While it’s great that this election seems to have worked out for French progressives, I think the trend where the French far right does better every election than it did in the last one needs to be addressed by the incoming government, and that their success at doing that will be the true marker of their success overall. If the left-center government is paralyzed and can’t deliver for working French people, then more and more of them will go to the far right, and all this election will have done is kick the fascism can down the road.

Same thing goes for England. It’s great what happened, but the real test is to come.