The French presidential campaign as seen from the UK

Raymond Kuhn, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, is one of the UK’s leading scholars of French politics. He is currently spending a few months as a visiting researcher at the Sciences Po Centre for Political Research (CEVIPOF). Sciences Po seized the opportunity to ask him for an analysis of the main trends of the French presidential campaign from the British point of view.

What is the British view of the French electoral campaign?

One of the main impressions so far is that the campaign has to a large extent been dominated by the Fillon affair. As a result, there has been less substantive discussion of issues (employment, national economic competitiveness, public services) than one might have reasonably expected at this stage of the campaign.

In the UK the Fillon affair has received significant news coverage, largely because it is an easy story for journalists to cover and for audiences to understand. It also fits into an established news frame in the UK about the behaviour of politicians and public trust in them.

The two other main features of the campaign from a UK perspective are the question of the vote for Marine Le Pen, and in particular whether after Brexit and Trump we are going to see a similar ‘populist’ success in France. Macron’s success in the polls is also notable and, in part, has been covered by UK media because his candidacy appeals to French residents in the UK and in part because of his alleged similarity in electoral positioning to Tony Blair in the late 1990s. In contrast, the campaigns of Benoît Hamon and Jean-Luc Mélenchon have so far had no impact in the UK.

What is your perspective on the rise of the Front National in France? How do you think it relates to Brexit?

What is striking to a non-French citizen is the extent to which Marine Le Pen and the FN are now a ‘normal’ part of French political competition. It is now generally accepted that she will qualify for the second round of the presidential election, whereas when her father did so in 2002 this was regarded as a seismic shock to the system. Yet it is also clear that Marine Le Pen and the FN polarize opinion; many FN voters are now strongly attached to the party (no longer simply a vehicle of protest), while in contrast many French citizens continue to regard the FN with a mix of fear, suspicion and hostility.

While there are similarities in the reasons for voting Brexit and FN, such as opposition to globalization, anti-immigration, anti-EU, anti-elites and a fear of ‘déclassement’, one should be wary of making simple analogies between the two phenomena. The roots of the French extreme right go back a long way in the country’s history and even the current incarnation has been around for forty years and more. The FN is a political party which is now obliged to have a range of policies across many issues. In contrast, Brexit represents the victory of a looser coalition of politicians and their supporters that has coalesced around the issue of the UK’s membership of the EU. With the victory of the Brexiters in the 2016 referendum, their primary objective has been achieved and as a result it is not clear what now can hold the Brexiters together as a political force.

What conclusions would you draw about Hollande’s five years in office?

In some respects the Hollande presidency has been a disaster, evidenced by his decision not to seek a second presidential term, the victory of the ‘frondeur’ Hamon in the Socialist party primary and the division in the upper echelons of the party as to who to support in the first round of the 2017 presidential contest. Hollande’s unpopularity in opinion polls, the successive defeats of the Socialist party and the left in a series of second-order elections since 2012, the failure of many voters of the left to support (or even understand the rationale for) government reform initiatives such as the Macron law and the El Khomri law, the continuing high levels of unemployment, his failure to incarnate presidential leadership (with the notable exception of the immediate aftermath of the terrorist attacks) – all point to a significant degree of leadership failure on Hollande’s part.

Yet, it may be that history will judge Hollande’s presidential term in a more balanced fashion. The country has avoided economic recession, it remains a leading member of the EU, it has avoided some of the worst excesses of Anglo-American neo-liberalism and the quality of its public services (although arguably in decline) remains good in comparison with that of several other EU member states. Moreover, if Hollande has not succeeded in resolving some of France’s structural problems, he is scarcely unique among recent French presidents in this respect. Overall, therefore, I would judge his five-year term to have been a marked failure in many important respects, but not the unmitigated disaster that it currently appears to many, including former Hollande supporters.

What do you think will happen in the upcoming French presidential election?

I assume that Marine Le Pen will qualify for the second round and have always thought that whoever was her opponent in the run-off would win. That was my firm certainty until recently. I still believe that this will be the case, but am now prepared for a narrower margin of victory. One big advantage that the French have because of the electoral system is a two-week gap during which they can pause and reflect before casting their decisive vote. Neither the British voters in June 2016, nor the American electorate in November enjoyed the benefit of such a period for reflection. I hope that the French people will use that period between the two rounds to consider the magnitude of the decision that faces them and the message that a Le Pen victory would send to France’s many friends in Europe and across the world.

Interview by Marcelle Bourbier (CEVIPOF)