La Patrie En Danger! The prospect of a victory for the French National Front leader, Marine Le Pen, looms over the future of the European Union. In the year of Brexit and Trump many would consider it "Strike Three - and your out!" for the neoliberal order. Will the key issue of immigration drive New Zealand politics in a similar direction?
IF FRENCH VOTERS advance Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc
Mélenchon to May’s run-off presidential election, the European Union will
tremble. Both the far-right nationalist, Le Pen, and the far-left firebrand,
Mélenchon, are committed to a fundamental reconstitution of the European
Project. Victory for two such uncompromising enemies of the status-quo would send
crushing shockwaves through the entire European political class.
The French punditocracy are, however, supremely confident that
this worst-case scenario will not eventuate. As they see it, the pro-EU,
neoliberal standard-bearer, Emmanuel Macron, will squeak through just ahead of
Mélenchon and the scandal-plagued conservative, François Fillon. Faced with the
prospect of the quasi-fascist Le Pen, they argue, conservatives, socialists and
the far-left will be forced to unite behind the “centrist” Macron. Extreme ideas,
rejected repeatedly by the French electorate will, out of fear of even more
extreme ideas, finally secure their long-delayed admittance to the Élysée
Palace.
Or will they? The colossal cynicism underpinning such a
“choice” may stick in the French electorate’s craw. Given the choice of a
France fastened to the Procrustean Bed of the EU’s unyielding rules and
regulations: or, the fast-fading glories of historical France; the France of hilltop
villages and cathedral towns; the France of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity;
then, who knows, they might just vote for Marine Le Pen – and the cynicism of
the political class be dammed!
Here in New Zealand, meanwhile, the leader of NZ First, Winston
Peters, will be assessing the results of the French elections with particular care.
As the man who predicted both Brexit and Trump, Peters has every right to feel
confident of his ability to both interpret and exploit the worldwide populist
surge.
Scornful of the pollsters’ ability to any longer intercept
and measure accurately the volatility of twenty-first century popular opinion,
Peters relies upon the direct, face-to-face feedback of the public meeting to
inform him of the electorate’s mood. He understands that those sufficiently
motivated to come out to a political gathering are also the ones most likely to
vote. Even better, they are the civic-minded types who encourage others to join
them in doing their democratic duty. Opinion leaders in their local
communities, they will put into forthright public utterances sentiments that
their less confident neighbours only mutter in private.
In other words, one modest meeting in a suburban community
centre may contain multitudes.
If reports of such meetings are accurate reflections of the
opinions of active citizens (as well as those of citizens who can be easily
activated) then NZ First’s leader will be in no doubt about which “hot button”
issues he needs to push.
The biggest and hottest button of the 2017 General Election
may be summarised in the question: “Who the heck are our politicians listening
to? Because they’re sure as hell not listening to us!”
All over the world, this is the question which aggrieved and
alienated voters are asking.
There is no shortage of answers. Among those accused of
commandeering the attention of the people’s representatives are: bankers;
corporations; politically correct elites; “the lying media”; globalisers.
Ordinary, decent, hard-working people; people who pay their taxes and follow
the rules; people like themselves; have, in the opinion of these voters, been
shunted aside and their preferences ignored. Or, even worse, they have been
made to feel that, in the greater scheme of things, they no longer count.
The alienated and aggrieved look around them for evidence of
their displacement and everywhere, from Taihape to Toulouse, their unfriendly
gaze settles on the ones who were not present in the land of their childhood;
their parents’ country; but who are now everywhere they look. Speakers of
foreign languages; wearers of outlandish clothes; followers of unfamiliar
faiths; purchasers of “their” real estate, “their” local businesses, “their”
local clout: immigrants!
In New Zealand, as Peters well knows, this anger with the
immigrant extends not only to the record numbers of people arriving from overseas,
but also to those who have emigrated from those impoverished fragments of New
Zealand which, until quite recently, had been reserved for the losers of the
great colonial struggles of the nineteenth century. Successful Maori generate
almost as much rancour among aggrieved Pakeha voters as successful “Asians”.
If France’s two populist “outsiders” advance to the second
round, what conclusions will our own populist outsider draw from their
success?
This essay was
originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The
Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 21 April 2017.
