We have all woken up today to yet more extremely worrying, troubling news: France’s far right National Rally party lead by Marine Le Pen is now in poll position to win it’s general election. Now, I don’t know much about French politics, but I know that Le Penn, like her father, is a vile xenophobe who would take France down a very dark path. Such politics should have been banished from Europe and the world in general decades ago, yet for some alarming reason we’re now seeing it’s resurgence: Trump in America, National Rally in France and the growing popularity of Reform here in the UK are symptoms of the same chilling trend. They are all a conscious rejection of the liberal, tolerant, accepting values we should all now hold dear, and the return of the reductionist, idiotic, “my group is better than your group” mentality which should have been made extinct at the second world war.

Why we’re seeing this resurgence we can only speculate: personally I think part of it is connected with those who feel left behind in the last two decades; those who never got to university and couldn’t keep up with the recent cultural revolutions, both online and off, such as the rise in LGBTQ+ acceptance, now feel disenfranchised. They want to see the return of the ‘traditional values’ they feel comfortable with, and the restoration of a simpler world they could understand, not realising that such a world allowed the overt exclusion and persecution of countless minorities. But perhaps such people don’t care, as long as straight, white and able-bodied people are once again dominant.

We cannot let that happen; we cannot let this far right resurgence continue. I think we should all be very, very worried about what we’re now seeing, in France and elsewhere. I glimpsed it here in London a couple of weeks ago. We currently live in a world where people are accepted for who they are, irrespective of skin colour, sexuality or physical ability like never before; it’s far from perfect, but it’s better than it historically has been. Yet those who feel disenfranchised by such trends now seem to want to undo them, and return the world to one where they are free to persecute and belittle anyone they feel is inferior to them. Such notions should appal us all, so the time has come to stop it. Surely we want to live in a world where diversity, equality and tolerance are cherished, and where anyone who doesn’t fit the straight, white able-bodied norm is free from persecution.