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Marine Le Pen’s surge is a warning to Sir Keir Starmer
Labour’s support is wide but shallow. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party will be waiting for its opportunity
In the upper-echelons of the Labour Party, as they consider a UK run by them (and such is their confidence, the urinal-equipped chancellor’s loo is being reassessed ready for the first female occupant of the role), a name is whispered with a worried nod of the head and a concerned furrowing of the brow.
The rise and calamitous fall of Emmanuel Macron has become the scary bedtime story for Sir Keir Starmer’s closest team – the type of tale a concerned parent might tell their children to stop them scrumping apples. “Don’t do that, or you will suffer the same fate as Monsieur Le President!”
A centrist, pro-European leader, Macron won the 2017 French presidential election on a wave of “change” rhetoric. For a period, he could do no wrong, as hyper-low interest rates and strong growth cemented the idea that En Marche! (the new party he founded) was going to solve the age-old problems of establishment, out-of-touch politics and, even worse, corrupt, idiot politicians. He was welcomed as a breath of fresh air, an antidote to the chaos of busted governments that had run out of ideas.
Then came Covid, the Ukraine-related energy shock, and controversial attempts at public sector and policy reform, particularly to the pension age. Being pro-EU (with the sticky insistence on remote rule-making from Brussels) suddenly became a hindrance, not a help. After rising so high, Macron has fallen to the humbling low of having to call an early election on the core question of what kind of France voters want. When Edward Heath tried a similar “Who governs?” strategy in 1974, it did not end well for the Conservatives.
Macron has been assaulted from the Right and the Left for failing to seal the deal he put before the French electorate. He is the Sun King turned to Mr Bean, to paraphrase Sir Vince Cable’s deadly description of that other fallen giant, Gordon Brown.
