Parisian election posters showing candidate for the 2017 presidential election Emmanuel Macron, March 23, 2017. Apaydin Alain/Press Association. All rights reserved.The 2017 presidential election in France will mark a moment of great historical import. We may be wrong, however, in our assessment of what makes this election particularly significant.
France, we are told ad nauseam, is the arena in which one of the final rounds in the global battle between populism and democracy will be fought. After the lukewarm results of the Dutch elections last week, liberals everywhere in the world seem on the edge of their seats, awaiting the final act of what resembles a Greek tragedy in three acts. After the Brexit and Trump debacles, however, no-one seems prepared to even dare believe in a happy ending any more. But this is perhaps wherein lies the tragedy: that even the most desirable outcome, a Macron presidency, is already couched as, at best, a Hollandisme 2.0. That the future of liberal democracy in France seems to rest in the hands of a 39-year-old Wunderkind, we are told, is no grounds for optimism.
Our cynicism might in fact hasten the outcome that we are so afraid of: a Le Pen presidency. The Cassandras of populism might just turn this plausible scenario into a self-fulfilling prophecy, especially if they continue to suggest that Emmanuel Macron’s centrist platform is on a par with the Front National’s amalgam of right-wing nationalism and socialist promises to ameliorate the plight of French workers and lower middle classes.
