Western European politics is suddenly sprouting some very odd couples. Last weekend, Rishi Sunak flew to Rome and posed for pally photos with Italy’s far-right leader, Giorgia Meloni. This week, France’s “radical centrist” Emmanuel Macron has been cheered to the rafters by the far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen. For both men, this has been a long, strange trip further and further to the right. Mr Sunak and Mr Macron came to politics after elite educations and stints in global finance. Years later, they still appear more at home with Silicon Valley billionaires than ordinary voters. Hardline nativists they are not. So what do these freshly pressed spreadsheet readers see in their unlikely new supporters?
In a word: convenience. Lagging in the polls, they are rummaging deep inside the grubby sack of anti-immigrant politics and pulling out rhetoric and policies that the far right claim as rightfully theirs. The one-time arch-globalist Mr Macron now stands behind a bill that will allocate housing and benefits not on the grounds of need, but on degree of Frenchness. No wonder that Ms Le Pen hailed it as an “ideological victory” – or that one minister quit in protest and others had to be implored to stay.
