Britain is so often aligned with America as our cultural kindred spirit that it’s easy to forget how invested we are in our neighbours, closer to home, with whom we may not have a language in common but share a whole lot of history with.
Over the last 18 hours your social media feed has probably been full of people celebrating France’s election result. ‘Vive La France’, ‘F**k fascism’, ‘Well done France for rejecting fascism’ and ‘Congrats France you’re not racist’ are among just a few of the statuses I’ve come across.
Yesterday, France elected Emmanuel Macron as to be their next President. He defeated far- candidate Marine Le Pen in a landslide victory after months of polls suggesting that the two were nearly neck and neck, causing left-leaning liberals to chew their own nails down to the quick and talk about the populist, nationalist waves currently sweeping throughout Western democracies.
With this in mind, many people on both sides of the channel are, perhaps rightly, feeling rather jubilant about Macron’s win. So, here’s what you need to know:
1. Emmanuel Macron is France’s youngest President since Napoleon
His party is also a very new kid on the political block. En Marche! was launched just 13 months ago. It was founded after Macron broke away from the much more established Socialist Party. Under the current President, Francois Hollande, Macron was appointed Minister of Economy, Industry and Digital Affairs in 2014. He resigned last August, founded En Marche!, and ran for the Presidency himself. He may not be a member of the alt-right but it’s still fair to say that his win feeds into the decline of mainstream political parties and frustration with the political status quo that we’re seeing all over the shop. This election was the first in recent French history where neither of the frontrunners belonged to an established political party.
2. Le Pen’s campaign pledges included drastic restriction of immigration, capping numbers at 10,000 per year
She also vowed that she would ban religious symbols like the hijab completely from being worn in public. Throughout her campaign, Le Pen repeatedly linked immigration to terrorism despite the fact that France’s terrorism is largely home-grown. So, her defeat is an unequivocally good thing.
3.Macron’s win is, undoubtedly, good for the European Union
While Marine le Pen wanted to follow in our Brexity steps, withdrawing France from the European Union and doing away with the Euro as the country’s currency, Macron is pro-EU and following the news of his victory the Euro rose to a six-month high against the dollar. However, this means that France is unlikely to be particularly accommodating towards Britain in Brexit negotiations as their new leader will do everything he can to preserve the strength of the union.
4. Nigel Farage, disappointed about the absence of Frexit, called Macron's win a 'giant deceit'
Meanwhile, Brexit campaign group Leave.EU are very unhappy about France's decision and drawing some highly questionable comparisons...
5. People are comparing Macron to Tony Blair
This is because he says he is ‘neither left nor right’. Macron is a centrist liberal ex- investment banker who loves free market capitalism as much as he loves the European Union. Articles, like this one, are popping up which positions his transcendence of ‘the old left-right divide’ as a ‘beacon’ for Labour MPs who want their party to return to the centre. Macron left the Socialist party to run on an ‘extreme centre’ platform and commentators are suggesting, perhaps that’s what Labour centrists, unhappy with Corbyn, could do here.
6. 66% of voters may have opted to back Emmanuel Macron but 34% of people voted for Marine le Pen
Macron did better in areas with more employment and higher levels of education, so the attraction of nationalistic rhetoric to people who feel disenfranchised and ignored by the establishment is still very much alive. This result has not gone any way towards closing the equality gaps that have fed support for the National Front and Le Pen. Indeed, if the smug statuses floating around in my timeline are anything to go by, it could serve to further reinforce them. Macron himself acknowledged this in his victory speech: ‘I know why some have chosen to vote for an extreme party’ he said, ‘I know the anger and anxiety.’ France may not have ‘done a Brexit’ but the underlying economic problems (see France's high unemployment) which, in part, caused Le Pen to become a forerunner in this election haven’t gone anywhere.
7. Finally, it’s also worth noting that a significant number of people abstained from voting
Over a quarter of French people are estimated not to have voted in the second round of this election. Turnout was recorded at 65.3% which is lower than all elections back to 1981, according to the BBC.
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Follow Vicky on Twitter @Victoria_Spratt
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.