Macron appears to have consolidated power, but is there anything for 'centrists' to learn from his success? Not really

Macron's landslide was not quite what it appeared, exposing how neoliberal Centrism depends upon disinterest and abstention. Photograph: Emmanuel Macron campaign poster 'Macron President' in Paris by Lorie Shaull (License) (Cropped)

Nearly three-quarters of a year has passed since Emmanuel Macron took up the post of President of France. In that time he has seemingly managed to consolidate power (despite of some rocky moments). So: job done, new centrist model ready to roll out? Not so fast.

Well, let's look beneath the surface. The election landslides for Macron and La Republique En Marche were always going to provoke a response, especially with the near wipeout of the old centre-left Parti Socialiste (PS).

One small, but significant, reaction - an indication of how sizeable a reorganisation of French politics Macron has caused - is the reunification of the old Parti Radical with the breakaway Radical Party of the Left, as the new Mouvement Radical.

For years, the two radical parties - in former times a powerful party of government - were occasionally a crucial coalition partner of the larger parties. But they split from one another down the old left-right lines.

The Radical Party of the Left would partner with the Parti Socialiste and the centre-left, and the Radical Party would partner with the various centre-right parties. It appears that Emmanuel Macron has helped to settle the dispute between the two.

The reunification of the Radicals is a small thing, but also suggests that Macron's victory (and the collapse of PS) was big enough to put into abeyance the question of whether to partner with left or right. The radicals are happy with the centre.

That perhaps also says a lot about where Les Marcheurs lie on a political spectrum: European Federalist, social liberal, and for equality of opportunity (rather than of outcomes) within a free market.

Those were also the bones of Macron's pitch at the election. An election that left Macron with a severely weakened opposition, a a left-wing reduced to around 50-60 social liberals, social democrats and socialists, and a right-wing of around 130-140.

One potential problem Macron faced was if those with divided loyalties between En Marche and the social liberals and social democrats in opposition organise, Macron might face difficulty from a voting-bloc under his own left-wing.

However, the Left is still in disarray - and the Radicals seem set jump ship. The election was a disaster for the Parti Socialiste, it's bastion, who fell from 280 seats to just 30. Even their 2017 Presidential candidate Benoit Hamon has walked away.

Hamon has formed a new party, Generation.s, which has formed a tentative European alliance with Yanis Varoufakis and DiEM25. It had been hoped that Hamon might do for PS what Corbyn did for Labour in Britain, but now he will have to start from scratch.

There are also two separate far-left groups in the National Assembly, that have yet to find a way to work together - France Insoumise with 17 seats and Gauche Democrate et Republicaine with 16 seats.

With the collapse of the Left and, so far, no sign of a new rallying position, Macron has for the moment usurped the place of the Parti Socialiste in two-party system. Does this mean that the centre is saved and the model can be copy and pasted elsewhere?

No.

The hope for a centrist revival is not giving due credit the particular circumstances of Macron's victory - nor that both Macron and Les Marcheurs won, across the board, as the least worst option amidst raging disinterest. Not exactly an inspiring rallying call.

Macron's victory also has shadows of the upswell that took Barack Obama to  the US Presidency in 2008. Macron, undeniably a member of the party establishment, rode on the back of a movement that was then jettisoned when office was achieved.

The leading talents of that movement were absorbed into the government machinery, while the movement itself has been left without it's leading figures and central purpose. Will it survive or find a new role?

That Macron has succeeded in consolidating his position must still be put to the test at the ballot. As Obama learned, when you set high expectations, the movement will want practical changes it can touch. A legacy they can touch.

What Macron has right now is a governing majority. He doesn't even have a campaign machinery for himself or his supporters to sustain their agenda. Nothing has really changed over the past year.

Copy the En Marche model at peril. Macron's was a victory for charismatic leadership, but it's hollow inside. The future, never mind success, will depend on the support existing parties like MoDem and the Radicals, and the creation of some sort of plain, traditional electoral machinery for Les Marcheurs.

Macron's victory was a lesson in how to get into government, not in how to stay there. He made waves, a tidal wave, that upset the system and forced some realignment. But politics is fickle.

Alliances can seem unbreakable, until they aren't. Break ups are forever, until they aren't. Just ask the Radicals.

Wellbeing has been forgotten in the drive to improve employment statistics

Photograph: Job Centre Plus by Andrew Writer (License) (Cropped)

As we approach eight years of Conservative government, the impact of their time in government is becoming clearer. If we judge a society by the wellbeing of it's poorest members, the Conservatives have fallen short.

Despite low unemployment and a real terms rise in household incomes - about £600 a year between 2007/8 and 2015/16 - the poorest have not seen the benefit, caught beneath the weight of the rising cost of living and Conservative cuts to benefits and tax credits.

As we wrote in October, you can't count on increasing employment alone to improve people's wellbeing - especially if the work available is precarious, with insecure pay and hours.

Last week, Resolution Foundation released a report looking at how employment had changed over the last twenty years. It pointed out that there has been a shift among working people, on the lowest incomes, towards lower hours and part-time employment.

Resolution described this shift as, in part, unwelcome and involuntary - with a quarter of working class people wanting more hours. The squeeze on working hours is not being helped by the increasingly precarious, non-standard form of hours worked.

This situation is coinciding with the real terms increase in earnings being offset by several forces: the rising cost of housing, the rising cost of energy and the rise in households servicing growing debt.

With wage growth lagging behind consumer price rises, the cost of living is putting a great deal of pressure on the least well-off households. The Conservative drive to clamp down on welfare and drive people into work has not delivered greater wellbeing.

For seven and a half years, the Conservative approach has been steady as she goes. Even a change of Prime Minister and Chancellor has not led to a change of plan. The evidence shows that, for the wellbeing of the poorest, this needs to change.

First of all, there is a need to address the punitive impact of welfare reforms - that will see the incomes of the poorest fall 10% by 2021-22 compared to 2010. Work is not paying.

Consider: how does the government expect a household that struggles to stay afloat on a precarious income - juggling high rent and servicing debt - with no extra for savings, to meet it's needs when a job if lost and they're faced with a five week benefits application waiting period? Answer: More debt.

Second, the cost of living must be tackled. We need cheaper energy and cheaper rent. How this will be achieved in the long run - whether by community-owned services to breach the energy monopoly and an expansion of social housing and a living rent, or through increased market competition - in the short term they government action.

And third, bound to the first two, a concerted effort must be made to address the growth of household debt. Debts caused by living costs, mostly rent, are a damning indictment of the failure to make work pay - debts that only increase when help is needed most.

The least well off are being crushed and trapped under Tory policies, living with growing anxiety and precarity. Wellbeing is suffering to no discernible end. That is the tale of eight years of Conservative government.

Carillion: When private service providers keep proving so inept and unethical, how can we be asked to back privatisation?

Photograph: Future site of the Library of Birmingham, from 2009, by Elliott Brown (License) (Cropped)

Carillion, a services behemoth, has collapsed. With it, it takes billions in government contracts and puts tens of thousands of jobs at risk. The construction and services company accrued £1.5bn in debt - of which £600m was owed to it's pension fund.

Fortunately, despite Carillion's own recklessness, the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) has stepped in to assure workers that their pensions will be protected - despite the complete failure of the company to meet it's commitments to workers.

However, numerous government projects, and smaller businesses to whom Carillion outsourced work, face an uncertain future. A result of what David Lammy described as, "privatise profits when things go well and nationalise risks so the taxpayer picks up the bill when things go wrong".

This government has tried to convince us of, or slip past us, a privatisations agenda, trusting private companies in the public sector. But how cane we back privatisation, when private sector providers keep proving so inept and unethical?

Carillion is not the only major private concern, even in the past year, to go bust and to do so revealing a massive pensions deficit - having taken profits for executive pay, but left workers' futures in peril, in what must surely be a major ethical breach.

When the steel industry nearly collapsed with the Tata Steel decision to close it's plants, workers' pensions were a huge block on a deal to save the industry. Incoming buyers did not want to take on responsibility for the pensions.

The unwillingness of private sector companies to take up their responsibilities in this case left workers with steel pensions in uncertain circumstances, where they have been prey to financial advice groups - now under investigation over their predatory behaviour.

The thing is, the government isn't just pushing privatisation for services, but for things like social insurance and pensions. It wants us all to do these things on personal, private terms, rather than in big collective government funds.

Yet, how can we trust the government's much vaunted workplace pensions scheme, when private companies treat workers' pensions as the first thing to drop when their isn't enough money for every commitment the company has made.

And what about Virgin? A global corporation that bitterly scraps for government contracts, even to the point of suing commissioners when they don't get them - suing parts of a cherished health service in financial distress. It was later awarded a huge contract, to much public outcry.

The government must now move to salvage what it can of Carillion, nationalising projects and departments to keep their vital work going and keep people employed. But what shape that takes is yet to be seen.

The speculation is that the government will continue to it's neoliberal trend of nationalising failure and debt, while returning the profitable parts to the private sector for executives to enjoy the benefits.

It would be refreshing to see something. Like the private sector picking up the tab for it's colossal failure? Yeah, right. Perhaps less fanciful would be consolidating parts of Carillion into a cooperative, run by it's workers?

As a cooperative, the still functional, still profitable parts could serve workers. The profits would deliver dividends for the workers, that would be of direct benefit their communities.

Whatever the government chooses to do, take note. This is one of those 'true colours' moments, where the rhetoric is paper transparently thin and the tropes are well known, enough to allow us to see what the governing party really values.

Last year, May let Brexit overshadow much bigger priorities - that can't continue in 2018

Theresa May's government scraped through 2017. After so very nearly sinking themselves with an unnecessary and opportunistic election, the May Ministry survived a number of crises and scandals to make it into 2018.

However, all of that minority government firefighting leaves little time for governing - and what little time the May government had was gobbled up by Brexit. In 2018, it seems likely that this pattern will continue and Brexit will deny sorely needed attention to far more pressing matters.

The government made it clear this was how things would be when they announced their unambitious Queens Speech, with their pledges now just watered down versions of their manifesto and spread thin over two years - so the government could focus on Brexit.

Even those pledges that did survive have made little progress.

The proposed Domestic Violence and Abuse Bill has yet to make it's appearance - while a few elements are cropping up in other bills, like issues affecting tenancy. The draft Tenant Fees Bill was only published in November, with the Committee of Communities and Local Government still gathering evidence.

Both of these will have to wait until 2018 is well underway before they see action and - the Tenant Fees Bill in particular - is going to be a hit with a lot of lobbying before it reaches its final form. It already largely conforms to present market standards that align far more landlords interests than tenants.

Promises on electric cars made it into the cutdown Queen's Speech, but only translated into £500m for charging points in the budget. A High Speed 2 rail pledge followed on the heels of an announcement to cut rail works plans for Wales and the North. Electrification estimates tripled in cost from £900mn to £2.8bn, so were pushed back, and are now cancelled. They were not offset by the less than £2bn in the budget to be split between the transport budgets of six city regions.

Repeated promises of action on homebuilding have born little fruit. The budget offered little but work arounds and tweaks, all attempts to nudge the housing sector rather than take action. It's unlikely anyone will be holding their breath that this will change in 2018.

Even the government's deeply prioritised Brexit made slow progress.

Negotiations were a tortuous embarrassment, with the government talking itself in circles of redlines - that could do nothing to change the fact that, despite having ruled out accepting the EU's position, they had little option other than to accept it.

And was only the preliminaries, getting the UK government to honour its word and its commitments. Concerns will be high as the UK government moves into the next phase, which includes trying to push through the Brexit Bills - domestic elements of the exit process.

Concern is rooted in the unending determination of the government to limit oversight and transparency in everything they do. May's team particularly want a free hand to negotiate future trade deals, awakening fears of shady deals with human rights abusers that undercut basic standards of workers' rights and quality of goods.

Fears have not been assuaged by the obvious lack of planning. Are there impact studies, or not? The government has gone out of their way to avoid reassuring anyone with any kind of data or fact.

One of the few part of the government's plans for post-Brexit to have been discussed was for agriculture post-Brexit - previewed over the Christmas-New Year week by Michael Gove. He made a pledge of funds to incentivise environmentally friendly land management, but concerns remain over trade deals undermining farmers.

The Tories made a huge mistake becoming embroiled in Brexit and Theresa May doubled down on it. Now, important domestic matters have been deprioritised. A second consecutive winter of the NHS in crisis should be considered an omen of what to expect in public services in the year ahead.

While the Tories have been playing at being 'statesmen', pouring their attention into Brexit - a policy that is epochal for all the wrong reasons - they have let domestic matters slide into chaos.

The NHS is cash starved and stretched beyond capacity and the best that the government was able to say was that the tens of thousands of cancelled operations 'were all part of the plan'. What kind of planning is that? Why would that be reassuring?

It is worth remembering that while Churchill led Britain through the war and the Tories held the outward-looking Great Offices of State, they lost the election held at the war's end. They were beaten by Clement Atlee and Labour, who had busied themselves on the Home Front - in the Home Affairs Ministry, with Agriculture and Fisheries, Education, Fuel, Labour, Pensions and the Board of Trade.

It is a dangerous move for any government to get caught playing statesman and forget to tend to the mundane matters of governing.

Housing, healthcare, welfare. All of these matters need determined attention in 2018 - and all of them are intricately entwined with rights, conditions and pay in the workplace. Domestically, Britain has become an anxious and precarious place under the Tories' idle supervision. How much longer can a blind eye be tolerated?