According to the opinion polls France will face a choice next May between two forms of national suicide: Mélenchon v Le Pen.
We were presented last month with Marine Le Pen’s dishonest arithmetic and incoherent jumble of liberalism and protectionism, tax cuts and increased social spending.
Last week, Jean-Luc Mélenchon published a six-year-old’s Santa Claus wish-list as the ultra-left economic programme of his “New France”.
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A country which already works less than its neighbours would move to retirement at 60; to a 32-hour week; a sixth week’s holiday; and seven days’ compassionate leave for the death of a “friend”.
A country which already entrusts 57 percent of its GDP to the state would add at least €100 billion a year to its annual budget. Prices would be frozen. Salaries increased. A large chunk of the national debt would be repudiated.
Who would pay? Private enterprise and “the rich” - several times over it seems. Tax breaks for business would be abolished. Inheritance would be limited to €12 million. There would be at least two new taxes on “wealth” plus higher income tax for moderate to high earners. Some industries, including banks, would be nationalised.
To give Mélenchon credit, his programme is coherent in a way. It is an unashamed lurch towards the kind of “collectivism” (his own word) last attempted in Europe by the Soviet Union.
By contrast, Le Pen’s programme is a straightforward swindle – a bait and switch mixture of welfarism and liberalism, explained in numbers which don’t add up. More on that next week.
The La France Insoumise (LFI) economic plan is ideologically coherent but self-defeating. It makes sweeping promises to young people, including university places for all and a minimum income for the over-18s. It guarantees them a miserable future by transferring an even greater share of national resources to the inactive old.
The Mélenchon economic plan cuts the ground from under its own feet in other ways. It promises a rapid dash to 100 percent renewable energy AND the dismantlement of France’s nuclear power stations (which are responsible for 70 percent of the nation’s electricity). It expects other EU countries to agree to abolish part of French debt while France unilaterally repudiates the single European market for goods and capital.
In sum, rule by the LFI would rapidly mean rule by the IMF. “Mélenchonomics” is simultaneously less dangerous than “Marinomics” and more dangerous.
It is less dangerous because Mélenchon will never be elected and the programme will never be implemented. If he does reach the second round, the polls suggest that he will be defeated by Le Pen by a two to one margin.
It is more dangerous because it is NOT intended as a programme for democratic government. Mélenchon knows that he cannot be elected this May; he wants only to reach the second round.
By exciting the idealistic Left and especially the young, he believes that he can overwhelm the muddled promises of central bloc candidates, handicapped by their at least partial attachment to the real world.
Once in Round Two, the LFI will paint anyone who abstains or votes Le Pen as a “neo-liberal” or a “fascist” and a “racist”. Mélenchon knows that he will still lose. He expects to emerge post-election as the only credible voice of “opposition to fascism” and to foment an insurrectionary mood which will make the street protests of recent weeks appear feeble.
An obvious question arises. If Le Pen and Mélenchon are offering such dotty programmes for government, why are they attracting the support of well over 50 percent of the French electorate? According to the most recent opinion polls, Le Pen has 35 percent support in the first round of the presidential election on April 18th. Mélenchon had risen in the last month from circa 14 percent to 19 percent, fuelled by his 45 percent support amongst under-24s and by the protests against failing lycées and the cost of living.
No candidate in a crowded but flailing “mainstream” – from the centre-left to centre-right via the ex-Macronist centre – is currently attracting more than 14 percent of the Round One vote.
As things stand, France is heading for a calamitous choice in the two-candidate second round on May 2nd between two ways of pretending that elephants can fly. Why?
All three forms of the mainstream, centre-right, centre-left and centre, have governed the country this century. They are held co-responsible for the €3.6 trillion mountain of debt. They have jointly fashioned a bizarre situation where the French state claims more resources than almost any other European country but still struggles to meet national needs in education, health and defence.
France is NOT the basket-case that some claim. In terms of the UN’s Human Development Index of economic and social success it comes in the top quarter, at 26th, close to other large western nations. Poverty is growing but remains below the EU average. The country still has a powerful industrial base, from defence, to luxury goods, to cars, to aircraft.
All the same, it is difficult for the mainstream parties to accuse Le Pen and Mélenchon of offering destructive and unrealistic economic policies when they have presided over half a century of high taxation, deteriorating services AND increasing public debt. From the centre-left to the centre-right, the mainstream has run out of appealing ideas and strong or likeable personalities.
The two most powerful political forces in the country are irresponsible. The “central bloc” is responsible – but it is also responsible for the mess that the country is in.
There are 40 percent or more of voters who refuse both Mélenchon and Le Pen, more than enough to take an honest and realistic candidate into Round Two. That “sensible” electorate is splintered in half a dozen ways. Talk of a “central primary” or a “saviour” candidate to unite the anti-extreme camp is growing. A technocrat (Christine Lagarde?) A sportsman (Teddy Riner?) A has-been (Francois Hollande?)
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No one seems to fit the bill. This is a scary election and may get scarier. The only reason for optimism is that politics, and especially French politics, hates a “fait accompli”.
Five months remain for a “surprise” out of centre-field.
Next week, John will be examining the economic policies of Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National in more detail - find all his columns here
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