THE important part of French presidential result is that Marine Le Pen will not succeed Francois Hollande as the next occupant of the Elysee Palace. But even though Emmanuel Macron polled 66.1 percent of the vote to Le Pen’s 33.9 percent, the alarming reality is that this run-off for the leadership of France has legitimized the racist National Front, which drew the support of no less than 11 million French voters.
In his first speech celebrating his victory, Macron vowed to fight “the forces of division that undermine France” but the size of that task is now clear and it is daunting. Macron won because all the parties that detested the National Front and all that their candidate stood for united to ensure her defeat. But it is entirely possible that this will be the last time that the president-elect will benefit from that unity. The rivalries among traditional French politicians mean that Macron will be in office but not necessarily in power. At the moment the En Marche political movement that he created virtually overnight as the vehicle for his candidacy has no legislators in parliament. That has to change at the June general election. But it is currently hard to see that En Marche will win a large enough bloc of seats to enable the new president to drive through his ambitious reform program.
He campaigned with a pledge to slash 120,000 public sector jobs, cut public spending by $65 billion and shear unemployment from the current ten to below seven percent. At the same time he promised to ease restrictive labor laws and protect the self-employed. He has also said that he is going to drive through EU reforms which will return some sovereign powers to France and force through greater accountability among the unelected Eurocrats in Brussels.
It seems almost certain that Macron will need to govern with the support of other parties. While the Gaullist Republicans broadly endorse public sector and labor reforms, the socialists will fight them tooth and nail and massive street demonstrations already seem a given. There may also be an unpleasant surprise in the number of National Front members elected. They currently have two legislators but showed strongly in municipal elections, governing 12 cities. In the 2014 European Parliamentary election they attracted almost a quarter of the vote and now occupy 24 of France’s 74 seats in the EU assembly.
Macron may be brilliant and personable but unless he can command sufficient support in his own parliament his five-year term could turn into a disaster. The divisions in France run deep and with the National Front hammering away inside and outside parliament they could run deeper still. Some pundits fear a return of the profound splits that destroyed the Fourth Republic in 1958. The clear danger here is that France’s economic difficulties will be compounded by labor unrest fired by resistance to reforms and promised that EU changes do not materialize. Thus in five years time when Macron seeks re-election Marine Le Pen or her ambitious, more openly-hardline niece Marion who is jostling for the National Front leadership, will mount an extremely threatening challenge.
Mainstream French politicians and their supporters need to think very carefully before they abandon the consensus that took Macon to the leadership of France.
