Am I a chicken-shop lefty? Here’s what a French fast food row taught me about politics | Coco Khan

How do you like your progressive politics? Are you net-zero left or anti-identity politics left? A “legalising drugs” kind of radical or someone whose public sector solidarity includes police? Nato or Nat-no? The reputation for infighting in lefty spaces – where policy disagreements harden into personal tests of morality – needs neither introduction nor encouragement.

But reading about the left-on-left battle at Master Poulet, a French chicken chain that just opened its first UK branch, I found myself mulling a question that felt more than a little personal: am I chicken shop left?

OK, OK, this might just be a me problem. I’ve always had an interest in chicken shops. Maybe it’s personal: chicken shops, offering cheap halal takes on mainstream fare, have long been a pursuit of south Asian immigrants who hoped, like my own family, for a better life in this brave new world (talk about a wing and a prayer). But they are also bound up in Black British youth culture: neighbourhood incubators for music, affordable places to hang, landmarks of “the ends”. Chicken shops tell the story of a mixed, working-class Britain, with all its whimsy.

There’s Morris Cassanova AKA “Mr Chicken”, the late graphic designer who claimed to have designed 90% of the chicken shop signs in London. Or just the sheer nerve of the Americana. I still chuckle whenever I pass a Dixy Chicken, imagining what the Confederate south might think of a halal business from Solihull bearing its name. Add the peri boom, Amelia Dimoldenberg’s hit YouTube channel Chicken Shop Date and Rishi Sunak discussing his Nando’s order (“It’s good broccoli,” he said), and the chicken shop’s modern cultural legacy is something to crow about.

Anyway, back to the boeuf – sorry, I mean poulet – in France. Back in April, Karim Bouamrane, the Socialist party (PS) mayor of Saint-Ouen-sur-Seine, near Paris, tried to block a Master Poulet branch that had opened outside the town hall. Literally, with concrete blocks at the doors. A court ordered them removed, so he swapped them for giant colourful plant pots. The shop responded with quippy signs (“we are open … no offence to Karim”, read one), delighting French social media with this meta game of chicken. Bouamrane insisted it was all about quality of life, as late deliveries and cooking smells disturbed residents. Not everyone was convinced.

Saint-Ouen has transformed in recent years, not least due to regeneration pegged to the Paris Olympics. Critics accuse the mayor of overseeing a gentrification drive that has seen property prices surge, arguing that’s his real issue: he wants to chase out cheap food (and the sorts of people who eat it). Master Poulet serves a drumstick of rotisserie chicken and potatoes for €4 (£3.40) – cheaper than a McDonald’s and probably no less healthy, yet McDonald’s is not a target. And given the tradition of rotisserie chicken in France, you do have to ask what exactly it is about the halal version that prompts complaints about bad odours.

Which may explain why politicians from the further-left La France Insoumise (LFI), have waded in, questioning whether Islamophobia and classism are at play, and accusing the mayor of abusing his power. One MP visited the shop in solidarity. His name? Éric Coquerel. I’ll just leave that there.

To be clear, I am far from an expert on French politics. The last time I thought much about the LFI and PS was in 2024, when they joined forces in the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) to hold back Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally. It worked, prompting many of us in the UK to ask, with Nigel Farage tipped for No 10, shouldn’t we – red, green, yellow or bin – be doing the same?

Bouamrane announced last month he would be running for president. But as I pecked at pommes frites on a warm London evening, it was hard to see how that successful arrangement of NFP could happen again. Bouamrane has since called LFI a colonialist party, for undermining French republicanism with its talk of race; while allegations of racism from LFI continue. Meanwhile, opinion polls put Le Pen on track for presidential glory. What leaves me crestfallen (at this point the puns are involuntary) isn’t the disagreement but what it heralds.

So am I part of the chicken shop left? I don’t know, maybe. But perhaps that’s the wrong question. After the almighty flap over Master Poulet, I’m left feeling that politics should be less “ruling the roost” and more “birds of a feather”. Especially with a far-right fox prowling outside the henhouse.

• Coco Khan is a freelance writer and co-host of the politics podcast Pod Save the UK

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