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‘Macron’s win in the French presidential election does not disguise the fact that Marine Le Pen achieved an 8-point improvement on her 2017 performance’, Lorraine Douglas told the Communist Party of Britain’s political committee on Tuesday evening.
‘The strong victory of the Fidesz-led alliance in Hungary is further evidence of the growth of right-wing populist nationalism in Europe’, she said, pointing to public support for President Orban’s refusal to bow to EU pressure for sanctions against gas imports from Russia. Another factor in the election has been the mistreatment of Ukraine’s Hungarian minority following the Maidan coup in Kyiv.
Ms Douglas opposed the delivery of US and British military training and arms to groups in Ukraine such as the Azov Battalion, the Right Sector and the National Militia, which are part of a European network of fascists.
‘The medium-term risks this presents to the working class movement throughout Europe cannot be over-estimated’, she declared.
The CP political committee warned that the war in Ukraine is entering a new, potentially more dangerous phase as Russia consolidates its position in Donbas and the Ukraine government demands yet more weapons in an effort to escalate the war.
What is needed is the same urgency to achieve a ceasefire and negotiations for a peaceful settlement that respects Ukraine’s sovereignty, allows autonomy to Donbas provinces and halts any further expansion of NATO.
‘However, President Biden sees this proxy war against Russia as serving US economic and political interests as he pursues his objective of switching EU reliance on Russian gas and oil to reliance on US imports delivered by tankers’, Lorraine Douglas commented.
Likewise, she condemned the belligerent rhetoric from Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is using the Ukraine war as the principal reason for keeping him in office.
Britain’s Communists accused the British and US governments of trying to sideline the United Nations as a force for mediation and peace and reiterated their condemnation of President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and of NATO’s 18-year drive eastwards which provoked it.
The CP political committee warned that the alternative to a rapid peace was not the illusion of a Ukrainian military victory but a long war of attrition that could spread into neighbouring countries, raising the spectre of nuclear war and mutually assured destruction (MAD).
‘This makes it all the more vital to support the principled and courageous work of Stop the War and CND in the face of Keir Starmer’s pro-war, pro-NATO diktats’, the party’s international secretary Kevan Nelson concluded.