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.

Macron and Popularity: The President of France has yet to win a sceptical public back over to the political process

Photograph: LEWEB 2014 Conference - in conversation with Emmanuel Macron by LE WEB (License) (Cropped)

The victory of Emmanuel Macron attracted the attention and plaudits of centrists across Europe, desperate for a way out of the slump that has undermined social and liberal democratic parties. But the talk in many countries of needing their own Macron and En Marche is all just buying into a myth, because the rise of Macron was an illusion.

Reports this last month talked of Macron and his government already facing a decline in public support. But what those reports ignore is that support was never that high in the first place - the election landslide was more due to the electoral system than a swell of support.

Macron's movement was perhaps well organised or made a particularly well tailored pitch, but En Marche mostly benefited from a system that favours voters' picking their least worst option - which served En Marche who were the heirs of the collapse in the credibility of the centre-left and centre-right.

Macron took just 24% in the full field first round of the Presidential vote, and La Republic En Marche took 32% on a first round legislative election turnout of just 49%. These numbers delivered political power, but not broad public support or high approval. There was no rising wave, just a window of opportunity.

The problem for Macron is not that he has been discredited, but that he has yet to win voters back to the political process. Taking power on the support of a quarter and a fifth, his approval ratings will begin low, with scepticism high and everything to prove.

Turning political power in decent approval ratings was never something that was going to happen overnight. The pledges of Macron were built around big promises with no easy solution, like cleaning up politics.

The difficulties faced by Macron and En Marche were underlined when, within the opening weeks of his new office, his MoDem political allies and their leader Francois Bayrou were hit by corruption investigations.

The other big promise Macron made was to reform France's labour laws, famous for their scale and complexity. It is an issue on which there is a clear public support for action, but no real consensus on what action.

Macron has his own ideas, but has set about a negotiating strategy, rather than trying to force it through. Even trade unions have gotten around the table for talks - with the two of the largest unions even declining to take part in protests against any watering down of labour protections.

While the left under Jean-Luc Melenchon and the union CGT push for protests and strikes, Macron's consensus approach with no legislative surprise has got enough of the key players involved to reduce action to the harder left organisations that media find it easier to discredit.

But the dissatisfaction with politics in France is too broad to be convincingly reduced to the bellyaching of the radical left. And despite the lean times and discrediting of the centre, neither the radical left nor the far right have taken a decisive advantage.

The people of France are not itching to rise up for either extreme, but nor have they fallen back in love with the Republican centre. Macron was never the unquestioned messiah and he has yet to win the public over.

The election results showed all of this. The approval ratings just confirm it. The task ahead of Macron is to rebuild the Republic and he has no gordian solution. A facsimile of Macron in another country would face the same problems.

Macron's ascendency is not the revival that liberals crave, nor are his low approval ratings the death knell of moderate-led reformist capitalism for which socialists are straining their ears. Macron got enough support to get through the door.

But to stay there, Macron and En Marche must win people back to the political process. Sure, his failure to reengage people would be a blow to neoliberals trying to cling to power. But it would be just as bad for progressives of all stripes, for whom public faith in democracy and a politically active and interested people are a cornerstone.

The Yellow Tide isn't what it seems: The neoliberal centre has depended upon abstention and prevails amid disinterest

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)

The rise of Macron was met with a chorus of celebration from some corners for the resurgence of the 'Centre'. In France, we are to believe, the neoliberal Centre has recovered. But has the centre really found a new revitalising note?

In the presidential election, Macron prevailed as the neoliberal Centrist candidate thanks to a number of factors: the collapse of social democracy, repeated Centre-Right scandals, and because the Far-Right was sufficiently repulsive.

Now, even with the Left non-committal, Macron did secure the support of around 45% of registered voters in the head-to-head with the Far Right. But was the high water mark.

At the legislative elections Macron's party, La Republic En Marche, took a landslide majority. Yet it came amid a low turnout. While his party took 49% of second round votes, just 43% of voters turned out - giving them the support of only about 20% of eligible voters.

The neoliberal Centre is holding on to power, but it doesn't seem to be the result of its own arguments. If anything, it seems as if the Centrists are standing still as the turbulent waters wash around them. As protest votes and popular dissensions of the Left and the Right ebb and flow, the stagnant Centre appears to rise or fall.

Just look at Italy. Despite losing a crucial referendum in December and resigning as Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi won back the leadership of the Partito Democratico in a landslide. And judging from the polls, he will likely return as Premier at the next election.

If he does, it would be explicitly at the head of a party of Renziani Centrists and neoliberals, looking to replicate Macron's success. That comes thanks to the Left-wing of the party going through with its threat to leave if Renzi won back the leadership.

Under former party leaders Pierluigi Bersani and Massimo D'Alema, the Centre-Left walked away to work towards concentrating all of the many Left factions - including their own Democratici e Progressisti vehicle - under a single progressive banner.

This move leaves Renzi as the undisputed leader of a definitively Centrist party. Matteo Renzi again proves himself to be - in the years of turmoil created by Berlusconi finally, if only partially, falling from grace - pretty much the last man standing.

But what else does Renzi have? Other that his political skill that earned him the nickname 'il Rottamore' - the scrapper. He lost the constitutional referendum on which he staked his Premiership and the Renziani approach has alienated the Centre-Left and driven them out of the party - much as the Hollande governments did and Macron risks doing with his programme.

Furthermore, it was his political skill - not electoral success - that saw him rise to the position of Premier, after a succession of resignations when the Democrats under Bersani failed to gain enough support to govern with it's Centre-Left platform in 2013.

While the Democrats had consistently polled well under Renzi, up on 2013, their lead has slipped and the recent turmoil has seen them fall into a neck and neck race with the populist anti-establishment party Movimento 5 Stella (M5S).

The sum of this is that in Italy, the 'third way' Centrism - blending social democracy and neoliberalism - may return to power with Renzi, but it's unlikely to do so with sweeping triumph. Again, the waters are moving and the Centrists are not the ones moving them.

In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte celebrated his party remaining the largest and the halting of the Far-Right advance. But the figures tell a different story. Between the coalition partners - the Centre-Right liberal-conservative VVD and the Dutch Labour Party PdvA - they lost 37 seats and 24% of the vote.

For Rutte's VVD, it was the failure of an alternative to muster sufficient support from a fractured and plural political landscape that has kept him in power: they remained the largest party with just 21% of the vote.

It will take an across the spectrum alliance of at least four parties to keep Rutte's VVD in office. While that kind of pluralism is a positive thing, it's not exactly evidence of a great Centre revival.

In Britain, the failure of the Liberal Democrats to increase their share of the vote reinforced the point.

By succeeding in getting people to engage with politics, to turnout and vote, Jeremy Corbyn shut down what appears to be the main avenue along which the neoliberal Centre has travelled: abstention.

If this is the case, it makes the pitch made by the Lib Dems over the last few elections and the New Labourite obsession misguided. Pitching to be the party of faceless bureaucrats, the party of government, the party of business, only seems to work if people have lost interest.

Could a new British party of the centre have done better than the Lib Dems? A party of economically neoliberal social democrats, uniting Labour MPs with some liberals and even some Tories, and pitching to as broad a base as possible, under a leader like Yvette Cooper?

The numbers don't really support it. Even with the Tories and Labour getting their largest vote share for some time, abstention was still the largest block. The reality is that Centrism doesn't seem to have a convincing story to tell and so stands still as events move around it.

Macron was the rallying point to see off a threat. And while Justin Trudeau did indeed lead the Liberals to a huge comeback and landslide majority in Canada in 2015, he did so with the support of just a quarter of eligible voters - the gift of an electoral system - against the waning power of an ever more rightward leaning government.

If Renzi wins back to the Premiership in Italy with effective power, it will also be likely thanks to an electoral system. And, in the Netherlands, Rutte held on thanks to support being fractured across the plural options.

While the Right rallies an angry minority around a crude nationalism that makes wild promises and the Left assembles behind a hopeful interventionism, the Centre mostly benefits from disengagement. The the relative recovery of the Centre comes to look more like a holding pattern.

This isn't the sign of a recovery - it's the absence of one.

The Centre remains with a hand on power because disengagement remains a real issue and neither a Left Alternative nor the angry Far Right have, so far, won over enough support with the broader public.

While this does seem to toll the bell for neoliberalism, Centrism need not necessarily follow it. There is a place for Centrism, but right now it seems like the Centre is struggling to understand itself.

The Centre is supposed to be about balance. About inclusion. That is not the same thing as 'equidistance'. And the occupation of the centre ground by neoliberalism is more about 'received wisdom', the present consensus, than the ideals of the Centre.

In a pluralist society, Centrism has an important role to play. It pursues a stake in society for people on all sides and tries to maximise the utility of the society - to ensure the maximum number of people enjoy the benefits.

What that can't mean is accepting conservative narratives on the economy, the trap that the heirs of New Labour have frequently fallen into. That centrism, of neoliberalism, has become like a technical government, a bureaucratic caretaker while we await something better.

Those that values the ideal of the Centre - inclusion - need to wake up. The revival of the Centre is not what it appears. The politics of management is offering nothing and standing still. People are ready to move. Centrists need an answer as to where.

French Legislative Elections: Macron's ascent asks a tough question of social democrats and social liberals

Macron's ascendancy consumed the parties of social democrats and social liberals, reducing them to a sliver of seats. Will they be represented in his En Marche majority? If Macron doesn't give enough thought to them, the Left opposition will look to build progressive alliances under his left-wing.

Emmanuel Macron has completed what he set out to do. He has won the Presidency and an Assembly majority riding the crest of his new movement 'La Republic En Marche'. However, the poor turnout suggests all is not yet what it appears.

Macron and En Marche won a landslide, yes. But the wave of disaffection was greater still. In the two rounds of voting, just 49% and 43% of the people voted. Macron has a majority in the Assembly, but not yet in the country. Far from it.

That disparity will only make it harder and more desperate, not easier, to win people over. The pressure is now tangible. Macron has to deliver - and not just his own programme. He has to deliver it in a way that meets with public expectation.

People are already disaffected, with turnouts low, and the call for people to rally about the Centrist candidate has not exactly been answered - regardless how it has been portrayed by those excited by a pro-European Centre revival.

Macron's Centrist success also came largely at the expense of the Centre-Left, practically wiping it out save for those who aligned with En Marche.

Leading figures in the social democratic 'Parti Socialiste' lost their seats as the the party was nearly wiped out, reduced from 280 to just 29 seats. The Left-wing Presidential candidate Benoit Hamon and Assembly leader Jean-Christophe Cambadelis were defeated - though former Premier Manuel Valls survived, standing as an independent.

Social democracy also managed to take social liberalism down with it. The 'Parti Radical de Gauche', their social liberal allies, lost all but three of their seats, though their leader Sylvia Pinel survived. It is worthy of note that three more radicals survived under the En Marche banner.

That poses an interesting question. How much of these ideologies was carried over to La Republic En Marche? Progressives will be watching closely for the answer.

In the mean time, there are questions of how to go about forming a progressive opposition. The main opposition will be the Centre-Right 'La Republicains'. They also suffered a defeat, though less damaging, and along with their allies dropped to 131 seats.

In opposition on the Left, Social democrats and social liberals are now present only in small numbers - in terms of their traditional, recognisable forms. Their supporters may be forced to look to En Marche and their MoDem allies in government for representation.

There is now, though, the possibility of a clear democratic socialist caucus in opposition. If the Socialists stick to the agenda that Benoit Hamon presented for the Presidential election, there is a possibility of forming a largely coherent DemocSoc group.

While the Socialists hold more seats, the leading voice of that group would be Jean-Luc Melenchon - who performed well at the Presidential election from the Left as the outsider candidate.

His movement 'France Insoumise' gained seats, and with what remains of the PS, along with the support of the PCF (Communists), there is a core of fifty seats with which to build an opposition group. That is enough, perhaps, to put pressure on Macron - and maybe enough to act as the beginning of a new Left alignment.

Macron's new movement - his new party of government, created just for that purpose out of the ashes of social democracy and social liberalism - has work to do.

That work has been described as Nordic in style, mixing controls on spending and cuts to regulation, with public investment and a strong social safety net - shifting the public role from keeping people in work to supporting them when they're not.

But to do that, he must first pull down the intensive labour institutions and the DemocSoc Left will not take that lightly. Expect protests on the streets and, if they can organise, a Left bloc voting against him. They will also resist plans aiming to cut taxes for the wealthy and corporations.

Caught in the midst of these struggles will be the social democrats and social liberals - both those within Macron's caucus and those in small numbers outside. They will have a difficult choice over their relationship to the Presidential majority.

Macron will likely have some of his greatest difficulties dealing with the threat of social democrats and social liberals pulling to the Left, if he tacks too far to the Republican Right, and threatening to vote with an organised DemocSoc bloc - perhaps giving both groups more influence than their initial numbers might suggest.

However, right now, Macron has the numbers. If he and his Premier move with energy, the most controversial elements of his approach might be completed early enough that En Marche can ride the wave. But the longer he waits, the harder change will get.

One last note. As a reminder that the far-right is far from beaten, Marine Le Pen was among a handful of Front National deputies elected to the National Assembly.

As Macron and his Centre-Right Premier Edouard Philippe lead the Assembly, they should keep Le Pen's deputies in sight. They represent the cost, for France, of failure to deliver on public perception. En Marche must deliver to France a tangible fresh start.

France 2017: Elections will be a stern test for the French political mainstream

The relationship between France and Europe will need to change regardless of who comes out on top in the 2017 presidential and legislative elections. Photograph: France and EU-flag, somewhere in Dunkerque by Sebastian Fuss (License) (Cropped & Flipped)

This year's French elections, both presidential in April and the legislative in June, represent the next important watershed in the struggle against the Far-Right. For progressives, they represent the next big hope for pushback against the extreme political trend represented by Brexit and Trump.

In the Netherlands, the failure of Wilders' Far-Right PPV to become the biggest party was celebrated by the mainstream - even by VVD's, despite their own loss of seats which makes their position as the largest and governing party more tenuous. Progressives have to start thinking bigger.

That won't be easy in France, where the political climate is fractious - which has been a consistent factor in the Far-Right's success wherever around the world it has reared its head. The governing Parti Socialiste and its President Francois Hollande and suffered a severe decline in its popularity and the fall in its credibility seems to have weakened the entire political mainstream.

As the Far-Right - the Front National under Marine Le Pen - threaten to gobble up a fifth or more of the votes, the parties from the Right through the Centre and Left are tangled in a close multi-party fight for the rest of the votes. The Far-Right is thriving on a mainstream in turmoil.

If the social conservatism, nationalism and hostile extremism of the Far-Right is going to be defeated, progressives in France need to find a way to work together despite their fractious splits. That will likely mean crudely rallying behind a single candidate in the presidential election. But for the legislative elections, it can mean a more practical alliance between separate parties or a simple willingness to engage and work together to freeze out extremists.

Electoral System

The presidential election, the first to happen on 23rd April, is a two-round contest. The election is completed in the first round if any candidate gets an outright majority. If not, the top two candidates face one another in a second round run-off.

The legislative election is contested in 577 single member constituencies, also over two rounds of voting - said to treated as the first vote cast with the heart and then the second with the head. The first round takes place on 11th June and the run-off is on 18th June (Henley, 2017).

Socialists and the Left - Hamon and Melenchon

Photograph: Benoit Hamon painted portrait by Thierry Ehrmann (License) (Cropped)

Under the Hollande Presidency, the Socialist government has faced painfully low approval ratings (Fouquet, 2016). Prime Minister Manuel Valls tried to bring about unpopular labour reforms and it has cost himself and his President dearly in political capital (BBC, 2016).

The result of the party leadership's unpopularity is that the chances of the party retaining power, either the presidency or in parliament, are low. Last year's regional election saw them drop to just 23% and 3rd in the first round - though they recovered a little to 28% and 2nd on second preferences.

In the face of a polling decline that was discrediting the mainstream of the party, the party's primary to nominate a presidential candidate saw an upset. Benoit Hamon, a centre-left critic of Hollande and a supporter of the basic income, became their official candidate for the 2017 election (Chrisafis, 2017).

But things are rarely simple for the Centre-Left these days. The Socialist situation is made much more difficult by the surge of support for an alternative candidacy. Emmanuel Macron, a former Socialist economy minister has launched an outside run - that is avowedly pro-European, liberal and centrist - for the presidency.

Macron's campaign, hoping to be a unifying candidate for the mainstream against Le Pen, even has the support of Socialist Premier Valls (BBC, 2017) - breaking a commitment Valls made to honour the outcome of the party primary, in order to back a candidate closer to his own position.

The socialist difficulties don't end there. They also face more opposition from further to the Left, in the form of Jean-Luc Melenchon's party Unsubmissive France. Melenchon received a positive public reception for a 'convincing' performance in the debate at the start of April (Willsher, 2017), thrusting him in amongst the leaders in the polls.

The nature of problems facing the progressive centre and left in France is demonstrated well by the Parti Radical du Gauche (PRG). The backing of the Radical Party of the Left is one of the few notes of consistency for the Socialists.

They have been a long time ally of the Socialists and, even entered their own candidate, party leader Sylvia Pinel, into the Socialist Party Presidential Primary. The Socialists had some relief when Sylvia Pinel announced last month that her party would honour the commitment to back the primary winning candidate (Le Monde, 2017).

And despite despite talk of discussions between the PRG and Emmanuel Macron, she acknowledged the need to unite and fight against the threat posed by the Front National. However, the Radicals are far from united behind the official stance, and some of its parliamentarians have announced their support for the outside candidacy Macron.

As for policy, there seems to be little on display in the campaign on any side - all of the focus is the notion of who best represents France. For Benoit Hamon's part, he has presented a more fleshed out set of policies than others.

Hamon has been vocal on wanting to further democratise Europe and to subject more of its policy convergence to be subject to the scrutiny and control of a democratic assembly (Flausch, 2017) - striking a compromises between a pro-EU position and the rising demand for change in the way the EU works.

At home he has made a pitch to recover working class support with policies like a robot tax, to tax automation that takes away jobs and cutting the working week to 32 hours (Serhan, 2017). He is also an advocate of the universal basic income.

However, without even the full support his party, it's unlikely that Hamon will even be amongst the chief contenders in the first round of the presidential election. The damage to the image of the Socialists seems just too much to overcome.

The Centre - Macron and Bayrou

Photograph: LEWEB 2014 Conference - in conversation with Emmanuel Macron by LE WEB (License) (Cropped)

In light of the negative perception that is hampering the Socialists and their nomination of a candidate some way to the left of the party mainstream, the party's former economy minister Emmanuel Macron launched a hastily arranged campaign for the presidency called 'En Marche!' (Lorimer, 2017).

From being dismissed as a bubble bound to burst, Emmanuel Macron has become the favourite, leading in all of the polls for both the first and second round votes. He has held rallies that, even in Britain (DW, 2017), received the attendance of crowds in their thousands (Gendron, 2017) - numbers comparable to those who flocked to see Bernie Sanders in the US election.

Liberals and pro-Europeans from across Europe have flocked to his side and offered endorsements - including Nick Clegg and EU liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt, with others taking a close interest.

But beyond his promise to run a hard campaign against the Far-Right and to stand up for the European mainstream, his policy positions seem somewhat thin - one French commenter described his campaign as like a movie, a canvas for a beautiful image without much depth (Gendron, 2017).

That may change when En Marche! has its list of candidates up and running for the legislative election, as appears to be the plan - and it would be hard to see them running without some sort of platform.

But that isn't so critical for a Presidential race where the aim is broad unity. It is notable that he has invoked a legacy of France governed from the centre in which he includes Jacques Chirac - in 2002, Chirac was elected overwhelmingly as the mainstream candidate versus Jean-Marie Le Pen, father of Marine, and his more openly extreme version of Front National.

Like with the Socialists, Macron is not the sole candidate of the Centre. But his chances are more clear cut. In theory, the 'official' centrists candidate would come from Francois Bayrou's Democratic Movement (Mouvement Democrate, MoDem).

In fact Bayrou only ruled out running again himself when he was sure Nicolas Sarkozy would not be running. As it stood, the centre was represented only by Jean Lassalle, a former MoDem Member of the National Assembly, on a 'Résistons!' ticket.

However Bayrou, having ruled out his own candidacy, proposed support for Macron (Willsher, 2017{2}) - an unsurprising move considering Macron's centrist campaign and rapid rise in popularity. The deal for Bayrou's support came a demand for a law to clean up French politics.

The tougher question is, how will Macron's En Marche! and Bayrou's MoDem mesh when it comes time for the legislative election? With plans in any definite form, it is hard to say what logo to expect candidates from the centre to be standing under come June.

The Right and the Far Right - Fillon and Le Pen

Photograph: EPP Summit Brussels December 2016 by the European People's Party (License) (Cropped)

The Republicans (Les Républicains, LR) started this campaign looking to have the presidency all sewn up. Former presidents and prime ministers were queueing up for a shot at being the party candidate (Vinocur, 2016) - including Nicolas Sarkozy, attempting a political comeback.

Yet their hopes have sunk low since then. Nearly every candidate was plagued with some sort of controversy or historical accusations of corruption in office. From Sarkozy to Alain Juppe, to Jean-Francois Cope, the leading candidates had track records they needed to overcome.

While it seemed for a brief moment that they had settled on a nominee free from such troubles in Francois Fillon, a social traditionalist and Thatcherite free marketeer, he also quickly found himself embroiled in controversy.

Fillon has been accused of creating, in essence phony, jobs for family members and using public funds to pay them. At a time when there is dissatisfaction with the political class in every country, it is the kind of story that won't go away.

If he had steered clear of trouble, he would still have found himself undercut - in efforts to be the mainstream candidate to face the Front National - by Macron, thanks to his platform that leans deeply into the territory of the Right.

On top of wanting tough measures against trade unions and ending the 35 hour working week, with restrictions on immigration, he wants cuts to public spending and an end to the wealth tax (McKenzie & Dewan, 2016). Hardly a broad platform.

The Right's ever further drift rightwards was to try and cover off the threat of the Far Right. After their performance in the regional elections last year, Marine Le Pen's Front National was seen as being in the strongest position amongst Europe's Far Right parties to rock the establishment.

Brexit only reinforced that idea. The fearful mainstream and grinning extremists alike presaged the EU's death in her victory. The trouble is, the 'surge' for Marine Le Pen and her party was never really what it seemed.

While passing 20% in the polls was a troubling landmark, her party has not been able to advance. The key is that it hasn't been able to convince a wider audience, despite efforts to make the Front National the respectable face of Far Right nativist nationalism.

In a departure from the more outspoken racism of her father, she co-opted mainstream values of French republicanism and sought to equate them with nationalism - as that which is native and needs protection. It hasn't worked. The most ambitious projections see her reaching the second round presidential run-off, only to lose profoundly.

Under the respectable surface are disturbing movements. There are dark and extremist rumblings. The face might be respectable but it is façade covering and benefiting from the rise of a cancerous extremism (The Guardian, 2017).

Implications

One thing is clear: the fallout from the French election will come with demands for things to change in Europe. Amongst the agreements that have kept the PS and PRG together is a commitment to overhaul the economic governance of the Eurozone and a call to harmonise Corporation Tax across the continent (Le Monde, 2017).

These would be gigantic, and necessary, steps and be a positive direction for the European Union, particularly in the fight against corporate tax evasion. From Far Left to Far Right, there will be pressure for some kind of action.

The presidential race is only the first and symbolic step. The second step will be taken in the legislative election, where some sort of consensus will need to be found among the progressive parties if they are to set the agenda.

Neither the Right, nor the Far Right, yet hold the balance. So what stands in the way of a progressive next step for France is whether or not the parties of the Left and Centre can find common ground.

In 2002, voters rallied around conservative Jacques Chirac in the presidential against Le Pen's father. It seems likely that the same will to unite behind anyone to 'beat the fascists' will stymie Marine in 2017.

But the various parties - the different streams of the Parti Socialiste, the Parti Radical de Gauche, Macron's En Marche!, Bayrou's centrist MoDems, Melenchon's Left groups and others - will need to pull together to ensure a positive progressive government emerges from the legislative election.

Secularism is supposed to be at the heart of free thought and expression, not an excuse to suppress them

Written over the door of the Faculte de Droit in Paris is the promise of liberty, equality and brotherhood from the secular state to its citizens, yet secularism still faces accusations of overbearing paternalism.

Secularism, at its most literal, means the separation of church and state. At the core of the principal is the idea that no religion - or any other formal, organised, set of beliefs - should play an integrated role in the governance or administration of civic institutions, so as to maintain their neutrality.

However, it is also intended to guarantee to citizens the freedom of conscience, and through that policy give support to freedom of thought. So as much as it means religion staying out of public administration, it also meant the state leaving personal beliefs, including religion, as a private matter.

How that principle is applied in practice, in modern times, has come under a spotlight in the past week thanks to the response of some to a rising fear in Europe of fundamentalist Islam. In France, local government in some areas have passed prohibitions against certain kinds of outward religious expression - the most notable result so far being the clamp down on 'burkinis' (Amrani, 2016).

One thing is absolutely clear. Issuing legal commands as to what women can and cannot wear does not convey "la légitime et saine laïcité", the legitimate and healthy secularity, or the guarantee of the freedom of conscience, promised by the French secularism that descends from the 1905 laws.

Part of the problem, perhaps, is that the world today is not the world into which those particular laws where issued. Listed amongst the laws of 1905, almost paradoxically next to the freedom of conscience, was the prohibition of public displays of religion.

The France that had the 1905 law applied to it was a country deeply entwined with the Catholic Church. The entangling influence of the church was deeply resented and the emergence of laicite came hand in hand with a history of anti-clericalism that pushed back and tried to wrestle society out of the grip of the clergy..

The Left bloc government that advocated secularism, formed by Radicals and Socialists, wanted in particular to end the influence of Catholicism over education - which had been traditionally provided almost exclusively by the clergy. Yet the broken clerical influence was simply replaced with that of the centralised state.

As much as laicite, and in particular secular education, was a republican and humanist project, it was also deeply nationalist. In early twentieth century France, secularism was at the centre of a broader policy of 'modernisation', that sought to establish and project the power of a centralised nation-state - seeking to make the civic state the centre of a society with a singular, integrated and unifying, language and culture.

In modern Europe, secularism has largely succeeded, yet it has done so alongside the advance of the centralised nation-states and nowhere in Europe has secularism and the nation-state been so heavily intertwined as in France - as to represent a major component of the 'national values' and national identity.

The rise of extremist and fundamentalist religion, and extremist and fundamentalist ideologies - that seek to play an active role in government to directly impose their values on citizens - do call for careful thought. The Nationalist Right's answers to these complex matters has been to call for a more strict imposition of 'national values' - and in France that has meant using secularism as the means to legitimise an overbearing policy.

This is a threat to the principles of secularism. The independence of the functions of government from any interest group is a worthy idea. The freedom of conscience is essential. As George Clemenceau - former Prime Minister of France, a radical and a contemporary to the 1905 laws - argued that you do not get liberty by fighting one tyranny with another tyranny.

Clemenceau wrote of his certainty that "apprenticeship in liberty can only be served through liberty" and that to "struggle against the church there is only one means - the liberty of the individual". Support for free thought, openness and tolerance are the progressive response to closed tyrannical intolerance. Stooping to the regulation of citizens' clothing just swaps one degrading paternalism for another.

Britain's tented Hoovervilles show the reality of the humanitarian crisis behind the debt and deficit obsession of the Great Recession

Desperation, in the time of recession and austerity, has led to tented encampments springing up across the UK. This one lies a stones throw from Manchester Piccadilly station.

Iain Duncan Smith framed his resignation as the drastic last straw of a reformer, who's efforts were curtailed by the Chancellor's obsession with austerity (Asthana & Stewart, 2016; Peston, 2016). Whatever the true conviction behind the claim, it highlights something incredibly important.

The economic crisis, to which the Conservatives have ever been keen to keep the eye drawn in the last six years, has masked a wider humanitarian crisis. Only one small moment of the Chancellor's budget statement was devoted to it. He told Members of Parliament that:

"Because under this Government we are not prepared to let people be left behind, I am also announcing a major new package of support worth over £115 million to support those who are homeless and to reduce rough sleeping."

The government tried hard during the election the evade the issue, despite attempts to confront the PM directly with the fact that rising numbers of people were using food banks (Channel 4, 2015; Worrall, 2015). Yet the fact remains that homelessness is still rising (Gentleman, 2016).

In his response to the budget, Jeremy Corbyn welcomed the Chancellor's package of assistance, but stressed that rising homelessness was the result of desperate under-investment by the Conservative government (BBC, 2016{2}). A lack of investment which had starved local government of the resources to help and housing associations of the capacity to offer shelter.

While the Chancellor's budget did offer some funds to 'reduce rough sleeping', it was in reality much less than he previously cut from housing support - estimated at only "£1 in every £5" by Shadow Housing Minister John Healey (Healey, 2016).

It is, however, something more than the approach of some local councils to rough sleeping, which has been less than humanitarian (Ellis-Petersen, 2015). Yet even harsh measures haven't been enough to stop the emergence of small, and not so small, shanty towns springing up in places like Manchester, like the Hoovervilles of the 1920s and 1930s.

Europe and the other half of the crisis

The living encamped amongst the dead, along the Rue Richard through the Cimetière du Montparnasse, in Southern Paris, where tents line the road.

On the face of it, the fact that this is as much a broader European as a specifically British problem, may seem to exonerate the Chancellor and his policies. After all, it would be unfair to blame Osborne for the living lodging amongst the dead on the Rue Richard, at the Cimetière du Montparnasse in Paris.

Yet while Osborne has no part in French system - where, in response to their own crisis, supermarkets are no longer being allowed to throw away surplus food and must donate it instead to help those in need of handouts (Derambarsh, 2016) - he does have a role in the other half of the crisis.

War on Europe's borders has led to a second element of the humanitarian crisis: an influx of refugees, for which Europe was not necessarily lacking in resources to tackle, but certainly appeared unprepared. With the British government unwilling to take on the burden of the refugees, a camp sprang up on the British border at Calais.

That camp grew to become a large slum town, administered by aid workers running soup kitchens and handing out charitable donations. But even that temporary solution could not last and the camp is now being broken up, by force, in order to disperse the refugees (Weaver & Walker, 2016).

Hoover and the Great Depression

As President, Herbert Hoover oversaw the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression. Photograph: Herbert Hoover by Opus Penguin (License) (Cropped)

Osborne's approach, pulling back the state and public investment and looking to free markets and civil society to step in to the breach, has made him seem like a man more concerned about balancing his chequebook than acting in the face of a crisis. With that image, he risks receiving the same reputation that marred President Hoover during the Great Depression, as a 'do-nothing' (Leuchtenburg, 2009).

It isn't hard to draw comparisons between some key aspects of the approaches of George Osborne and Herbert Hoover. As US Secretary of Commerce, for two administrations between 1921 and 1928, Hoover was a follower of the efficiency movement - pursuing the ridding of inefficiency and waste from the economy (Hawley, 2006).

As when Osborne's Conservatives came to power in 2010 advocating for a 'Big Society' (Rigby, 2016), Hoover believed that the means of achieving his economic aims was 'volunteerism', as opposed to direction from government - trusting to, and nominally supporting, individual initiative, typified by his role as director of American charitable relief efforts in post-war Europe, particularly in Belgium.

His subsequent time as President, from 1929 and 1933, was however overshadowed by the Wall Street Crash and the beginning of the Great Depression that saw the poor of New York living in Central Park in tented encampments - one of many American shanty towns that became known as 'Hooverville'.

Hoover made more effort than previous Presidents to arrest the severe economic downturn, including some public works projects. And then (Gray, 1993), as now (Pidd, 2016), civil society stepped up to provide aid and relief. Yet when the election came, Franklin D Roosevelt won, and with his New Deal coalition led the United States for four terms, with a comprehensive and interventionist plan to support and rebuild.

While Osborne avoided the stigma of the crisis hitting on his watch, he has also avoided intervention. Instead he has cut public spending - saying that the roof must be fixed "while the sun is shining". Amidst years of economic turmoil and cuts to social security, while statistics say homelessness has continued to rise (Gentleman, 2016), its difficult to see an application for his maxim.

The cracks and those slipping through

The advent of these modern day Hooverville encampments suggest that there is an unacceptable break down in the welfare safety nets in Britain, in France and elsewhere in Europe. Not all of this can be put down to the pressures of the refugee crisis. There are cracks appearing and people are slipping through.

Throwing money at suppressing the symptoms is not enough. It won't tackle the core problems. As much as the Conservatives want the focus to be on the public debt, in order to justify their agenda, private debt is just as large of a problem. Individuals are hanging on by their fingernails, stretched thin by the high cost of living.

Housing is prohibitively expensive. The cost of energy needs to come down. Work for the lowest paid is too insecure and the safety net too full of holes. George Osborne doesn't have to become a believer in a big  interventionist state overnight to help. At the very least something might be done with small reforms, aimed at properly regulating the energy and housing industry to prevent anti-competitive behaviour and price gouging.

Above all that, Osborne might benefit from accepting a single simple lesson, one that most austerians should take note of: the bad times inevitably end up costing far more than the good.

The Alternative Year: Five stories that defined UK & European politics in 2015

To round out a very eventful year in European politics, here's a review of the big stories - as covered here on The Alternative. We'll be back in January 2016 with more articles that look behind the political curtain to put policies in their proper contexts, to lay bare the ideologies and the theories, and to try and find the progressive alternatives.

The Radical Left Breakthrough

Alexis Tsipras and Syriza's offer of a united social front saw the first major breakthrough for the Radical Left. Photograph: Ο ΣΥΡΙΖΑ-ΕΚΜ για την παραγωγική ανασυγκρότηση της Θράκης by Joanna (License) (Cropped)

In January, candidates of the anti-austerity, Radical Left party Syriza were elected to 149 of 300 seats in the Parliament of Greece in a huge upset. Having made clear their opposition to the economic establishment, party leader and Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, along with Finance Minister and Economist Yanis Varoufakis, provided a further shock by proceeding to sit down and negotiate bailout deals with the much despised troika - the IMF, the European Bank and the European Commission. Their choice raised big questions about the value of working within the European system in order to reform it.

It wouldn't be the Syriza leader's only decision to raise a few eyebrows. In the Summer, as the crisis in Greece grew worse and negotiations came to a head, Tsipras announced a referendum on whether to accept the austerity-imposing bailout terms that Greece had been offered. In a comprehensive turnout, the people of Greece voted No. Tsipras then agreed to the terms of the deal anyway. That decision has been interpreted a number of ways - some not particularly kindly - but the most positive interpretations might be that it was intended as a powerful show of dissent in the act of accepting coerced conformity.

Yet Tsipras wasn't finished. Accepting the deal and passing it through Parliament led to a rebellion, and breakaway, by Syriza's Left faction, leaving the party's position perilous. So the Greek PM stunned the world again by resigning and calling an election, looking for a mandate to implement the deal he had negotiated. Despite opposition, he swept back into office with 149 of 300 seats once more, but this time with a more compact party, shorn of its rebellious elements. However, the Syriza leader's pragmatic approach has drawn criticism - particularly for his repeated use of popular votes on major issues.

With two elections and a referendum, in all of which he was victorious, its hard to believe that all of this has only been Alexis Tsipras first year as Prime Minister. It wouldn't be a surprise if he, and the citizens of Greece, would like his second to at least begin a little less eventful.

'Syriza's negotiation with European Leaders is a reminder that we need to take Europe back, not abandon it'; in The Alternative; 16 February 2015.

'The referendum in Greece is asking a deeper question about dissent: do we have to conform in order to belong?'; in The Alternative; 5 July 2015.

'Tsipras' repeat use of popular votes raises questions about radical democracy and his approach of 'pragmatic radicalism''; in The Alternative; 24 August 2015.

'Tsipras has his governing mandate, but weariness and disaffection dominate the mood and demand a positive response'; in The Alternative; 21 September 2015.

The Bad Night for Progressives

Ed Miliband gives his first keynote speech to Labour Party conference as leader, in September 2010. He would contest just one election as leader. Photograph: At Labour Party Conference in Manchester (License) (Cropped)

Spring brought the UK general election campaign, which was heralded as the build up to the closest election in modern UK history. Labour and the Conservatives were tough to separate on most issues, although that didn't stop the Liberal Democrats from taking the inexplicable decision to pitch themselves as the party of equidistance between them. Early polling and debates suggested it might be a strong showing for the Left in terms of the popular vote. Yet concerns remained about how the first-past-the-post system might distort the result.

The reality on the day was a nightmare for progressives. The polls had been way off. The Labour Party failed to make up any ground, losing dozens of seats to the SNP in Scotland. The Liberal Democrats collapsed to just eight seats, losing stalwart MPs like Charles Kennedy, Vince Cable and Simon Hughes and important former Ministers like Lynne Featherstone and Jo Swinson. Nor did the Greens didn't manage to make their big breakthrough. And, above all, the Conservatives picked up the advantage in every key constituency in England.

Especially after the polls had suggested a close contest, the emergence of a Conservative majority was traumatising. Both Labour and the Liberal Democrat leaders resigned. The resulting Labour leadership was to produce one of the more surprising stories of the year - from which the party has still not resettled.

'Election 2015: A Shorthand Guide to the 2015 UK General Election'; in The Alternative; 6 April 2015.

'Election 2015: Seven-way debate sees the Left outnumber the Right to talk about ideals, fairness and being open to the world'; in The Alternative; 2 April 2015.

'Election 2015: The BBC's opposition leaders debate sees Farage cornered by the Left and lash out at the audience'; in The Alternative; 16 April 2015.

'Election 2015: A bad night for progressives. What now for the Left?'; in The Alternative; 8 May 2015.

The Conservative Assault on Human Rights

Lady Justice standing atop the Old Bailey courthouse in central London.

No sooner had David Cameron moved back into 10 Downing Street, than the Conservative Government had begun to come under fire - even from members of their own party. Campaign groups and MPs alike were incensed by proposals from the Conservative government to reintroduce illiberal policies, previously blocked by Liberal Democrats under the Coalition.

With, plans to do away with the Human Rights Act where soon joined by plans to reintroduce the Snooper's Charter there were people already announcing how much they missed the influence of the Lib Dems. But the Conservatives where far from done. In the midst of the refugee crisis, where local communities where pulling together with an internationalist and humanitarian spirit to support those driven from their homes, the Prime Minister David Cameron was criticised for using dangerous and dehumanising language to refer to refugees.

The lack of respect for human rights, combined with domestic policies that pursued further austerity and slashed into fundamental parts of the welfare state, designed to provide the most basic humanitarian support, earned Cameron's ministry the ire of the opposition. However, Britain's unrepresentative voting system had awarded his party a majority and the opposition to his government was weak, divided and scattered. The question became: how would popular discontent express itself?

'Scrapping the Human Rights Act removes the safeguards that protect individuals from the arbitrary power of the state'; in The Alternative; 14 May 2015.

'Conservative Queen's Speech offers some relief to Human Rights campaigners, but also holds new threats to civil liberties'; in The Alternative; 27 May 2015.

'Local and provincial communities are showing the chief internationalist value of empathy in the face of the refugee crisis'; in The Alternative; 13 July 2015.

'Humanitarian government is under attack and progressive opposition can no longer afford to be weak, scattered and resigned'; in The Alternative; 27 August 2015.

The Corbyn Momentum

The new Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn addresses a thousand people in Manchester Cathedral, while several thousand more assemble outside. The speech capped a weekend of protest outside the Tory Party Conference.

Jeremy Corbyn entered the Labour leadership race as the complete outsider, pushed forward to at least give a token place in the debate to the party's Left-wing faction. What the Labour Party establishment did not count on was a huge groundswell of popular support for the 66 year old Islington MP. Membership of the party increased drastically as Corbyn's campaign gained traction, with Left-wingers old and new returned to the Labour Party after years in the wilderness. Even so, it was still thought that the Right-leaning establishment would still have the final word. But Corbyn's momentum couldn't be halted.

The final result was a landslide victory for Jeremy Corbyn, in every voter category. However, it appeared that winning the leadership would be the easy bit. Corbyn came under attack from the beginning, on everything from whether he bows sufficiently to whether he sings the national anthem. Even his own party has been restless, with the MPs in Labour's Parliamentary Party feeling rebellious under what they believed to be a disastrous Left-wing leader they felt had been forced upon them by the membership, the trade unions and constituency organisations.

At a long weekend in Manchester, in parallel with the Tory Party Conference, the energy that Corbyn's election had injected into the Left was tangible. A rally in the sunshine at Castlefields Arena, at the end of a weekend of concerts, talks and marches - drawing figures from across the anti-austerity movement - was the peak. But the weekend has one more moment to offer. At Manchester Cathedral, trade union leaders and progressive voices spoke to a packed house. But they where only the warm up act.

Ten thousand people, a thousand of them crammed inside with the rest gathered about an impromptu stage outside, had gathered to hear Jeremy Corbyn speak. Regardless where your progressive sympathies lie, it is hard not to be enthused about so large a spontaneous audience gathering to listen to a mild mannered figure call for a politics with a renewed social conscience.

'Corbyn has brought idealism to the campaign, but needs to show how public ownership can further the pursuit of a just, inclusive and power-devolving society'; in The Alternative; 6 August 2015.

'Jeremy Corbyn wins the Labour leadership election in a revolution of party members overthrowing the party establishment'; in The Alternative; 12 September 2015.

'Anti-austerity 'Take Back Manchester' event tries to prove that the Left is back in fashion'; in The Alternative; 5 October 2015.

'"We don't pass by" - Jeremy Corbyn lays foundations for compassionate narrative based on renewing belief in public service'; in The Alternative; 6 October 2015.

The Autumn Election Season

Justin Trudeau led the Liberals back from their worst ever result to a upset landslide majority. Photograph: Toronto Centre Campaign Office Opening with Chrystia Freeland and Justin Trudeau by Joseph Morris (License) (Cropped)

Elections on either side of the Atlantic in the Autumn served to highlight some differences in the political mood. In Canada, Justin Trudeau's Liberals won out in a multi-party contest between three moderate parties. Meanwhile in Argentina, a broad centrist coalition led by neoliberal Mauricio Macri replaced outgoing President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner's Peronist, popular nationalist, Justicialist Party.

By contrast, populist and Far-Right parties had sprung up once more in Europe. In Poland, the Left was swept away and even progressive liberalism was struggling under a Right-wing, conservative tide. Further elections in France and Spain confirmed that, in Europe, the political mainstream was suffering a substantial decline. In France, the establishment managed hold off Front National through tactical voting, while in Spain the more proportional voting system allowed for a plural, indecisive, multi-party result - bringing Spain's two-party system to an end and which may prove difficult terrain from which to create a government.

What, at least, did seem to be confirmed on both sides of the Atlantic was the weakness of two-party systems and their distorting effect upon pluralistic societies. In Canada, Trudeau's party won a majority in a shift that only seemed to take place in the final week, as either/or decisions forced voters to choose between worst case scenarios.

Above all, however, these elections all made clear just how much work is necessary to build a progressive politics and just how easily popular conservatism can tear it all down. In France particularly - where the established parties looked weak and discredited - the danger of failing to engage, educate and inspire people with progressive ideals, to build a progressive civic space with a bridge to humanitarian institutions, was brought into sharp focus. 'Winning' on a technical level alone isn't enough.

'Shift in Canadian federal election from three party race to two party polemic shows importance of electoral reform in ensuring a truly representative politics'; in The Alternative; 19 October 2015.

'What can progressives learn from elections around the world?'; in The Alternative; 26 October 2015.

'When the Centre is discredited only the Right benefits - the Left has no shortcuts, it has to build and engage to move forward'; in The Alternative; 13 December 2015.

'The 'new politics' is being put to the test in Spain, where Podemos hopes to show that Syriza was not an anomaly'; in The Alternative; 20 December 2015.

The Lessons for 2016

For progressives, despite a lot of setbacks, there were at least some positives to take from 2015. The unexpected landslide majority for Justin Trudeau's Liberal Party in Canada. The surprising popular successes of radical democrats like Jeremy Corbyn, Alexis Tsipras and Syriza, Pablo Iglesias and Podemos. The little, flickering, light of hope amongst all of the conservatism is that, liberals and democrats alike, have begun to find ways to reach out to the public, to connect with them and to get them engaged with the idea that there are progressive alternatives and that people do have the power to make them happen.