UK and France show us the world’s political fates are far from settled

In a year already so saturated with closely watched and fought elections across the globe, it was perhaps tempting to pay little attention in the run up to the UK’s general election and the second round of France’s parliamentary elections last week.

It all seemed a foregone conclusion: in the UK, polls were all but certain of a decisive Labour triumph, and in France, the far-right National Rally (RN) seemed closer than ever to clinching victory once again, having swept to a first-place finish in the first round of President Macron’s snap elections.

I was in Paris on assignment for CNN for both rounds, and witnessed large crowds take to the streets and fill the iconic Place de la République as results trickled in each time – the first time in backlash against the RN, chanting anti-fascist slogans, and the second time in celebration of what turned out to be a stunning bounce back of the leftist alliance.

In between, I covered the UK elections where, as predicted, the left also triumphed with a Labour Party landslide.

In both cases, you can’t underestimate what happened. Both countries have essentially remade their political landscapes and will now face an increasingly combustible world with a new political reality at home and, in the case of the UK, with entirely new leadership. There was undeniable relief felt all around for anyone outside of the far right and bent on keeping populists out of power.

Both winning factions worked the system: with only a third of the British vote, Labour won two thirds of the seats in parliament, and in France, the moderates and leftist alliance agreed which seats to contest in the final round to squeeze out the hard right.

It worked, but I’d argue they shouldn’t relax now.

Both are big countries whose roles on the global stage can’t be overlooked. But CNN committed to extensive special programming of both elections not just because of this, but because the results point to the increasingly outsize importance of global themes such cost of living and security – and to who seems to be addressing these issues the most head on in most voters’ eyes.

To put it straight: in both France and the UK, far-right parties had their best showing of the postwar period.

The RN – led by Marine Le Pen – won 182 parliamentary seats and looks set to become the country’s official opposition for the first time. It will now be a legitimate thorn in the side of President Macron’s, who now presides over a deadlocked parliament where far-right policies will become more central to legislative debate.

In the UK, while Nigel Farage’s populist right-wing Reform UK party may have won only five seats, it far exceeded polling expectations and its total vote share of 14 per cent which means it, too, could become a veritable opposition with a big say in defining the Conservative movement in Britain going forward, shaping key political debates in the UK from Brexit to border control. It is in the conversation now in a way it hasn't previously been.

Mr Farage and Ms Le Pen’s mantras echo through similar growing movements in all of Europe’s major economies and across the Atlantic to the US, where former president Donald Trump continues to power ahead in the polls against an increasingly embattled President Joe Biden.

An MP from Mr Macron’s centrist Renaissance party who was lucky enough to be re-elected, conceded to me that we may come to look back on the 2024 French election as a triumph for the far right.

It is gaining all the time – incrementally, but persistently.

Over the past 10 years, populist voices have emerged from the shadows into the mainstream and are increasingly translating into tangible votes and real power. This had already happened in the European parliamentary elections this year but we now see it translating into national votes in major EU countries

If the rise of the far right continues its current trajectory, it seems all but certain that it will develop into a dominant force in major western powerhouses in the coming years, unless centrist and leftist parties are able to stop their own rot.

So the question then becomes: how do they do that?

The overwhelming impression I’ve got from reporting on and in both of these countries is that it isn’t really about politics any more. You see this in the historically low voter turnout in the UK election, and you see it in the growing crop of Macron detractors in all spheres of French society.

So many people have lost faith in incumbents and in the powers that be, that they’ve tuned out of the whole left-right debate entirely. Voters are not as loyal to parties – the fragmentation of the vote across a number of groups, especially in France, makes that much clear.

What people do know is that their cost of living is going up again and again, and that they want change. They have shown in these elections that they will sway to the political grouping that has the clearest answers.

Far-right parties such as RN and Reform UK now find themselves in an opportune position: able to speak directly to these struggles of disgruntled voters from the sidelines, and crucially, without facing the accountability that those in charge do. There is an advantage to being the perpetual outsider, and it’s a role figures such as Mr Farage and Ms Le Pen relish.

In this way, I see the results of the past week as marking part of a process rather than an end. The outcomes of both the UK and France’s elections are a game-changer not only because of who is now in charge, but because of who is now left waiting in the wings.

Max Foster is a CNN correspondent and anchor of the daily current affairs programme CNN Newsroom with Max Foster. He is based in London.