Something extraordinary has just happened across the Channel.
A centrist, whole-hearted European who is not yet 40, has been elected President of France with two thirds of the popular vote. Emmanuel Macron, soon to be the youngest ever leader of a large modern democracy, is being hailed as the man who halted the march of hard nationalism and anti-globalism.
A pure product of French meritocracy, darling of the cosmopolitan elite – and a technocrat, no less – he crushed by 66 per cent to 34 per cent Marine, the self-proclaimed tribune of “Le Peuple”.
The Remain camp in Britain and the ex-Clinton camp in the United States are rejoicing. Brexit elements and Trump fans in the US, on the other hand, are sullen, ungenerous and sneering in their proxy defeat.
The French rolled over in 1940. This time they’ve saved Germany the fuel and bullets. ?? #Presidentielle2017 pic.twitter.com/SbrDoonw3s
— LEAVE.EU ?? (@LeaveEUOfficial) May 7, 2017
Both sides placed large emotional bets on the French election. Both may have been wrong.
The nationalist-populist forces in Britain and the United States proclaimed Marine Le Pen, despite the anti-semitic and collaborationist DNA of her party, to be the natural successor to Trump and Brexit. In other words, the Anglo-saxon nationalists were too nationalist. Believing that all nations are similarly driven, they assumed that French politics would inevitably be shaped by the same forces as US or British politics.
In truth, Marine Le Pen is detested by substantially more than half of the French nation – for where she comes from as much as what she says. She was always likely to reach the two-candidate second round of this year’s election and was always likely to lose. The British media, Right and Left, talked up her chances absurdly in recent weeks. But for months, French opinion polls have suggested that any candidate who reached the second round with Le Pen would have, in effect, a golden ticket to the Elysée Palace.
Equally, the forces of openness and liberalism would be well-advised not to read too much too soon into Emmanuel Macron’s stunning victory. He was in the second round of the election largely by chance.
If centre-right primary voters had not rejected the favourite, Alain Juppé, in November, Macron would not even have reached the second round. The man who was anointed, instead – the conservative François Fillon – was discredited in January by allegations of financial wrong-doing but stubbornly refused to withdraw from the race. In the same month, the Socialists chose a hard-left candidate, Benoit Hamon, which freed many moderate voters on the centre-left to move to Macron.
In this way, the electoral waves parted and allowed a young man who had never previously fought any kind of election to stroll to the presidency.
Macron deserves credit for his guts and his positive, liberal message. He performed with great aplomb, and a tinge of arrogance, in destroying Marine Le Pen in the TV debate last Wednesday. She committed electoral suicide on air by heckling and smearing rather than arguing. All the same, he had the sang froid and clarity of mind to reduce her to incoherence by the close.
On the surface, his sweeping victory looks like a powerful endorsement of Macronism and Macronomics. He attracted over 20,000,000 votes – many more than either Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007 or François Hollande in 2012 – despite the low turnout and record number of spoiled ballots. If the latter are taken into account, the “real result” on Sunday was roughly Macron 59 per cent, Le Pen 30 per cent and neither of the above 11 per cent. Nonetheless, it is still a stunning victory; compare it with Trump’s 46 per cent of the popular vote.
But it would be wrong to assume that French voters have given an overwhelming endorsement to openness, optimism, globalism and Europeanism. Almost 50 per cent of voters in the first round chose anti-EU, protectionist candidates of Left or Right. When other respectable choices were still available, Macron won the support of less than one in four French voters.
The first real tests of Macron’s political ability will arrive thick and fast. In 10 days’ time he must decide who will he choose as a prime minister. The smart money suggests that he will pick an experienced operator from the open-market wings of the centre-right or the centre-left.
And how hard will it be for Macron’s one-year-old movement, En Marche!, to go from zero seats to a working majority in the national assembly in the parliamentary elections next month?
The French electorate is perverse but it has never been so perverse as to deny a newly elected President a parliamentary majority. On the other hand, it has never previously been faced with a President with an unknown centrist party, who promises that half of his candidates will be new to politics.
The election, over two rounds, will be fought by five political forces, rather than the usual two or three. There will be Macron’s centrist, Europhile En Marche!; there will be the bruised but still powerful centre Right; there will be the disintegrating Socialists, who hold a slender majority in the outgoing assembly; there will be the Front National and there will be Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s protectionist, anti-capitalist hard Left.
Polling company computer models suggest that Macron could emerge with something close to a majority but they have never analysed such a Rubik’s Cube of an election before. A hung parliament is possible. So is cohabitation between Macron and the centre-right.
But Macron says he will press on regardless. He intends to start his presidency with the most controversial part of his programme – his plan to rip up French labour law and make it easier to hire and fire, and allow management and local unions to negotiate their own deals, including changes to the 35-hour working week. If necessary, he says, he will push though this legislation by presidential decree in July and August.
Stand by, therefore, for epic demonstrations and strikes in a French summer of discontent.
By the iron law of recent French politics, Macron should be widely hated by the end of his first year (as Sarkozy and Hollande and Chirac were). There is an important difference, however. Unlike previous presidents, Macron has inherited a gently improving French, and European, economic climate. French unemployment, which has been stubbornly snagged at 10 per cent for years, should start to fall this autumn and winter. France might also start to benefit from pre-Brexit disinvestment in the UK.
If Macron can hold his nerve and assemble some sort of governing majority, he could have the breathing space denied to his predecessors. He could push ahead with his other reforms of the education and tax systems and even his somewhat vague plan to “reinvigorate” the European Union.
With the economic wind blowing in his favour, his beginner’s luck may not have run out yet.
