NATURALLY, the focus for people in this country is the general election on July 4. But ours is far from the only general election this year and some of them will have important consequences and maybe even important lessons for us here.
 
Among the really big countries that have all already held elections are India, Mexico and South Africa. It would probably be a mistake to try to impose a preconceived pattern on the outcomes. But there may be common themes which have had a big impact on the results, and which may crop up elsewhere.
 
I am no expert at all on any of these countries, or their political systems. But there are two striking common features.
 
In these countries of the global South, the outcomes were both a surprise (including in relation to polling trends) and quite seismic. The second factor was that the problems of the economy were well to the fore with them all suffering from what we tend to call the cost-of-living crisis.
 
In India, there was a major upset when Narendra Modi’s BJP party and allies lost their overall majority. It is worth recalling that he remains India’s most popular politician, so the scale of the losses should not be exaggerated. Even so, the big loss of seats and votes means that he has also lost his aura of electoral invincibility.
 
Numerous reports suggest that he lost votes among the poor and the Dalits (the so-called “untouchables”), many of who were treated abysmally during the Covid pandemic and have never properly recovered. This seems to be at least a partial but emphatic rejection of Modi’s politics around economic issues.
 
In a very different context, something similar may have happened in South Africa. For the first time since apartheid was smashed, the ANC has not won an overall majority in a general election. The ANC won barely 40 per cent of the vote, losing 17 per cent and 71 seats. This is a seismic shift.
 
The ANC has maintained a large and deep following in South Africa because it is rightly judged to be the instrument of the destruction of white-minority rule. No-one can ever take away that achievement from Mandela and his comrades. Yet the slump in the polls cannot be attributed to a rejection of this great legacy.
 
The change in votes and seats was very straightforward. All other parties were effectively static. The ANC total loss of 17 per cent went overwhelmingly to uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), who gained 15 per cent.

The MK name, taken from the former armed wing of the liberation movement, is led by former ANC president Jacob Zuma. Zuma is a hugely controversial figure dogged by allegations of serious crimes, including sexual crimes and enormous corruption.
 
But his association with the ANC, the MK name, and its leftist political stance all suggest its vote is not at all a rejection of the legacy of the liberation struggle. Instead, the implication is that some former ANC voters are groping towards more radical economic solutions than the ones that are being offered.
 
If the judgements about the Indian and South African elections are necessarily tentative, the outcome of the Mexican presidential election is unambiguous. The election of Claudia Sheinbaum as President, with 60 per cent of the vote, means that Mexico has passed definitively into the camp of the leading leftist countries of the global South.
 
Surpassing her mentor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Amlo) in terms of vote, Sheinbaum is the country’s first female president, a Jewish woman in a country with a tiny Jewish minority, and a supporter of Palestinian rights.

She is a committed environmental activist and holds a science PhD to boot. She opposes neoliberal economic policies, as should be expected from a former militant of the M19 movement, and has pledged to expand Amlo’s programme of greater welfare benefits and state pensions.
 
Mexican voters have decisively shifted leftwards and broken the old political duopoly. From these three elections taken together, it seems that there is an uneven but definite trend in many parts of the global South. Voters are seeking economic solutions from the left.
 
This cannot be said at all of the main political trends in the global North. The political trend is to the right, to the benefit of parties and policies of the right and the far right.
 
The European elections are treated far more seriously in many other countries than they ever were here. As a result, they often point to election trends in major domestic elections too.

So, it is deeply worrying that the pattern in these elections was that the right, including the far right, made significant gains while the centrist parties largely held up. The really serious losses were recorded on the left. Yet the situation is even worse than the bare figures suggest.
 
First, the reactionary trend was most evident in the three largest economies of the EU, Germany, France and Italy.
 
Secondly, the centrist and even many of the left-wing parties have conceded enormous political ground to the far right. In general, there is a consensus that what voters must be offered is war, attacks on living standards and racism, usually with a cutting edge of attacks on migrants.
 
Thirdly the response to the rise of the right, with few exceptions, has been to compound their previous failings by enabling the far right further.
 
The worst example of this is in France, where Macron surprised his own party by calling a snap general election in the wake of the results, and its own poor showing. This can only mean he would rather govern as a strong President in tandem with Le Pen, rather than as a lame duck with his own centrists.
 
This is both wholly unprincipled and delusional. Le Pen or similar as Prime Minister would only push their own reactionary agenda. Macron would be obliged to acquiesce as he has abandoned all political defences. Only a strong and united left can defeat Le Pen — the “centre” has already surrendered.
 
Superficially, this country looks as if it is in a very different part of the political cycle. But the big issues are the same, and the far right is also on the rise here in the form of Reform UK.
 
Naturally, Farage’s revival is almost entirely at the expense of the Tory vote, just as it has always been. His ultimate aim seems to be some type of reverse takeover of the Tory Party itself.
 
This scenario will pose a major task for the next British government. To defeat the right and far right we must show ordinary people that there is an alternative.