This week marked the first in modern history when Britain and France both held national elections that overlapped. The results were, like the nations themselves, similar yet very different: Britain went left, and France went right—but the real story in both places was throwing the bums out. The voters are angry today, my friends.
The similarities between the two elections and how they mirror what’s happening in America are striking. Everywhere there is a backlash against mass immigration and disappointment with globalization, yielding anger at the establishment elites for not being truthful about how these developments harm the masses of ordinary people who are not generally invited to Davos for the World Economic Forum.
And everywhere there is pushback against changes to the culture caused by the influx of so many new arrivals, in Europe’s case mainly Muslims. Many French people want to be French, and the English mostly want to be English (Britain as a whole is a matter for another column).
That’s why the far-right National Rally of Marine Le Pen hammered the centrists of President Emanuel Macron in Sunday’s parliamentary election in Paris – even though in macro terms Macron has been good for the economy. It won a third of the vote to Marcon’s 21%, and is likely to easily win the most seats in the second round on Sunday.
Marcon will stay in power but with the rest of the vote badly splintered, and with his party outperformed by a leftist bloc that opposes his pro-market reforms, he will be a lame duck of sorts. He cannot run again, and Le Pen may end up winning the presidency in 2027.
At first blush the British election is confounding, because the country turned to center-left Labour even though the zeitgeist might have been expected to also help Rishi Sunak’s Conservatives. Look deeper, though, and something fascinating is revealed.
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