European mainstream political parties seem to be caught in a catch 22 situation. On the one hand they are securitising the migrant crisis for reasons that can be seen as right or wrong, but in doing so, they create the political space for the existence of extreme right wing parties.
Jean-Yves Camus, a political analyst and associated research fellow at the Institute of Foreign Relations and Strategy in Paris joins the programme to talk about these issues.
Jean-Yves does not see the threat of the National Front Party in France to be a serious threat in that he thinks that they will not be elected. Even if they win 30% of more of the vote, Jean-Yves says, they still only have 2 MPs, and no mainstream French Party is going to form an alliance with them. He does see the National Front affecting the politics of Hollande’s party but not seriously. He advocates that Hollande’s latest policies are nothing like as extreme as Le Penn’s who basically wishes to stop all migrants coming to France. Nevertheless, the fact that the National Front exists is a major factor which shapes French politics.
Jean-Yves does also does not see UKIP as being a major threat to UK politics. He sees them merely as a neo-sceptic party, not linked to fascists roots, which like it or not do exists behind the scenes in France’s National Front. UKIP has absorbed several conservative party MPs because of the current political discourse surrounding migrants. Cameron is thus obliged to change his politics because of UKIP, however this does not mean that UKIP is a threat unless it forces Cameron to adopt far right wing nationalist policies, which at the moment he does not seem to be doing. The danger is that all conservative party politics will move to the right, making policies which would have seemed extreme a few years ago, seem normal, whilst conservative voters do not notice what is happening.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, Jean-Yves expresses amazement that western mainstream media is unable to report on the clear facts that Bandera groups are in fact tied historically to groups which treated minorities, including Jews in a highly repressive way.
