England And France Smack Down Their Conservatives, Fascists And Nazis. Our Turn In November, America!

Huzzah!

Two big elections in Europe these past few days resulted in bad news for conservatives and fascists (but we repeat ourselves), and good news for fans of not living under the misrule of those angry and bigoted hose-heads. As part of the latter group, yr Wonkette would like to take a moment to acknowledge and appreciate the voters who kept two of America’s largest allies from stepping into the abyss.

First up was jolly old England, where the public looked back on 14 years of conservative governance and said Oi! You wankers have sodded this off quite enough, you have! Now get out of Parliament right now, or we’ll strap you into chairs and read stories about Harry and Megan to you until you go completely daft!

Britain’s major left-leaning party, Labour, picked up 209 seats, meaning it now controls 412 of the 650 seats in the House of Commons (including the speaker of the House of Commons, who by tradition resigns all party affiliations upon election). The Tories, meanwhile, lost 244 seats and have been reduced to holding a mere 121 seats in the House, a historically low number.

Labour leader Keir Starmer immediately became Prime Minister and had his meeting with King Charles to confirm it, because apparently nothing can become official in UK elections until some doddering royal approves it. Which we suppose is still an improvement on some of the old ways leaders were selected.

England under the Tories was a goddamn nightmare. You had Brexit, which a majority of the public now regrets. You had Boris Johnson, a mop-headed embarrassment who spent his years as prime minister mostly drinking and knocking up his third wife. You had another PM, Liz Truss, who was so terrible that a head of lettuce outlasted her.

Outgoing Prime Minister Rishi Sunak sounded downright repentant for sucking:

“I am sorry. I have given this job my all but you have sent a clear signal, that the government of the United Kingdom must change,” Sunak told reporters as he and his wife left the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street for the last time. “I have heard your anger, your disappointment and I take responsibility for this loss.”

No temper tantrum? No screaming “Rigged?” No sending a crowd of Yorkshire dentists marching on Parliament in Guy Fawkes masks? What kind of a western democracy is this?

Next on the agenda was France, where the far-right National Party was expected, after years of goose-stepping right up to the edge of power, to finally grab a majority of seats in Parliament. Remember when the Nazis needed the military to take over Paris? And now people are voting them in. Think about how much grief Hitler could have saved himself if he had simply waited another 84 years.

Anyway, a funny thing happened on the way to fascism. The voters came out and voted:

With voter turnout at its highest rate in more than 40 years, initial estimates suggested the majority of seats would go to the New Popular Front (NFP), a left-wing coalition which quickly banded together just days after [French President Emmanuel] Macron announced that legislative elections would take place. […]

Early results put the left-wing NFP with the most seats, but short of an absolute majority needed to govern; Macron’s centrist Ensemble coalition in second; and the far-right RN in third. 

It turns out that right-wing agendas tend to be very, very unpopular in western democracies. This is more evidence for our theory people mostly just want to live their lives, read whatever porn they can find in the library, and otherwise be left the fuck alone. Don’t like porn/gay marriage/abortion/declining birthrates/declining church attendance/whatever else is bugging you that you’d like to force other people to stop? Then don’t have any and shut the fuck up.

How did this happen? The leftist and centrist parties of France actually cooperated to block the far right. From The New York Times:

France’s left-wing parties and Mr. Macron’s centrist coalition pulled out over 200 candidates from three-way races in districts where the far right had a chance of clinching a seat. Many voters who abhorred the far right then cast their ballot for whoever was left — even if the candidate was hardly their first choice.

Naturally, this normal political move of parties forming alliances to defeat another party was met with levels of whining normally unseen outside of a preschool:

“Depriving millions of French people of the possibility of seeing their ideas brought to power will never be a viable path for France,” Jordan Bardella, the National Rally president, told supporters in a speech, accusing Mr. Macron and the left of making “dangerous electoral deals.”

Stupid democracies, what with their strategic voting and majority wins!

The bonus here, for fans of fascist weeping, is all the American wingnuts who simply cannot believe that they are any sort of a minority. Which makes sense, given how they generally feel about minorities.

Tech bro David Sacks, a close buddy of Elon Musk who has been outspoken about how much he wants to elect sociopaths to office, is a good example:

The incredible trick of forming a political coalition! It can’t be simply that far-right ideas might be very unpopular and people desperately wanted to keep those people out of power.

Perhaps the best talking point on this was that second tweet, which we saw mentioned elsewhere. It goes something like this: because the National Party got a larger percentage of the vote (37 percent) than either the left (26 percent) or centrist (23 percent ) coalitions got individually, somehow this means that the French people really wanted a right-wing government, but were thwarted by … a majority of the public that didn’t? We think we’ve got that right.

Also we’re not sure what’s going on here: French voters were tricked and the election is both illegitimate and legitimate, we think?

And here is some bonus whining from Ben Shapiro, beta:

We would more call them small-d democrats who like having a majority and thus a legitimate claim to power, but we’re weirdly accurate like that.

France is not exactly out of the electoral woods yet — forming a coalition to keep the far right out of power is one thing, but forming a coalition to govern together is another. Still, it’s a much better problem for France to have than Nazis occupying its government buildings. Again.

See how much fun it is to vote against fascists? The United States should try that in November, if for no other reason than it will make Stephen Miller really mad.

[BBC / NPR / NPR / New York Times]

If you like Wonkette’s coverage of international affairs, know that it does not happen without the generous support of our readers.