France turned its back on the far right. Brexit Britain can too
Reflecting on the depressing economic prospects facing this country and many parts of the world, I am reminded of a line in PG Wodehouse’s Much Obliged, Jeeves.
The narrator – that Boris Johnson-like figure Bertie Wooster – sinks back in his chair, face buried in hands. “It is always my policy to look on the bright side,” he says, “but in order to do this you have to have a bright side to look on …”
Well, in my view, the result of last weekend’s French presidential election offers a peep of a bright side. The concerns about the rise of the extreme right have been well aired, and there has been plenty of commentary about the fractured nature of the French polity and the mountain of problems confronting a re-elected Emmanuel Macron, who, it is to be hoped, has learned the lessons of his past mistakes.
But to read a lot of the commentary, a visitor from outer space could be forgiven for concluding that Macron had actually lost the election, instead of winning by a greater margin than had been predicted. As Francisco, one of the sentinels, says in the opening scene of Hamlet: “For this relief much thanks.”
Although Madame Le Pen had softened her anti-European stance for electoral reasons, there was much at stake. After Brexit, there had been a great deal of speculation about Frexit. And although the idea of France, a founding and pivotal member, leaving the EU had been formally dropped, it was obvious that Le Pen’s programme would have come pretty close to leaving the EU in all but name.
As more and more citizens of this country are realising, leaving the EU is not such a great idea. In common with other economies, this country is experiencing the inevitable and damaging losses to national – and therefore individual – income from
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