The French presidential elections of 2017 are set to become much more than a test of how many votes the ultra-right isolationist Marine Le Pen can score this time, but might see the emergence of at least two candidates without the backing of an official party.
One is Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a radical left-wing populist who represented several left-wing parties in 2012 but now strikes out on his own and started the JLM2017 movement to represent “La France insoumise” (The France that does not surrender) and he tries to ride the wave of popular protest against changes in the Labour Law. Mélenchon, member of the European parliament, wants a change to European treaties and a European social development fund.
He does not call for a referendum on leaving the EU, and euro, as Le Pen does.
Le Pen herself is heading both the Front National, including the old stigma’s of racism and revisionism attached to the “brand” of the party created by her father, and also her own Blue Marine Grouping that aims to unite “all patriotic French”.
The biggest possible upset to the traditional party lines comes from the reformist economics minister Emmanuel Macron who has started his own “En Marche” movement to unite reform-minded people across the left-right divide.
While he declared at a recent rally that he was going to lead the movement to victory in 2017, he has not officially declared his candidacy.
He was a close collaborator of president Francois Hollande, who is not expected to announce his decision to stand to not until the end of the year.
A former banker at Rothschild of independent means, an economic liberal, he is not seen as being of the Left by many more traditional backers of the ruling Socialist Party, and his tendency to speak his mind even outside his cabinet portfolio has irritated
At the right of the spectrum, the Republicans are still fighting among themselves about who will be the party’s candidate with former president Nicolas Sarkozy seeing himself as the natural leader. He is not undisputed in his own camp.
Macron and Mélenchon are addressing the voters directly, without the intermediary of a party, and that in itself could get more people go to the urns after many years of low turnout amid voter dissatisfaction over their (party) representatives.
Macron and Mélenchon are also “clean” as in not engaging in politics for the perks and salaries, but being driven by conviction. At 38, Macron could wait for the presidential elections of 2022.
Between Macron on the one side and Mélenchon on the other, the Socialist Party is boxed in and likely to embrace a traditionalist socialist candidate, such as Ségolène Royal or Arnaud Montebourg.
On the right, if Sarkozy becomes the candidate for the Republicans, he is likey to chase the FN voters and leave the centre open to people like Alain Juppé, François Fillon or Bruno Le Maire from his own camp as well as other centrist possible candidates, if they can manage their own campaign. With Sarkozy to the right and a relatively strong centre, Marine Le Pen might struggle to get to the second round and into the presidential palance.
But in the “post-fact” atmosphere of the referendum on the European Union in Britain, it remains to be seen whether political conviction will carry the day over populist fiction.
