The rise of Macron

The Economic Observer Chen Jibing/Wen

It now seems safe to declare that the populist political wave that has swept the entire Western world since last year's British referendum to leave the European Union has finally receded on The French coastline. This is a rather surprising result, because France is the Western power facing the economy, immigration problems, terrorist attacks, and identity crisis the most.

In the first round of the French general election on April 23, centrist independent candidate Emmanuel Macron and far-right National Front leader Marine Le Pen came first and second with nearly 24 percent and 21.3 percent of the vote, respectively, and they will compete in the second round of voting on May 7. François Fillon, the highly vocal center-right Republican candidate a few months ago, and Jean-Luc Mélange, a far-left candidate whose popularity soared in the final stages of the campaign, both lost with about 20 percent of the vote, while the currently ruling center-left Socialist Party candidate, Benoy Amon, received just over 6 percent of the vote.

This is very much in line with the poll results released before the election, as did the results of the Dutch general election for more than a month. It seems to be said that the results of these two elections not only mean that the populist forces that once seemed unstoppable have become tired, but also save some face for traditional professional poll forecasting agencies.

Since Marlene Le Pen also made it to the final runoff, many would have thought the above judgment was too optimistic or rash. However, this result is only further evidence of the professionalism of the French Civil Investigation Agency. Almost all polls predict that Marlene Le Pen will successfully cross the threshold of the primary. In fact, Le Pen's actual vote rating in the first round was even slightly lower than previous poll forecasts. Of course, the polls also predict that in the final decider, Macron will easily beat Le Pen, who will not even get 40% of the vote.

This is related to the electoral process in France, where voters vote for their preferred candidate in primary elections without giving much thought to other factors, often resulting in a very fragmented vote – no candidate in the past few decades has been able to win more than 50 per cent of the votes in the first round and thus be elected directly. But by the second round, as most of the candidates are eliminated, the votes will flow to candidates with more moderate value positions. In the 2002 general election, Marlene Le Pen's father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, snatched the limelight in the first round of voting, but won only a measly 18% of the vote against Jacques Chirac in the second round, and this electoral mechanism was at work.

Marlene Le Pen looks set to repeat her father's mistakes 15 years ago. For now, all the candidates who lost the first round of elections and their political parties are trying to mobilize their supporters to vote for Macron on May 7 to boycott Le Pen. Both the current Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Kazenaf and the two charismatic former centre-right prime ministers François Fillon and Alain Juppé enthusiastically praised the 39-year-old Macron's promise of "successfully taking France into the future". They unanimously denounced Le Pen for representing France's "backwards and divisions," and the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélangcom used the usual populist tone to refer to Le Pen's political forces as "enemies of the republic."

The latest poll results also show that the popular support between Macron and Le Pen is still widening further, indicating that a significant majority of the supporters of these candidates will vote for Macron in the second round, not Le Pen. All this indicates that the dream of sending the first female president in the history of the French Republic to the Elysée Palace with the help of right-wing populist ideology will not come true.

One

Emmanuel Macron is now facing a historic opportunity to become the youngest head of state in France since Napoleon.

However, if he wants to live up to the people who took to the streets to sing the Marseillaise with great enthusiasm because of his outstanding performance in the election, especially the young people among them, he will need to show great courage and wisdom in the future, and pay a much harder effort than the election campaign. Given the dire situation in France and the reality that he has only four years of executive resume, some have made pessimistic predictions: Macron won the election not difficult, but it will be harder to deliver on his reform promises.

France is the only Major Western power that has not really undergone painful structural reforms since the 2008 global financial crisis and the 2010 eurozone debt crisis, and is therefore the major developed country with the slowest economic recovery. In the past 5 years, France's unemployment rate has never been below 10%, and the youth unemployment rate has been as high as 20%; France's economic growth rate has improved slightly this year, but it is expected to be only 1.4%, ranking third from the bottom among the 28 countries in the European Union; for a long time, France's tax revenues with high welfare policies have not been enough to support public services, the national debt is high, and few voters are willing to support any reforms to cut these public services...

After a mediocre and comfortable five-year presidency, Socialist Francois Hollande, known as the "most unpopular president in the history of the Fifth Republic," wisely decided not to seek re-election (his approval rating had fallen to an unprecedented 4 percent), for the first time since World War II.

During Hollande's five-year tenure, France struggled with mass unemployment and economic stagnation, and the population developed a strong sense of disillusionment with the political world. Since the New Year's day in 2015, three serious terrorist attacks have killed more than 230 people, the differences in the perceptions of the Muslim community, which accounts for 10% of the total population, have been unprecedentedly tense, and the sense of security and identity of the people has been in serious crisis... The country is more divided than ever.

Once elected president, the parliamentary elections to follow in June will be crucial for Macron. The Marching Movement led by Macron (En Marche!) Only one year old, it is not likely to win a majority in Congress. Macron himself does not define it as a political party, preferring to call it a "movement", which does not have any organizational structure and operating system of a traditional political party. In this case, macron, if he wants to smoothly advance his reform agenda, will have to transcend the political left-right divide (as he advertised in the elections), rally as many center-left and center-right political forces as possible around him, and form a new pan-centripetal majority in parliament.

For the time being, it seems that the reformist camp within the center-left French Socialist Party and the center-right French Republican Party will support Macron's reform ambitions because they themselves want to push forward. But once Macron's reforms touch on the core issues that have plagued France for years — such as rising social welfare, overburdened taxes and a rigid labor protection system — sharp divisions are bound to erupt within his cross-party coalition. Neither the Socialist Party nor the Republican Party will spend too much political cost on the president, who is not part of his own party, to support ambitious reforms that threaten to annoy his own base voters.

Everyone argues that France should and must reform, but the blueprint for reform drawn by people of different political aches will be the same real challenge that macron will face in the past. In fact, when Macron was minister of economy in the Hollande government, he was opposed and protested by trade union groups for trying to promote reform policies, which was an important vote bank for the Socialist Party.

If le Pen is elected president, her government is likely to be paralyzed in the future. The National Front currently holds only a pitiful 2 of the 577 seats in the French Parliament, and even if it wins the June elections, the additional seats will not help it become a major party with enough influence in parliament. Given the current strong hostility towards Le Pen among the mainstream in all political parties in France, it is expected that most of the policies she has introduced will be strongly blocked.

Two

Macron was the most pro-free-market, progressive and European integration of all the candidates in the French election, and his high-profile promotion made European leaders celebrate, and Brussels and Berlin immediately sent warm blessings. Global financial markets also breathed a sigh of relief, with the euro rising 1.5 percent the day after the preliminary vote results were announced, and the asian morning jumped 2 percent to its highest level since last November's U.S. election. At the same time, French government bond prices and stock markets also soared.

In European affairs, Macron continued his usual orthodoxy. He hopes to restore trust with Germany, another pillar of the European Union, on the basis of a radical domestic push for reforms, with a view to reaching a more comprehensive and broad agreement with the latter with a view to overhauling and overhauling the troubled eurozone economy and working more closely on defense, security and immigration issues. His ideas will obviously be strongly supported by Germany and the European Union.

Even if it is yet to be seen by this time of next week, the young Macron's achievements in the primary can show us that the seemingly indestructible wave of anti-establishment populism for more than a year has been effectively contained in the heart of the EUROPEAN Union, and the turning point in European politics has loomed.

More than a month ago, after the right-wing Liberal Democratic People's Party (LDP) narrowly defeated the far-right politician Helt Wilders in the Dutch general election and won re-election, the current Prime Minister Mark Rutte excitedly boasted that "the Dutch people 'stopped' populism by vote" and prevented the collapse of the European "dominoes". To be honest, most people, including me, don't have too much confidence in this. This is not because the Netherlands is too small. In fact, the traditional mainstream party led by Rutte was able to overwhelm populist political forces in the election campaign precisely because he actively catered to populist demands in many ways. In other words, Europe's political spectrum, wrapped up in populist forces, is still shifting further to the right. Lutte's victory is, to some extent, an accommodation of the principle of sacrifice. If this trend is not reversed, sooner or later the establishment will be ousted from power, either this time or the next time.

But Macron presented a very different new posture to people. Throughout the election, he did not publish any eye-catching radical political platforms or attempt to cater to any extreme sentiments of the left and right; he firmly adhered to the "normal" position of the centrist, constantly releasing a fresh wind of inclusive unity with his image of unfettered independence; he did not use the offensive and slanderous methods used by populist politicians to label dissidents as "enemies of the people" and "traitors to the state". Instead, this has been extremely effective in squeezing the space for populist politics manipulation in both the far left and the far right, drawing the majority of the wavering middle voters into their camps.

Macron's success has injected an antidote to the current increasingly toxic Western democracy, foreshadowing the future direction of democratic politics.

What is particularly surprising is that Macron is not only more supportive of European integration than de Gaulleists, but even more supportive of further integration than the traditional Left of France. For example, he explicitly supported improving the shortcomings in the eurozone's institutional framework, transforming the European Bailout Fund, which emerged after the eurozone's debt crisis, into a normalized financial stability mechanism similar to that of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and he also supported the eurozone's fiscal integration, strengthening budgetary constraints on member states, and even establishing a "European Treasury"...

At a time when Brussels has become almost the "general source of all problems," it is risky to advocate these unpopular ideas. Even in Germany, which is most pro-EU, this does not necessarily have much public support.

Macron's rise, then, may give us a glimpse of the hope behind the political chaos in the West: popular discontent is not primarily about integration and globalization, but about the country's rigid pattern of interests and political incompetence. Voters are eager for change, but not necessarily willing to embrace isolationism, protectionism and racism.

Three

After the preliminary results of the first round of voting were announced, Macron told rabid supporters on the streets of Paris: "In one year we have changed the face of French political life."

His remarks are not the rhetoric that politicians are accustomed to.

The biggest loser in the first round of elections on April 23 was the traditional big party , the center-right Republican Party and the center-left Socialist Party, which had long dominated French politics , were swept out at the same time, for the first time since World War II.

As a nonpartisan rising star in politics, Macron led the "En Marche! "The movement has only been formed for a year, and his achievements are amazing. What is particularly convincing is that Macron's movement has not gained power by means of malicious enemies with elite establishments, as populist political forces have done. On the contrary, after winning the first round, he quickly got the endorsement of the two major political parties. Ultimately, the former Rothschild investment banker, a graduate of France's National School of Administration, is himself an elite and pro-establishment, but he has shown voters extremely well his political vibrancy and anger beyond the left and the right. As he told his supporters, he represented "optimism and hope."

Thus, Macron's rise not only shattered France's original political map, but perhaps also heralded another new trend in Western politics: the stable pattern of two or more large parties in the past will become increasingly difficult to maintain. This is not the result of Macron's personal superhuman abilities, but the result of changing times and the demands of voters.

In fact, this trend is not just emerging now. Last year's referendum on Brexit and the election of Donald Trump as US president have highlighted the decline of the traditional Party System in the West.

Unlike all past U.S. presidents, Trump did not rely on Republican resources and support to successfully enter the White House. Instead, he won a bipolar campaign in large part by subverting the traditional republican ideals. The politically apolitical Trump has repeatedly changed his republican and democratic identities, and many of the values he has displayed — from personal ethics to attitudes toward trade, from defending American democracy to understanding america's international standing — are also completely contrary to the traditional mainstream values of the Republican Party. In the next four years, will the Republican Party succeed in "taming" Trump, or will Trump continue to "kidnap" and transform the Republican Party? It is the greatest suspense of American politics.

In Europe, the large-scale collapse of center-left parties that once had a broad and deep public opinion base is a classic portrayal of the weakening of the traditional party system.

Compared with the currently demoralized French Socialist Party, the domestic and foreign difficulties faced by the century-old British Labour Party are more representative.

Not knowing whose advice he had followed, former Labour leader Ed Miliband mistakenly believed he could retake 10 Downing Street by leaning to the far left. But British voters ruled in the opposite direction, leading to Labour's crushing defeat in the May 2015 election. Incredibly, however, many members of the Labour Party have decided that Miliband's failure was that he was not left enough. So they put Jeremy Corbyn, a far-left fringe figure in the party who looked like a university professor, to the party leader, who had called the Allah Party and Hamas "friends", lamented the death of Fidel Castro, and believed that his main mission was to nationalize at home and oppose "American militarism" internationally... No wonder former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has a deep sense of stardom, has to publish an article in the Guardian that electing Corbyn as its leader will put the Labour Party in "the most dangerous situation in more than 100 years of its existence" and that "the Labour Party is falling forward with its eyes closed and arms open..."

In Italy, the fragile ruling coalition of center-left Democratic Parties formed after a difficult victory in the last general election has struggled to carry out effective reforms. Unwilling to be tied down, Prime Minister Matteo Renzi launched a referendum on constitutional reform at the end of last year, but had to step down after a crushing defeat. In Germany, the social democrats, who have a history of more than 150 years, are not far off. Even though they recently elected martin Schultz, the highly publicized former speaker of the European Parliament, as the candidate for this year's general election, there is probably little chance that it will get any advantage from Merkel's center-right coalition.

Ultimately, in the face of a shrinking blue-collar workforce, an accelerated aging population and a surging wave of migration over the past 10 years, moderates on the center-left have been unable to paint their new coordinates in a vastly changed pattern of capitalism and globalization. At the same time, they have made the same grave mistake as before the First World War, namely, to deal with the newly resurrected "national" problem with the old methods of solving the "class" problem that they used to master. A growing body of evidence has shown that voters who voted for Trump and Brexit are not necessarily all so-called "victims of globalization" with poor education and economic hardship. Their main anxiety is not the state of the economy, but their identity – they feel that someone is taking their country from them. The tragic history of the 20th century has repeatedly proven that nations can almost always easily overwhelm classes and create a strong sense of solidarity.

What about the center-right on the other side of the front? Unfortunately, the traditional European mainstream center-right parties are also not improving in the twilight. The reason why the center-right has not suffered an avalanche of defeat like the center-left is partly because they are luckier – this round of populist shocks came almost entirely from the right, which itself is naturally less stressed than the left; on the other hand, it is also the embarrassing "result" of their often forced to pander to populist demands, as in the Dutch story, they are increasingly being dragged away from the original centrist position by populist forces.

Sitting in those ancient palaces and recalling the political giants who shaped the history of the past, this generation of European politicians seemed small and lonely.

Four

After passing the "passing line" of the primary election as desired, a National Front propagandist told the news media that "the differences between the left and the right are a thing of the past, and the latest difference is between globalists and patriots." ”

Pitting globalists against patriots is a trick used by right-wing populist forces, but the first half of this sentence is not wrong. The increasing blurring of the distinction between the left and the right on the Western political map is the third new trend presented to us in this French election. In fact, this is one of the important reasons for the irreparable decline of traditional centrist mainstream parties. Their inherent ideology hinders their understanding of the new political situation, making it difficult for their policy ideas to resonate with the sentiments of a new generation of voters.

According to traditional political divisions, on the political and economic fronts, the left advocates greater government regulation of markets, increased public welfare, and often accompanied by higher taxes; the right advocates the protection of individual rights, celebrates free competition, and guards against the easy intervention of public power in the private sphere. Culturally, the left advocates the concept of "progress", hates "discrimination", and enthusiastically promotes "equal rights" for minorities and vulnerable groups; the right wing respects traditional religious morals and social customs, and often expresses its love for traditional lifestyles from the heart.

Moreover, the traditional left, without exception, is an internationalist, while the traditional right places greater emphasis on the sovereign power of the nation-state. In part because of this, the supporters of the traditional left are mostly the lower middle class of society, while the supporters of the traditional right are mostly the middle and upper classes of society.

However, recent facts tell us that in major Western countries, a large proportion of working-class voters support traditionally right-wing, and even far-right, parties. The main reason for this is that these right-wing parties are a bulwark against immigration – the slogan "Proletarians of the World Unite" increasingly gives way to slogans of "British independence", "America First" and "France First".

In fact, the political map that has traditionally been demarcated by left and right has long since disintegrated unconsciously. In Europe today, most mainstream center-left parties still call themselves "Social Democrats", "Socialists" or "Labour", but none of the governments they govern pursue an orthodox socialist line that gives priority to the rights and interests of the working class. The left-wing former French prime minister, Socialist Manuel Valls, is more interested in developing the economy and supporting businesses than on continuing to expand workers' welfare. Jean-Luc Mélangon, from the far left, is in some cases less like a leftist, advocating France's exit from the European Union and the eurozone, and his critique of globalization is no softer than That of Marlene Le Pen. Right now, le Pen wants to actively strive for the iron fans of her theoretical sworn enemy, Melanthorn, because the same anti-establishment and anti-globalization stances may resonate with them.

In contrast, the right has gone further than the left in adapting to this new situation of ambiguity between the left and the left.

Marlene Le Pen does not oppose much of the policy claims of traditional left-wing parties, instead she often emphasizes social justice, supports a progressive tax system, and calls for state intervention in industries under pressure from foreign competition, in line with Trump's strong support for trade protectionism as a Republican president.

Particularly impressive is the fact that since Marlene Le Pen succeeded her father as party leader in 2011, the National Front party has softened her racist remarks so much that she has even fired her father and a key party leader. Today, the French National Front has completely abandoned the Nazi anti-Semitic ideology on which it began, and Le Pen himself often openly overtures the Jewish community in France in order to cloak himself in a cloak of tolerance.

Other far-right parties in Europe are no exception. Dutch Liberal Leader Helt Wilders, who once lived in a kibbutz collective community in Israel and was deeply fond of Israel, married an Eastern European wife known for his anti-immigrant stance; last year, leaders of far-right parties in Belgium and Austria went to Israel's Holocaust Memorial for a bizarre "pilgrimage"...

The far right in Europe today has found a new enemy: Muslims. They are now keen to peddle "Islamophobia" to replace those conspiracy theories about Jews of the past. This is indeed a manifestation of keeping pace with the times.

Yet no matter how friendly and respectable they appear, the racist undertones of these far-right political forces remain legible. Jews alone, for example, show that more than 7,000 French Jews emigrated to Israel in 2014, twice as many as in 2013. And with the enthusiastic appeals of Israeli leaders such as Netanyahu, more and more European Jews are considering emigrating to Israel. The latest hostility toward Jews may indeed come from Europe's growing Muslim population, as advocated by far-right politicians, but wise Jews who have learned a hard history do not believe that these far-right parties will genuinely protect themselves from threats. The "statist" platforms they throw out are only designed to cater to the growing disillusionment of traditional left-wing voters who feel abandoned by mainstream politics in the process of globalization.

History also teaches us that all will ultimately suffer in the politics of incitement to rival hatred, and that advocating a middle-of-the-road approach to reconciliation is the only way to solve the problem.

Le Pen and Macron responded in very different ways to this new situation and new change that was increasingly blurred on the left and right. If the rise of the National Front and Le Pen represents the dark side of this trend – the resurgence of narrow nationalism (even racism), the rise of Macron represents the bright side of this trend – globalism and patriotism are completely inclusive: support for globalism does not necessarily mean denying the traditional national identity, and adhering to patriotism does not necessarily mean "closing borders" and "building walls".

Five

In this era of globalization and new technologies, the mainstream political establishments in the West have not been able to respond in a timely and effective manner to the new problems of the new era. They revel in the great successes that globalization and technological progress have brought to their own class, do not put themselves in the shoes of the people to feel the frustration and disillusionment of the people, and they lack the ability to renew their commitments to the electorate. This gave the populist forces that had emerged as rebels an opportunity to take advantage of it, leading to the defeat of the elite.

In the future, if the establishment is to win back trust, they will have to shape a new type of politician.

In fact, Emmanuel Macron was not the first person to have the potential for such a new type of politician, and the equally young Matteo Renzi was his forerunner. It's just that the latter is in the traditional left's entanglement of interests and has bad luck, while Macron, as a non-partisan, has the opportunity to easily display his ambitions. But Macron can learn many lessons from both sides of his unlucky pioneer — in short, he should try to avoid setting too high goals for himself, as Renzi did, and taking a desperate gamble. But at the same time, he should also learn from Renzi's sophisticated political scheming. In the latter area, for Macron, who has not been a parliamentarian for a day, There is much that Renzi can teach him.

There is also reason to believe that Macron's rise heralds a fourth trend in Western politics, although it has yet to be realized: the debut of a new type of politician.

We can draw some of the basic elements of this new type of politician from the chaotic political practice of the past year.

First, in terms of moral image, the new type of politician should be able to convincingly show that he will not be bribed by anyone. Hillary Clinton received and spent far more political contributions than Donald Trump, which became the reason for her defeat rather than the resource for her victory.

Second, in terms of political stance, the new type of politician should reject all short-sighted temptations, strictly adhere to the middle ground and not wander, so that their various extremist opponents have no room to expand; the new type of politician should also be good at expressing optimism, actively selling the future to voters, and defending the status quo so that Hillary and British Remainers have been punished. In this regard, Matteo Renzi and Emmanuel Macron have already tasted the sweetness, but they also have a ready-made great mentor: John Lenzi and Emmanuel Macron. F. Kennedy.

Finally, in terms of operational strategy, new politicians should be aware of the profound changes in political language brought about by new technologies, especially social media, and be good at exploiting them. Hillary Clinton has one-sided support from the traditional mainstream media, which became the reason for her defeat to Twitter big V Donald Trump, rather than the resource to defeat the latter.

The most important one, of course, is the cliché: the new type of politician must sincerely listen to the rational elements of populist rhetoric and actively and effectively incorporate voter anxieties and demands into their own alternative agendas, rather than passively dealing with the nostalgic agendas of populist politicians.

This requires them to correctly distinguish the essential difference between populist politicians and voters who support them. It also requires them to carefully distinguish between the commonalities and differences between different populist currents, such as Brexit, U.S. protectionism, and the French National Front. Only then can a targeted proactive agenda be put forward, rather than avoiding real problems with a set of empty praises of globalization and pluralism.

Let's go back to the decisive battle of May 7.

A series of recent economic indicators show that the economic boom in both Europe and France has a tendency to pick up. This is obviously good for Macron's election. In the coming week, as long as there are no extreme situations, it is believed that this fledgling who has been deeply regarded by all walks of life can successfully become the youngest president in the history of the French Republic.

Marlene Le Pen's camp is still trying to build momentum, and for them, there is really nothing to lose. A few days ago, Germany's far-right AfD held a campaign in Cologne, which borders the French border, which also met with the cold eyes of the people.

It can be expected that as the populist wave is reversed in the Netherlands and France, the defense of European integration will win a phased victory. In the ensuing period of valuable adjustment, radical reforms should be the sole theme of European politics. As I have pointed out earlier, defending the status quo will only end in failure.