EUROSCOPE. Two cheers for a Macron presidency

On 21 April 2002, Jean-Marie Le Pen, the then leader of the Front National, performed strongly enough — to the surprise and dismay of many — to make it to the second round of the French presidential election. However, in the second round that May he lost by a huge margin, with Jacques Chirac of the Republican party winning 82 per cent of the vote.

Hopes that Marine Le Pen — who has relinquished her leadership of the Front National in the hope of appearing to be more of a “unifying candidate” — will be resoundingly rejected the way her father was (though perhaps not on the same scale) are high, following the first round of voting at the weekend.

European markets and the euro rallied in the wake of the results which saw Emmanuel Macron, the pro-European candidate and founder of the En Marche! movement, win just over 24 per cent of the vote, ahead of Le Pen, who won 21.3 per cent of the vote.

The result was as had been anticipated, but was nonetheless hugely significant for France. For the first time since the founding of the Fifth Republic in 1958 neither of the mainstream established socialist or right of centre parties made it to the second round.

Francis Fillon, who on the right of the Republican party had been seen as a strong alternative to Le Pen, saw his support base dwindle over a scandal involving the payment of public funds to family members. The Socialist Party’s Benoit Hamon, who comes from left of that party, won just over 6.3 per cent of the vote as, despite some gains, he failed to be able to undo the damage done to his party’s popularity by Francois Hollande’s lacklustre presidency.

In fourth place, just behind Fillon, was the far left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who had inspired many, particularly young people, with his alternative vision for France.

The political landscape is also very different from what it was in 2002: the anti-Europe, anti-immigrant (and anti-Islam) messages of the Front National — once an outlier in Europe — have spread across the continent, emboldening the far right across the region, which has made some efforts to find common threads in their movement.

Le Pen has also tapped into the anti-globalisation sentiment capitalised by US President Donald Trump, and Geert Wilders, the far right politician in the Netherlands, as the economic recovery that followed the global financial crisis has left many behind. Le Pen has performed more strongly than her father, winning just under 2.9 million more votes than he did in 2002.

Still, observers are fairly certain of a Macron win, with polls suggesting a strong lead for him. Ipsos puts him 24 points ahead of Le Pen and there are reasons to think such polls can be trusted: the public and Le Pen and the Front National have been polled for years, and it is thought less likely that voters would be unwilling reveal plans to vote for her — her ascent in the first round was predicted, unlike the success of her father in 2002.

In addition, the polarising impact of the Front National’s policies were highlighted by Le Pen’s decision to step down as the party’s candidate, to give her a better chance of succeeding more widely. Whether it does help her case remains to be seen.

There are reasons to be cautious and not underestimate the threat posed by Le Pen. The gulf between Le Pen and Macron couldn’t be greater, as was revealed by the areas in which they proved the strongest in the first round. While Macron performed particularly strongly in economically strong areas such as the big cities, Le Pen was able to tap into disillusionment in other areas that had been left behind, with high levels of unemployment, and where her anti-immigrant message won support.

Macron is an extremely pro European candidate, welcomed by the business community — a fact that Le Pen (and the left) have been very critical of. It will mean he may struggle to engage some of those on the left who had been swept up in Melenchon’s movement. The willingness of other candidates — Fillon and Hamon — to endorse him, will be played on by the Le Pen campaign as a sign that he is as much of the establishment as the mainstream parties.

Macron served as a minister in the Hollande government, and backed reforms to the labour market that triggered nationwide protests. It’s a link that Le Pen continues to pick at. On Wednesday, Le Pen made an unannounced visit to a Whirlpool plant in Macron’s home city of Amiens (production is set to shift to Poland) forcing Macron — who was meeting union reps — to face a crowd of angry Le Pen supporters, as she contrasted his approach with her own of talking to the people.

There is one political message from Brexit that Macron should keep in mind: While he will need to highlight the dangers of what Le Pen could do to the French economy and society, and its wider relationship with Europe and beyond, the British Brexit referendum showed that a negative message will not always suffice, particularly at times when people want a vision of the future to cling to. He will need to be positive and optimistic about the European project and globalisation at a time when this vision is under pressure across the continent.

The current security issues facing France in the wake of a string of terror attacks (most recently the attack on policemen in central Paris just before the first round of the election) will add complexity to the debate, and require Macron to tread a particularly careful path. This may prove tricky for a politician who has been prone to unpredictable moments, such as his criticism in the early days of his campaign of French actions in its former colony Algeria. Le Pen has gone for exactly the opposite approach, appealing to French nationalism and trying to redress her party’s image of being a Holocaust denier..

There is also the question of what will become of voters on the left. Melenchon has asked his voters not to support Le Pen but won’t endorse Macron and a poll by the Ifop from earlier this` week suggested that as much as 19 per cent of Melenchon’s supporter base could vote for Le Pen, with around 33 per cent planning to abstain altogether. The hashtag SansMoiLe7Mai (the 7th of May without me) has been trending on Twitter, with some drawing parallels with the reluctance of some Bernie Saunders supporters to vote for Hilary Clinton in the US election.

While Macron seems on course to win despite these uncertainties, his biggest challenge may be the one following the election: uniting a country left with deeply polarised visions of its problems, the future, and its place in the world.