Centrists like Macron can fight rising populism

French President Emmanuel Macron seems likely to defeat Marine Le Pen, leader of the populist-chauvinist National Rally, in the runoff election. That would be a relief — but what’s already happened in this race is disturbing regardless. Macron is essentially all that remains of the French political centre, which is destined to shrink until it finds a way to answer its populist opponents.
In the election’s first round, support for the mainstream Socialist, Republican and Green parties collapsed. Candidates of the populist left, populist right and other radical movements won more than half of the vote. Macron will prevail in the run-off if enough supporters of Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of the populist left, loathe Le Pen even more than they hate Macron. But this probable victory shouldn’t disguise the fact that political moderation is in retreat — in France, as elsewhere.
The centre’s default response to populism tends to be anti-populism. This is failing in France, just as it’s failing in the US.
Carried too far, populism is obviously dangerous. It mixes easily with xenophobia, anti-capitalism, and illiberal programs of right and left. In the toxic forms championed by the likes of Le Pen and Donald Trump, it channels chauvinism and demagoguery. But to defeat these more poisonous variants, the center needs its own measure of populism. Centrists ought to realise that populism doesn’t have to be illiberal. Indeed, liberalism entirely purged of populism isn’t really liberalism.
Populism’s core is suspicion of the ruling class — an impeccably liberal instinct, even when the rulers are meritocrats (actual or purported) rather than aristocrats. At the root of this suspicion are the demand for political equality and the belief that all
citizens have worth and standing irrespective of their credentials. Populism recognises that policy choices turn not just on knowledge but also on values, where meritocrats have no special authority. It also realises that elite expertise is often narrower and more fallible than many experts care to admit.
Rising suspicion of elites should hardly come as a surprise. Low- and middle-income households in France and other industrial countries have faced wave after wave of disruption. Centrist policies accelerated trade and technological change, which left many struggling. Then came the Great Recession, induced by incompetent financial regulation. Next, Covid-19, the draconian measures adopted to contain it, and the current surge in inflation.
Demographic pressures are stretching pension systems — a particular problem in France, which has one of the world’s most
generous systems, leading Macron to propose a rapid increase in the retirement age. Fighting climate change means more expensive energy, posing another threat to the living standards of the economically insecure. Macron’s fuel taxes precipitated the “yellow vest” protests of 2018.
In many cases, centrist policy makers caused or aggravated these problems. So why do they expect to be trusted to solve them? No doubt, the answers offered by hard-left or far-right populists would make things worse — but, counterproductive as they might be, at least these plans acknowledge that the complaints are legitimate. It helps that the populists’ policies are beguilingly simple. Melenchon and Le Pen also both reject unpopular excuses for inaction: They see institutional impediments to their plans (not least, obligations to the European Union) as anti-democratic.
In all these ways, technocratic centrists such as Macron are at a disadvantage. They’re rightly preoccupied with trade-offs, constraints and complications. These make good policy hard to design and even harder to defend. Which helps explain the characteristic errors of reflexive
anti-populism: impatience, exasperation and (especially when it comes to the chauvinist variety) condescension. “We know what’s good for you, and you don’t.”
Voters are drawn to populism in the first place because they feel ignored. Holding them up to contempt is unlikely to bring them around.
The French case is all the more striking because Macron is an unusually smart centrist. He built a political movement from nothing, recognised his elitist vulnerability and
has often tried to address it. After the yellow-vest protests he embarked on a listening tour. He seeks out photo ops with the common folk. He even said he’d shut (well, scale down and rename) the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the school for elite bureaucrats where he and many other French politicians were taught to rule.
Sadly, none of these gestures seem quite as authentic as remarks such as those he made opening Station F, a start-up incubator built in a former freight depot: “A train station,” he said, “a place where one encounters people who are succeeding and people who are nothing.”
Macron has the right policies, by and large. But he would do well to remember that the government is there to serve the country, not the other way around.
Given Macron’s opponent, the choice for French voters in this weekend’s election is clear. Nonetheless, the centre would be stronger, and not just in France, if it countered the toxic populism of the fringes with some sincere populism of its own.

—Bloomberg

Clive Crook is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering economics,
finance and politics. A former chief Washington commentator for the Financial Times, he has been an
editor for the Economist and the
Atlantic