In France, comics are a very serious matter. They are well-drawn, often have interesting stories, and are read by a wide audience of all ages. In the fall of 2015 The president, an album of futuristic politics that follows the beginning of the presidency day by day The Pen, topped the charts for a few weeks and sold 150 copies. The second album of the series also had good success, Totalitarian, and the third, La Vague, whose cover portrays Le Pen just re-elected for the second term with Putin and Trump behind her.
The screenplay of La Présidente is the work of Francois Durpaire, who obtained his doctorate from Sciences Po (the mythical political science faculty of the Sorbonne) and who, as a multiculturalist activist, is at the ideological antipodes of the Front National. Although therefore a fierce opponent, Durpaire had the political intelligence of imagining possible Le Pen at the Elysée already two years ago, when no analyst dreamed of taking the hypothesis into consideration, and of trying to get into Marine Le Pen's head (and not into that of one of her convenient caricatures) to describe her contradictions, difficulties and painful choices.
In 2015 Durpaire envisioned a runoff this year between Holland and Le Pen. Not even his pessimism about the resilience of the French ruling classes was therefore able to predict such a rapid deterioration in their capacity for hegemony.
Today not only Hollande has completely left the scene, but the two historical pillars of French republicanism, Gaullists and Socialists, are reduced to the shadow of themselves and are preparing to unite their residual forces to oppose the rise of the Lepenist right and the left maximalist.
In imagining Le Pen at the Élysée Dupraire assumes nothing more and nothing less than the implementation of the program of the Front National. No authoritarian coup de main, extraneous to the psychology of the character, but quick implementation of the points relating to theimmigration andexit from the euro, made possible by a narrow parliamentary majority born from the division of the Gaullist group. France quickly plunges into recession and the government is forced to adopt austerity measures in an increasingly dramatic context (an interesting point because it is in contrast with the expansive intentions of the electoral platform).
Durpaire's intent is didactic, that's what would happen if the program were applied to the letter. In reality, the chances of this happening are very slim. Let's see why.
First of all, it should be remembered that France is not a presidential republic like the United States, but a semi-presidential one. In America Trump he is president and head of government, in France the Elysée must cohabit, if necessary, with governments of different political affiliations. In recent weeks we have seen all the limits of the vast powers of the White House, which has to deal with an inconclusive Congress and with a hostile judiciary and bureaucracy. In France it would be even worse. Le Pen would find herself dealing with a socialist government, chaired by Cazeneuve, who has already declared that he would not resign and that he could only be disheartened by Parliament and only at the end of June, after the political elections.
The elections in June, in turn, would see the Front National still a minority in the National Assembly and almost non-existent in the Senate, which moreover is renewed only half. Le Pen would therefore have to offer a Gaullist the possibility of forming a government.
To have any hope of not being disheartened by parliament, the prime minister should not bet on a split in the Gaullist bloc but should be genuinely centrist and not pro-Lepenist. Such a centrist government could grant something to the Elysée on immigration and pensions, but it would never agree to collaborate in leaving the euro.
To get out of the euro, Le Pen would then have to go through a long and tiring road. You should call a constitutional referendum to change the electoral law, vote again, win, obtain a parliamentary majority sufficient to be able to call a referendum on the euro and win it. In addition to these objective conditions, Le Pen has set a subjective one. Before calling the referendum on the euro, you said, you will wait for the 2018 Italian elections and evaluate whether to proceed or not based on their outcome. Le Pen did not add anything else, but it is easy to deduce that if one does not prevail in Italy anti-euro coalition, then France will also somehow drop the matter.
Le Pen at the Elysée will therefore be a more than halved president who will produce a permanent and debilitating stomach ache for France and Europe without however bringing them to the abyss unless help arrives from Italy. At all costs, preventing France and Italy from joining forces will therefore be Germany's greatest concern, which will in any case try to keep the European project on its feet while waiting for better times.
The victory of Mélenchon will face obstacles very similar to those we saw for Le Pen. To have a majority in parliament, the prime minister will have to be a moderate socialist and pro-euro. Mélenchon's own positions have softened in recent days. Now the exit from the euro is an extreme measure to be considered only after the possible failure of a radical re-foundation of the monetary union. In practice, Mélenchon will carve out some space for himself in foreign policy, he will often be seen with Maduro and with Raul Castro, but everything will end there.
Paradoxically, as Politico (a decidedly pro-system site) writes, the greatest risk for France is that everything will remain as it is today, that a Macron inexperienced or a Fillon always on the defensive do not have the strength either to propose to the French the reforms requested by Germany or to renegotiate the terms of the Union with Germany. A grand coalition between socialists and Gaullists would please the markets, but in the long run it would strengthen the anti-system forces, which are always endemic in France. A global recession, even more modest than that of 2008, would make the desire to really try something new irresistible in a large part of the electorate.
For the moment, therefore, we continue to think that the time is not yet ripe for Le Pen and Mélenchon, that Macron will ascend to the Elysée and that the markets will breathe a sigh of relief which will bring the dollar to 1.10 and the European stock markets to new highs of period. There is still a few hours to buy some calls.
