Elections: A global opposition comeback?

July 9, 2024

MANILA – Confronted with the specter of far-right political takeover, various progressive forces have responded with spectacular electoral success under tremendously divergent political circumstances.

In Britain, the deeply unpopular Torries under former prime minister Rishi Sunak were effectively forced to call for new elections amid a collapsing support base. In Iran, new presidential elections were held after the death of a former president during a helicopter crash in the country’s northern misty forests in May. The most curious case, however, was in France, where President Emmanuel Macron, a notoriously audacious politician, decided to “[throw] a live grenade” at the feet of the resurgent far-right National Rally (RN) party, which topped the European Parliament elections last month.

The Labor Party managed to win more than 400 seats despite gaining fewer votes than in previous elections. The Tory collapse was far more dramatic than many expected, while the far-right gains ended up far less dramatic in terms of total number of seats (five) in the 650-member parliament. Former conservative prime minister Liz Truss couldn’t even hold on to her seat in South West Norfolk.

Corralling an absolute majority in the parliament, new prime minister Keir Starmer is now in a historic position to alter Britain’s troubling trajectory after more than a decade of turbulent and ultimately disastrous politics under the Torries. While Labor won its first general elections since 2005, Iran elected its first “reformist” president since 2005. The relatively unknown former parliamentarian Masoud Pezeshkian—a heart surgeon by training and an ethnic Azeri and Kurdish by descent—experienced a meteoric rise in two rounds of