So as was predicted by me and countless others, Macron was victorious in defeating Le Pen and her right wing coalition. While Le Pen was not a terrible candidate her affiliation with her party and their past offensive rhetoric ultimately appears to be the cause for her unfavorability. Macron despite winning by a large margin of victory at 65% is still relatively unpopular with the populace who seem more content with a bureaucrat out of dislike for the National Front. Will this come back to bite them? I believe so and here is why.
Macron is essentially doomed from the start. In the coming weeks, Macron will be tasked with setting up his strategic alliances in a bid to gain total control over the government machinery. If unable to gain these alliances, Macron will have an extremely difficult time getting anything accomplished while president of France and will go the way of Sarkozy and Hollande. On the issue of Islamic extremism and immigration Macron must not renege on his campaign rhetoric and move in the opposite direction as his predecessors did. If he were to do so then he can expect to see Le Pen again and this time he might not be so fortunate. Double-digit unemployment, serious terrorist threats, the European migrant crisis, E.U. corruption, and ballooning public debt are the troubles that lay ahead for Macron and frankly I don’t believe his centrist platform will placate enough issues facing France. I will give him credit though for moving the French economic agenda away from failed central economic planning and moving towards a more free market capital approach.
Macron’s victory means that the E.U. will not go down without a wimper but I believe it will still go down nonetheless, just more slowly. The people across Europe appear to be wising up to the political aims of this bureaucracy whose end goals appear to be the destruction of national identity in the name of select economic gain. This is why the right has and will continue to gain traction in the political sphere so long as the E.U. continues to flounder. While Macron’s election may present a slightly more difficult negotiation with Britain over Brexit I suspect it won’t change much of the overall outcome of their leaving. Britain maintaining its own currency lends itself to be in a better strategic position. Ultimately Macron winning means the E.U. no longer has any scapegoats when problems arise, which they will.
Now to those who are now gloating that political “Trumpism” is dead with the loss of Le Pen, I feel some things need to be pointed out. While these native protectionist candidates might not appear to be doing well in the overall elections they are being effective in changing the tonality of the political discourse. Their ideas and beliefs can no long be ignored and large swaths of the population are finding their views appealing. An example of this was Austria’s president passing some legislation on religious dress aimed at curtailing niqabs and burqas. Its starting to create this interesting dichotomy where the countryside and rural areas of the countries are starting to rebel against the directions and ideas put forth by the wealthy urbanites. This does not bode well for resolving a continuously fracturing population. Not only does it pit people against each other but it increases the possibility of violent conflict and revolution. Obviously I am not condoning that course of action but it must be said for the fact that revolutions typically come from the countryside and make their way into the city, rarely the other way around. At the celebratory speech of Macron instead of coming on stage to the sounds of La Marseillaise he came on stage to the E.U. anthem. That says it all.
A clearer picture of the future will be realized in the coming French elections in June as well as the elections in Germany in September.
Acerbity [əˈsɜːbɪtɪ] 