in 2002, Hollande was the most pro-Brit. Miliband’s invitation to address the socialist group at the National Assembly is also a signal of honour. Two young women are at the heart of this Labour-French socialist rapprochement. Axelle Lemaire was elected a deputy to represent the French citizens in the British Isles and North Europe. She worked in the Commons and knows Labour well. Emma Reynolds, the shadow Europe minister, speaks French and has been invited to address the important annual summer university of the French socialist party at La Rochelle next week.
After the temptations of English nationalism including calls for Labour to propose a referendum Miliband is opting to hold the United Kingdom together and to insist that Britain’s future lies in the European Union. It is a principled stand. Pandering to England-first ideology may win plaudits in the press owned by elderly rightwingers who pay no taxes in our nation but it is contrary to British national interests and to Labour values.
France and Britain, Labour and le parti socialiste, Hollande and Miliband will follow their own paths. Convergence and cooperation where possible, agreement to disagree where necessary.
But the isolationism pursued by Cameron since he pulled out of cooperation with other centre-right parties in Europe three years ago has brought Britain no benefits. Miliband’s reception by Hollande is an important step to recognition that Britain now has an alternative prime minister-in-waiting.
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Denis MacShane is a Labour MP and former Europe minister. Follow him @denismacshane or www.denismacshane.com
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