If someone asked me today, “do you think Marine Le Pen could win the French presidency next April?”, I would have to say without pause: certainly. After being rocked by Brexit and Trump’s electoral victory, the political centre ground has never looked more vulnerable to the extremes. It is sometimes said that when someone is most vulnerable, they are at their most dangerous. Not in the case of the establishment; you are only dangerous when you are unpredictable, and the centre has been anything but unpredictable this year.

I begin with this short introduction having been struck by the Financial Times reporting of the Les Republicains primary this weekend; for me, this typifies the mistakes the liberal centre has made over the course of the year, and judging by this seems set to make again next year as we go into the Dutch, French and German national elections over the course of 2017. Tony Barber, writing on the success of François Fillon on Sunday having knocked out Nicolas Sarkozy and beat Alain Juppé to win the largest share of the vote, notes that “France needs its best qualified, most trustworthy centre-right politician to keep out Ms Le Pen”, considering the successes of populism in other parts of the Western World this year. Chances of Marine Le Pen winning the French presidential elections in 2017 have shot up over the course of the year, as a result of the surprise outcomes of votes in the West’s two greatest bastions of the liberal internationalism.

However, it seems the centre has learnt little from these defeats. Having seen Trump cruise to victory on the back of a motley coalition of racists, nationalists, traditional conservatives and most importantly, globalisation’s discontents, the very same alignment of social forces which brought down the Cameron Ministry and hailed ‘Independence Day’, the centrist establishment still has no idea how to reorientate itself so as to confront the challenge from the extremes. I already detect from several articles, spreading from the FT to the Telegraph, that the slightly more right-wing policies and overtly ideological position of Fillon have the establishment concerned; will this not deter centrist voters? No doubt many of these establishment commentators still have their bets placed on Juppé, a more centrist figure who hopes to reconcile France’s divisions, rather than pursue a clear political agenda. It still amazes me that the centre’s long-term strategy still consists of holding this ship together, despite the fact bits of it are breaking off every passing week. It reminds me of the scene from Star Wars: Episode III, in the first Act of the film when Anakin and Obi-Wan are trying to land General Grievous’ ship (him having fled the ship in an escape pod). As they pass through the atmosphere, the entire rear half of the ship breaks away, Anakin dryly comments ‘We lost something’, to which Obi-Wan replies “Not to worry, we’re still flying half a ship”. As if the other half was irrelevant, and its absence of no consequence (which of course, in this case it was), the ship can merrily go on its way as if nothing has happened.

Here lies the problem with Tony Barber’s analysis, and even he acknowledges it to some degree in the last paragraph. France is not going to go for a centre-right candidate if he is simply the best qualified and most trusted by the political establishment. This is why I’d be doubly concerned for France if the centre-right were to produce Alain Juppé as its standard bearer, because he is not only also stained from his time in office as French Prime Minister, known to be technocratic in his style and painfully old, representing the centrist Old Guard, but his political programme has no bite in it at all. At least Fillon has some ideology in his politics, some courage of his convictions, praised as a Thatcherite no less by the Daily Telegraph; Juppé represents the extreme centre in all its inability to solve the crises modern Europe is facing. This is also why I’m sceptical of many commentators’ writing off of the Socialist primaries which will happen around January, and any leftist candidate making a significant mark on the first round of the vote in April; a significantly daring populist candidate might gain the kind of traction that a centrist like Juppé would not. Whether the French left still has such a figure to produce, we are yet to see. As for Emmanuel Macron, who declared his candidacy last week to no one’s surprise, I also am not optimistic. He is correctly identified as one of France’s most popular politicians; in June roughly half of the French electorate believed that Macron would make a good Head of State. However, Albert Rivera had similar popularity in Spain last December, however his Cuidadanos Party did not get the traction in either the December or June elections that was hoped for, and the radical left Podemos Party won a better vote share, even after their alliance with the former Communist Party of Spain. To me, it seems Macron’s brand of reformism and renewal has lost its chance to win the people; it simply isn’t enough.

And here we come to my final point; France needs boldness from its political class, if it wants to escape coming under the rule of Le Pen and her Front National, and be brought within an increasingly wide swath of territory conquered by an insurgent Nationalist International. ‘Best qualified’ isn’t going to cut it anymore, nor is a liberal reformism which talks of regeneration and renewal whilst offering nothing new in terms of discourse, nothing which will reach the abandoned people of France. Today, ‘reforms’ are of the structural and labour market variety, and mean subjecting precarious lives to even more uncertainty. This isn’t a daring enough vision, not a strong enough challenge to the established consensus which has received a hammering on both sides of the Atlantic now. Alternative visions are appearing all over the previously placid neoliberal world, bold and daring visions which are offering people a completely different picture of politics and society. If we don’t want to lose yet another democracy to right-wing populism and unconcealed nationalism, then the Europe’s political elite has to get its act together and offer an equally daring and bold vision for society, an equally new direction which can promise change to a people tired of the stale taste of centrist politics.

Sources: FT, Telegraph, Spiegel Online