Macron’s En Marche: a failed political project or something to be copied in the UK?
Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the second round of the French Presidential Election made him the first President for a while to win a second term. Yet his vote dropped while the vote for the fascist candidate Marine Le Pen went over 40%. Her father got derisory votes in the 1970s but the impact of his political project has only increased since.
Macron was not a particularly popular candidate not just for his policies such as increasing the pension age or a focus on Islamophobia, but because he was thought to be an aloof candidate of the rich. He admitted in his victory speech that much of his second round vote was people wanting to stop Le Pen. The abstention and blank ballot count was high for France.
It might be argued that while Macron’s victory was a defeat for fascism, this time, there was also a failure of the left. Melenchon narrowly failed to be in the second round ballot and it can be argued that had at least some of the left parties combined- for example the Greens and the Communists and perhaps the NPA, it might have been different. Melenchon says he plans such a coalition for June’s Parliamentary elections.
Macron’s victory was met with street protests in Paris and the Yellow Vest movement is a reminder that whether Le Pen can ultimately now be stopped in 2027 is about a good deal more than what happens electorally.
Even so the Sunday Times (24th April) has noted that Tony Blair, Trevor Philips, Rory Stewart and others are planning a British version of En Marche partly it appears in the belief that Starmer is not an Election winner. How far this is actually true is another matter but there have been numerous ‘centrist’ political projects in Britain over the last 10 years or so, all of which went nowhere at all, due to lack of interest from voters in the main. The Liberal Democrats who arguably own the franchise are not polling notably better than in the recent past despite their well known ability to focus on and win individual polls rather than wider elections.
We shall see but perhaps the key thing here is that while there is a focus on electoral politics, this isn’t just about that. In fact very far from it, as Le Pen unfortunately understands well.
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