Mick Barry (Cork North Central, Solidarity) | Oireachtas source

Of course I am. The Taoiseach will be sitting across from the people who participated in that election campaign. There could be another election in the UK before the end of the year.

The election saw the biggest gains by the Labour Party in the UK during an election campaign since 1945, narrowing the gap from 23% to 2.5% during the campaign. Since then, there has been the horror of what happened at Grenfell Tower, the tomb in the sky. Everybody knows that was a man-made disaster due to deregulation, cheap cladding, the failure to install sprinklers, slashing the number of inspectors and so forth. It is a monument to the failure of neoliberal capitalism. If it had happened the week before the election rather than the week after, there probably would have been a very different election result. The fact that it happened afterwards shows that the election is not the end of the matter. There is the start of a social movement against not just the Tories, but also the capitalism they represent.

In terms of the French election, there were two spectacular victories for Mr. Mélenchon. The turnout, particularly last Sunday, was woeful. It was down to 43%. Election fatigue and the weather are blamed, but Mr. Mélenchon was far closer to the mark when he said that it was a civic general strike. The centre left and the centre right have collapsed into the Macron movement, but there is no great enthusiasm among the mass of people. Confrontation is looming. Emmanuel Macron is talking about reforming the so-called labour laws by the summer, implementing a ceiling on damages for unfair dismissal and changing sectoral agreements to company by company agreements. That will open the door to driving down the living standards of workers in France. Attempts to go down this road resulted in mass protests against Mr. Sarkozy and Mr. Hollande and we will see the same against the policies of Mr. Macron. The challenge to him will come from the syndicats, the unions and the radical left.

There is an important lesson here, and I will conclude on this because I am aware that the Taoiseach is an admirer of the ideas of Mr. Macron. The agenda of the so-called new European centre in reality serves the interests of the establishment and the traditional right. It will be challenged on these policies by the working class movement and the radical left.

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