The GPM Global Forecast is a bi-weekly, members-only article series for 2016. It provides analysis and short-term forecasting on key military, political, and economic events around the globe.
France
France’s Marine Le Pen, leader of the French National Front (FN), has already been vocal about how the Trump win boosts her chances in presidential elections next year. She runs on a platform that mirrors the Brexit/Trump narrative: anti-immigration, anti-EU (the ‘establishment’ for the European context), and a closer relationship with Russia.
Interestingly, much like with Donald Trump, there’s a Russian connection with Le Pen as well – the only bank that has been willing to lend cash to her campaign so far has been the Russia-backed First Czech Russian Bank.
The National Front has been around since 1972, and has long served as the political voice of far-right French nationalism, and as the primary vehicle of Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen. Le Pen the senior was somewhat of a paradox in French politics, roundly demonized by the mainstream media and political parties yet still able to command up to 15% of the popular vote. Jean-Marie stepped down in 2011 and was replaced by his daughter Marine, who champions a markedly less extreme version of her father’s politics. This generational divide is evident in their ongoing and much-publicized feud, where Jean-Marine bemoans his daughter’s pivot to the center of the political spectrum and Marine continues to distance herself from some of her father’s more unpalatable policies (playing down the Nazi Holocaust, for example).
Under Marine, the FN has seen their fortunes improve at the ballot box, but the system is still heavily weighted against it in terms of actually taking power. In the past, the run-off system has seen voters from both sides of the spectrum uniting to ensure that the FN does not assume office. Yet here’s where the ‘Trump bump’ may have an effect. Now that formerly fringe, nativist political movements are shedding their former stigma, old rules may no longer hold true. There are also some striking parallels between French and US politics, notably in the choice being offered to voters in May of next year: A hugely unpopular sitting president (Hollande), a career politician and veteran of the establishment (Sarkozy), and a burn-it-down firebrand (Marine Le Pen). If current polling trends hold, the FN and the Republicans will enter a second-round of voting, one where the Left’s hatred for Nicholas Sarkozy and Marine Le Pen’s newfound appeal may just do in France what everyone thought was impossible in the United States.