EU Referendum


Brexit: "insurgents" on the run


08/05/2017




One of the dreams of political chaos theorists was that Le Pen should win the French presidential election, adding to what has been seen as a populist trend set by the EU referendum and Donald Trump's victory.

But anyone who was really expecting Le Pen to take the presidency will have been severely disappointed. The establishment choice, Emmanuel Macron, has stormed to victory, crushing his opponent with 65.5 percent of the vote against the challenger's 34.5 percent, giving him an unassailable 31 percent lead.

However, before getting too triumphant, this compares relatively poorly with the performance of Jacques Chirac who, in 2002 beat Le Pen père with 82.21 percent of the vote, against 17.79 percent. And that was on an 80 percent turnout, compared with the 74 percent this time round.

On the back of Ukip's collapse and an imminent Conservative victory, the order of things seem to be re-asserting themselves. Oddly enough, it is the demise of Ukip which is giving the Conservatives their chance.

We see the Telegraph reporting that the party's collapse could help the Tories capture 45 seats, the reversal of the Ukip effect that we identified in 2005. In 2010, we estimated that the effect had cost the Tories 41 seats, very close to the level that they are now expected to recover.

That actually has been the real impact of Ukip, not in gaining seats but in splitting the vote and weakening the Tories, thereby exerting the leverage that eventually led to David Cameron conceding a referendum.

Now, it's almost as if we're back to "normal" politics, and not only in the UK. Throughout Europe, after the Dutch failed to give Geert Wilders' Party for Freedom (PVV) its breakthrough and the Austrians robbed Norbert Hofer of his victory, the "insurgents" are on the run.

The Guardian certainly seems to think so, quoting Michiel de Bruin of BMO Global Asset Management, who comments that the win "sends a clear signal that anti-EU populist parties are unable to secure a power base across the political landscape in continental Europe".

The only thing, of course, is that politics are not back to normal. Brexit is real and casts a shadow over the entire European "dream". Mr Macron and his partner-to-be Angela Merkel will have their work cut out, isolating the UK and containing the "contagion".

At 39 years of age, Macron becomes France's youngest president and is set to join Angela Merkel as the other half of the Franco-German "motor", ready to do battle with les rosbiffs over Brexit.

The French return to orthodoxy, by a significant margin, means that any hopes of disunity amongst the main players in the Brexit "theatre" will have reduced. And, if as expected, Merkel retakes the chancellorship in the autumn, the UK will be confronting a powerful orthodoxy which is unlikely to grant it many concessions.

During his presidential campaign, Macron had warned that Brexit negotiations would be "no walk in the park", pledging to protect the Single Market and the ECJ. At his victory party in the grand central courtyard of Paris's Louvre Museum, to the strains of Beethoven's Ode to Joy, he delivered a victory speech in which he spoke of "rebuilding our Europe" and working to "rebuild ties between Europe and its citizens".

Juncker perhaps summed it up for his "colleagues", posting on Twitter that he was "happy that the French chose a European future". European Council president Tusk, on the other hand, congratulated the "French people for choosing Liberty, Equality and Fraternity over tyranny of fake news".

Predictably, though, Arron Bank's Leave.EU delivered a different message. It tweeted that the French people had once again "rolled over" just as they had done in 1940 – except this time they saved Germany "the bullets and the fuel". The tweet attached a picture of a newspaper cutting from 1940 reporting the surrender of France to the Nazis.

Picking up on the same theme, former Ukip leader Farage tweeted: "A giant deceit has been voted for today. Macron will be Juncker's puppet".

Therein lie the extremes – the great divide. Much will depend on the extent to which Mrs May and "Team Brexit" can distance themselves from this sort of rhetoric. But, either way, a milestone was passed on Sunday. For better or worse, we know where we stand.