Will the terrorist attack in France affect the outcome of the next French presidential election? Will the average French person be swayed by the atrocity to vote for Marine Le Pen as the only candidate who will “stand up” to terrorism? My sense is that, as with Brexit, the mainstream media is misjudging the electorate. The central media position on Le Pen is that while the National Front will do well in the first round of the election – as a sort of protest vote – when push comes to shove, French people will see sense and vote for the centrist candidate.
This is precisely the logic that led the mainstream to call Brexit so wrong and indeed, led the mainstream media in the US to predict that Donald Trump was a joke and that his reality-TV assault on the Republican high ground would have petered out by last Christmas.
In France, the sense that the common man is being left behind is very real and, as in Britain, this cohort of people whose vote has always been always “assumed” by the centrist Right or centrist Left is now up for grabs. Marine Le Pen wants to grab it on a platform of making France great again, by pulling out of the euro and curbing immigration.
Sound familiar?
The establishment reacts to floating voters by patronising them and if they indicate that they may vote for a candidate such as Le Pen, they are lampooned as being racist, out of touch or backward.
However, in this article, I am going to show you the economic evidence that is driving the guy in the middle, not just in France but everywhere in the West to the extremes.
The first thing to know is that the plight of the middle in France is real.
Firstly, traditionally rich societies like France didn’t recover as quickly as other OECD countries from the 2008 crash.
France has only just brought its per-capita GDP figure back to where it was at the start of 2007, while the OECD average has grown by about as tenth. France is getting relatively poorer than the rest.
Obviously, if the country is getting relatively poorer, social services, employment opportunities and peoples’ general contentment with the status quo diminishes.
But something else is happening in France. Personal incomes in France are lagging way behind. This implies that while French corporations might be recovering (and they are some of the best-run corporations in the world), the share French workers are getting out of this recovery is falling.
As French GDP personal incomes have fallen well behind, the average French worker is seeing his/her living standards falling behind and that is how you can, possibly paradoxically, feel poor in a rich country. Madame Le Pen is benefitting from this in the polls.
Let’s examine the politics of this dilemma. What is it like to feel poor in a rich country? What does it feel like to have no stake?
An interesting and novel way of looking at European politics – the politics of mature, wealthy, deeply democratic societies – is not through the prism of left versus right, rich versus poor, urban versus rural, Christian versus Muslim, conservative versus liberal or young versus old or whatever other face-off that we like to talk about. The real divide in mature democracies like France is between Insiders and Outsiders.
The Insiders are those literally ‘on the inside’. They are the people with influence, with a voice at the table, those with a stake in the society. Insiders can either be on the left or the right. They can be traditional public sector trade unions in France who want no reform or they can be bank bosses in Italy who want a bailout. Their game plan is to gouge the state and extract as much rent as possible for their members and interests. Insiders are organised. They are part of the process of politics and their concerns are listened to by the state. In short, they have access to power and can influence the way it is deployed.
In a crisis, when growth disappears, the Insiders redefine their strategy and go into self-preservation mode. The Insiders’ main objective is to make sure their members’ interests are protected from the slowdown in growth and that they get as big a share of the dwindling income pie as possible.
Interestingly, the Insiders on the traditional Left and conservative Right join forces to pass on the costs of recession to the Outsiders. This is why you see the statist left and the corporatist right in power in France, Italy and Spain. Sure, they might speak the language of left and right, and ham up their ideological differences for the audience, but essentially, they are both in the business of preservation.
The Outsiders in contrast, are those with no one to speak up for them. They have no stake in the political process and are thus on the outside. They are the self-employed small business-person, the contract worker, the hard-working immigrant, the unemployed and, of course, the young. They are outside the tent, beyond the process and because they are not organised, their concerns are never felt. They too can be on the left and on the right. The small rural French shopkeeper could well have traditionally conservative instincts, while the twentysomething Parisian contract worker could well be liberal to her core, but they are both Outsiders. Neither has a real stake in society; neither has a voice.
What they do have is a vote – as we saw in Brexit.
Because the Outsiders are, by definition, not organised and rarely speak with one voice, in challenging times they are represented by unconventional parties who mix the rhetoric of the excluded with the tribal comfort blanket of the nation; who offer the elixir of low taxes, with the promise of economic growth; who tell them that there are easy fixes.
More than anything, these parties have identified that the mainstream, traditional parties are in cahoots, trying to maintain a status quo, which is simply serving to featherbed the Insiders.
This is fertile ground for Marine Le Pen. It is not that the vast majority of the people who vote for her are racist – they are Outsiders. They look at the aristocracy perpetuated by the grandes écoles which dominate French politics and business, or the untouchable unions such as the air traffic controllers who strike with impunity and they see Insiders who run the country.
When there is an atrocity like the horrible mass murder in Nice, people get angry and scared and look to someone who will protect them. They look to the Insiders and see more of the same. In this context, voting for an Outsider makes eminent sense.
Morning all.
Voting for the outsider is to extent a case of “be careful what you wish for” 1. Our electorate handed us a very weak hand by voting in a hog tied government. God knows what compromises will be made but it will all cost money. Fiscal space my ar$e. 2. Brexit – your guess is as good as mine. 3. Hollande out for sure, however France has squandered the opportunity QE gave it. ATC strikes is symbolic of the problems they have. The electorates of most of the western world are unhappy and that means unpredictable outcomes. France – A… Read more »
For the majority of the article, replace France with Ireland
There is still no examination of the banking system and who runs it and why all money is issued as a debt. Those who issue the script and those closest to the issuer are the insiders and the rest outsiders. The gap widens. Meanwhile this issue is never addressed. All else is incidental. It matters not which country is examined, this is a world wide problem .
I agree with everything what David says in his article, so I have nothing to add. But because there are, understandably so, many comments about the Nice attack, I would like to say this: 1. No one from the commentators (that means in Ireland, not only here) noticed that had even one pedestrian have a gun and army training, this tragedy might have been either prevented or limited in size – at the end of the day, the police shoot the driver, but it was ages after the massacre – this is a Byzantine type of civilisation – to count… Read more »
‘if the common travel area between Ireland and the UK can be retained, then Ireland will be an appealing destination for firms relocating elements of their business from London’
Ipso facto: CTA will not continue post-Brexit. Not sure what happens when Core UK cuts Corporation tax to 12-15% levels whilst Ireland Inc’s forced to accept EU Federalist Integration/Harmonisation of tax rates across Europa. I guess Enda/Michael will just have to get an opt-out like wot Thatcher got. They’re both of similar mettle to The Iron Ladh,so no worries there, then…..
http://www.independent.ie/business/brexit/brexit-could-mean-marked-slowdown-in-irish-economy-deutsche-bank-warns-34892565.html
Me & Enda, hey? Great minds think alike…..LOL! ‘Taoiseach Enda Kenny tells EU to prepare for prospect of Northern Ireland joining the Republic’ http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/republic-of-ireland/taoiseach-enda-kenny-tells-eu-to-prepare-for-prospect-of-northern-ireland-joining-the-republic-34894210.html Brexit offers a chance to conclude the peace process on the island of Ireland by transferring responsibilities from the remaining CoreUK England and Wales to the EU in Brussels & Berlin. I advocate both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland becoming formal EU Peace Protectorates with the new EU army on standby in case things kick off in a few years after some bonfire mayhem. It’s no longer tenable for CoreUK England and Wales to… Read more »
Statism in France, and it’s pervasiveness means that the French way of dealing with a crisis will be much different.
Nigel Farage is a noderate who would be a wimp by French standards, with his avocacy of greater personal liberty, etc.. France seems more likely to pick another centralizer.
The Grand Ecoles have failed. French business has not suceeded – it’s banks needed to be bailed out by Greek taxpayers, Irish taxpayers, Spanish taxpayers, etc… It’s car manufacturers are losing share to Korea, and jobs are moving East.
So far the French response has been nothing short of extremely delusional.
For the record I agree with the point Mr Brogan often raises, re the manner of the issue of money as being a significant cause in the various present social and economic problems, and that this is being deliberately suppressed in the MSM. I also regard this problem as being one of the methods, and like a hydra to cut that head down, though satisfying, would not get to the heart of the problem. However I have no significant disagreement here, perhaps only a strategic one. However consider this extract from the work of a fairly renowned economist writing during… Read more »
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-eu-gold-retail-insight-idUSKCN0ZY1CA
What is driving people to the FN ? The same entity that is driving Spaniards to Podemos, Greeks to Syriza, and Portuguese people to anti-austerity politicians there. The EPP (which includes the CDU (as evidenced by their behaviour with respect to Greece, they are not Christian, and are now thoroughly anti-democratic) plus FG, etc). The corporatist centre right is manufacturing a massive mess. The centre left have become useless. They are not as corrupt as in the USA, but even more useless. And for centrists, include corrupt parties like Ireland’s FF, who are no longer in the EP, thanks to… Read more »
With gratitude to survivalist (who quoted Alex Carey)
“The twentieth century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: the growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy”.
In dystopia the robots will be hired out.
In utopia you will own your robots.
David’s description “Family Firm” was an apt description of the main political crime organization in the RoI.
Their fingerprints are all most policy disasters in the past 30 years.
And now that M. Martin is holding power over the government, they are once again a dangerous menace to Ireland’s intersts.
The FF leadership have shown a repeated tendency to put Europe before Ireland, and their own clique before the electorate. They deserve to be politically obliterated. Unfortunately, the media thinks otherwise.