France Is in a Deep, Deep Hole

 The much-vaunted French social model, a product of the postwar decades that combined state-led investment, welfare protections and labor rights, is foundering. 

Its slow capsizal has cast France into a deep hole from which there is no easy exit — and given the far right a major opportunity.

The blame doesn’t just belong to President Emmanuel Macron. For decades, governments of both center left and center right have overseen a managed decline of France’s social model.

That’s where Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally comes in. 

The party is often stereotyped as a protest vote for “left behind” industrial workers, but its appeal is much broader. While the party still trails the left among the very lowest paid, its electoral support has in recent years stretched deep into the middle class. 

Her poll ratings for the next presidential election, in 2027, stand at around 35 percent; 

given France’s fragmented party system, she is on track to receive the highest first-round percentage for any candidate in the past half-century.

In last summer’s parliamentary elections, a so-called republican front of left-wing and centrist voters held back her party’s expected victory. 

Yet warnings of far-right danger are securing diminishing returns.

David Broder, an expert on the European far right

New York Times 11 February 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/11/opinion/france-budget-macron.html

Macron’s France finally passes a budget

https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2025/02/macrons-france-finally-passes-budget.html