Holding Back the Tide is an Important Venture, But not a Sufficient Task

This article in brief addresses the challenge, in the face of Right-wing racist rhetoric and creeping complicity with this within parts of the centre Right, for political alternatives to be imagined that are both ‘social’ and ‘democratic’. In doing so it notes how recent UK and French elections have shown how, in the first case it was possible to defeat a governing party that increasingly stirred up culture wars to remain in power and, in the second case to galvanise a broad enough social coalition to hold back an increasingly confident tide of racism presenting as national interest. The article, however, also argues that such is not enough and that while holding back the tide of Right-wing populism is an important task, and that social visions that are realistically achievable are needed in order that dangerous and delusional visions do not come to predominate.