At the Northwood headquarters in London, France and the United Kingdom signed a military and anti-immigrant agreement. The racism of European imperialism has not disappeared, it has been recycled. The bourgeois parties mimic the far-right. The capitalist scourges will only disappear definitively with socialism.

By Ruben Tzanoff

A historic war agreement

The pact signed between France and the United Kingdom marks a milestone in the military relationship between the two countries.

For the first time, they have established coordination of their nuclear arsenals -France and the UK are the only countries in Europe that posses any- in the face of what they define as “extreme threats”. They also pledged to strengthen defense industrial cooperation, enhance joint cyber capabilities and promote greater integration of their foreign policies.

The main motivations

The European Union (EU) and, individually, its member governments are taking advantage of the continuation of the war in Ukraine and the “Putin threat” to rearm and stimulate millionaire business with the war industry.

European imperialism, without breaking with the U.S., has begun to take some steps in response to Trump’s disinterest in sustaining support for Europe under the same post-war conditions.

immigration is the target

Another point on which they agreed concerns immigration.

They agreed to carry out a pilot program based on a “one in, one out” scheme , whereby for every migrant returned to France, another would be accepted in the UK, with a limit of 50 cases per week, when just the day before the agreement was signed 250 people had arrived on the Kent coast.

They treat the humanitarian issue of immigration and the right to asylum as if they were dividing goods among masters.

Racism is an old political tradition that imperialism has recycled. The old colonial justifications of racial superiority have been transformed into criminalizing migration policies, Islamophobic discourses and discriminatory policing practices that systematically target oppressed peoples and people in need of asylum because they are fleeing economic hardship or violence.

They mimic the far-right

Emmanuel Macron, questioned leader of the collapsing French imperialism, is adopting measures inspired by the far-right proposals of Marine Le Pen with whom he is competing electorally.

In 2024, Macron’s laws tightened expulsions of people with rejected asylum applications, automating orders to leave the territory, cutting administrative remedies to speed up the processes and denying residence permits to those who qualify for them.

Keir Starmer came to the British government promising that the Labour Party would be more progressive than the Conservative Party that preceded it. It is a sham, this has not and will not happen.

When Starmer warned “We risk becoming an island of foreigners” he placed himself in the parallel lane of the rising far-right Nigel Farage who has grown in recent elections.

The publication of the policy document White Paper “Regaining Control over the Migration System” leaves no room for doubt. It is a roadmap to criminalize migrants in order to “reduce net immigration”.

Increasing political and social polarization

In both France and the United Kingdom, political and social polarization is growing.

Macron is undergoing a strong attrition and faces criticism from all fronts. His policies are not going unnoticed, but are receiving the mobilized rejection of broad sectors of the working people.

Starmer, who aims to regain the influence the UK lost since Brexit, is increasingly questioned; precisely in a country that comes from being shaken by workers’ strikes and whose people starred in a massive and sustained solidarity with Palestine denouncing the government.

Neither rearmament nor racism

We repudiate the nuclear alliance of French and British imperialism.

It does not represent a defensive measure to guarantee peace and security for the peoples. It is part of its strategy to maintain a position of strength on the global scheme, in competition with other powers.

It is clear that the appeals of “nuclear non-proliferation” are exempting the major powers.

It is the task of revolutionaries to promote mobilizations rejecting rearmament and so that the available money is not destined to warmongering, but to satisfy the needs of the working people in housing, health, education, salaries and other unsatisfied social rights.

The project attempts to pregressively close European borders. It is reactionary, racist and anti-human, that is why it must be fought against.

Social democracy, the Greens and other reformist variants that remain within the framework of the capitalist system are no alternative to stop the far-right.

We need to crush them in the streets, with unitary mobilization, with political independence, and building strong revolutionary socialist parties.

For a Europe of the workers

To the “Fortress Europe”, capitalist, warmongering and racist, we oppose an egalitarian social construction, in solidarity, without exploiters and imperialist oppressors, that is to say, a Socialist Europe where workers rule.

The dilemma is still Socialism or Barbarism.

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