Many observers thought that the ascendancy of Donald Trump and Great Britain’s vote to leave the European Union heralded a new movement in global politics, with nationalism and anti-immigration sentiment casting out establishment governments.
But in the French presidential election on Sunday, the anti-immigrant, pro-nationalistic Marine LePen was defeated in a landslide by centrist Emmanuel Macron, who won on a pro-immigrant, pro-European Union platform.
And yet there still may be something to the notion that Trump heralds a new anti-establishment political movement. Macron won as an independent, without the support of any of the established political parties. Both the leftwing and the rightwing parties that have dominated French politics for decades were shut out of the election.
Maybe the real contribution of the Trump phenomenon is the repudiation of conventional party politics.
From Adam Plowright, Macron elected French president, AFP, Yahoo! News:
Pro-European centrist Emmanuel Macron resoundingly won France’s landmark presidential election, first estimates showed Sunday, heading off a fierce challenge from the far-right in a pivotal vote for the future of the divided country and Europe.
The victory caps an extraordinary rise for the 39-year-old former investment banker, who will become the country’s youngest-ever leader.
He has promised to heal a fractured and demoralised country after a vicious campaign that has exposed deep economic and social divisions, as well as tensions around identity and immigration.
Initial estimates showed Macron winning between 65.5 percent and 66.1 percent of ballots ahead of Le Pen on between 33.9 percent and 34.5 percent.
Photo of Emmanuel Macron by Copyleft (Own work) [CC BY 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons
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