French presidential candidates Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron
(Picture: AFP/Getty Images)With Marine Le Pen and Emmanuel Macron through to the final round of the French presidential election, might we be on the verge of a seismic political shock sufficient to eclipse Brexit and Trump? Le Pen, after all, comes from the French far-Right. She may have worked hard to detoxify her brand — her National Rally party was originally the French National Front – but, in the corridors of European power, there will be plenty of politicians and bureaucrats biting their nails. They, after all, believe in a version of the world that Le Pen and her ilk totally reject.
We used to think politics could be divided neatly into “left” and “right”, with the main disagreements focused on the role of the state, the liberty of the individual, the importance of markets, the limits of capitalism and so on. That division no longer works.
