Another domino stays upright (1)

Although at midnight on 23 April we still have to wait for the final results of the French presidential elections (which the tweety political ignoramus Donald Trump today described as ‘very interesting’ – thank you for sharing, but what exactly did you mean?), it now seems certain that Marine Le Pen has not made it to the second round as the leading candidate. Instead, she has been beaten into second place, by 2 percentage points, by the newcomer and pro-EU moderate socialist Emmanuel Macron, whose new En Marche! party was founded just over a year ago. Given Le Pen’s supposedly massive lead in opinion polls over the past few months, with as much as 30% of voting intentions, her performance on the day – which is of course when it counts – has been frankly poor. In March 87% of the Dutch electorate decided not to vote for her fellow populist Geert Wilders; and now 78% of the French electorate have decided not to vote for her.

Le Pen will almost certainly go forward to the second round in two weeks’ time, but only with a 2% lead over the third- and fourth-ranking candidates François Fillon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon; and it seems as good as certain that she will lose catastrophically, since everyone else will vote for Macron simply to keep her well out of the way. This evening Fillon called on his supporters to do so; and only Mélenchon is rocking the democratic boat by saying he will leave the choice to the party rank-and-file. He is almost as anti-EU as Le Pen, although for slightly different reasons; but the idea of a coalition between Le Pen’s right-wing Front National and his left-wing La France Insoumise seems unthinkable, and would surely drive many of his own voters away. In short, Mélenchon cannot afford to wait and see, but must make a public choice one way or the other before the second round takes place. The other seven candidates that took part in today’s first round, including the Socialist Party’s Benoit Hamon, are marginal non-entities – indeed, the Socialist Party’s future as a major factor in French politics is now seriously in doubt, since Hamon barely received enough votes to ‘save his party’s deposit’ (or, in the French phrase, sauver les meubles – ‘rescue the furniture after a fire’).

What all this means for the rise of populism in Western politics is that yet another predicted domino has failed to fall. The only two that so far have fallen – Britain and the US – only did so by a very tiny (and disputed) margin; and the consequences are by no means clear. The turncoat Conservative premier Theresa May is likely to find herself on the wrong end of tough negotiations with the EU about Britain’s departure from the Union (‘Brexit’), and the newly elected populist US president Donald Trump’s political antics are increasingly embarrassing not only to his more intelligent colleagues, but apparently even to his former supporters; recent elections in hitherto reliably ‘red’ (Republican) US states such as Kentucky and Georgia have resulted in surprising shifts towards Democratic candidates.

In Europe, first Holland’s Wilders and now France’s Le Pen have failed to score the electoral points they had so confidently hoped for as ‘representatives of the people against the establishment’. Next in line is Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party, which is riven by internal strife among its leaders. This weekend’s Parteitag (annual party conference) was rocked by party secretary Frauke Petry’s deliberate shock decision a few days earlier to withdraw as its leading candidate in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. The party has briefly recovered by electing a new ‘duo’ leadership – but the AfD has thereby shifted even further to the right, whereas Petry had been hoping it could present itself as a more or less mainstream party that might even go into coalition with more middle-of-the-road ones. That now seems a lot less likely, and Petry’s influence on the AfD has faded – as have the party’s chances of reaching the 5% electoral threshold that would allow it to win seats in the Bundestag in September. Meanwhile, chancellor Angela Merkel’s reputation as a European stateswoman has continued to grow. Germany is yet another domino that now seems unlikely to fall.

Which basically leaves Italy, where the populist leader is – perhaps appropriately – a former TV comedian called Beppe (‘Joe’) Grillo. Despite domestic political gains, including the mayorship of Rome, his Cinque Stelle (‘Five Star’) party’s attempts to forge alliances with supposedly like-minded politicians in Europe have ignominiously failed, and you no longer hear so much from him, especially now that his European allies have successively failed to break through. There is something sadly operetta-like about Italian politics, from Berlusconi to Grillo – it’s all very hard to take seriously. Although Italy has recently had some outstanding political leaders – Romano Prodi, Matteo Renzi, Lamberto Dini, Mario Monti – they have been repeatedly swept from power by populist movements; and Italy’s society and economy have suffered accordingly.

Perhaps my assessment of Europe’s chances is over-optimistic; but I’ve a feeling that Brexit and Trumpism have given the European electorate a salutary warning about where populism can lead to if it is left unchecked – and that people over here are starting to respond accordingly.