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| Macron's landslide was not quite what it appeared, exposing how neoliberal Centrism depends upon disinterest and abstention. Photograph: Emmanuel Macron campaign poster 'Macron President' in Paris by Lorie Shaull (License) (Cropped) |
The rise of Macron was met with a chorus of celebration from some corners for the resurgence of the 'Centre'. In France, we are to believe, the neoliberal Centre has recovered. But has the centre really found a new revitalising note?
In the presidential election, Macron prevailed as the neoliberal Centrist candidate thanks to a number of factors: the collapse of social democracy, repeated Centre-Right scandals, and because the Far-Right was sufficiently repulsive.
Now, even with the Left non-committal, Macron did secure the support of around 45% of registered voters in the head-to-head with the Far Right. But was the high water mark.
At the legislative elections Macron's party, La Republic En Marche, took a landslide majority. Yet it came amid a low turnout. While his party took 49% of second round votes, just 43% of voters turned out - giving them the support of only about 20% of eligible voters.
The neoliberal Centre is holding on to power, but it doesn't seem to be the result of its own arguments. If anything, it seems as if the Centrists are standing still as the turbulent waters wash around them. As protest votes and popular dissensions of the Left and the Right ebb and flow, the stagnant Centre appears to rise or fall.
Just look at Italy. Despite losing a crucial referendum in December and resigning as Prime Minister, Matteo Renzi won back the leadership of the Partito Democratico in a landslide. And judging from the polls, he will likely return as Premier at the next election.
If he does, it would be explicitly at the head of a party of Renziani Centrists and neoliberals, looking to replicate Macron's success. That comes thanks to the Left-wing of the party going through with its threat to leave if Renzi won back the leadership.
Under former party leaders Pierluigi Bersani and Massimo D'Alema, the Centre-Left walked away to work towards concentrating all of the many Left factions - including their own Democratici e Progressisti vehicle - under a single progressive banner.
This move leaves Renzi as the undisputed leader of a definitively Centrist party. Matteo Renzi again proves himself to be - in the years of turmoil created by Berlusconi finally, if only partially, falling from grace - pretty much the last man standing.
But what else does Renzi have? Other that his political skill that earned him the nickname 'il Rottamore' - the scrapper. He lost the constitutional referendum on which he staked his Premiership and the Renziani approach has alienated the Centre-Left and driven them out of the party - much as the Hollande governments did and Macron risks doing with his programme.
Furthermore, it was his political skill - not electoral success - that saw him rise to the position of Premier, after a succession of resignations when the Democrats under Bersani failed to gain enough support to govern with it's Centre-Left platform in 2013.
While the Democrats had consistently polled well under Renzi, up on 2013, their lead has slipped and the recent turmoil has seen them fall into a neck and neck race with the populist anti-establishment party Movimento 5 Stella (M5S).
The sum of this is that in Italy, the 'third way' Centrism - blending social democracy and neoliberalism - may return to power with Renzi, but it's unlikely to do so with sweeping triumph. Again, the waters are moving and the Centrists are not the ones moving them.
In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte celebrated his party remaining the largest and the halting of the Far-Right advance. But the figures tell a different story. Between the coalition partners - the Centre-Right liberal-conservative VVD and the Dutch Labour Party PdvA - they lost 37 seats and 24% of the vote.
For Rutte's VVD, it was the failure of an alternative to muster sufficient support from a fractured and plural political landscape that has kept him in power: they remained the largest party with just 21% of the vote.
It will take an across the spectrum alliance of at least four parties to keep Rutte's VVD in office. While that kind of pluralism is a positive thing, it's not exactly evidence of a great Centre revival.
In Britain, the failure of the Liberal Democrats to increase their share of the vote reinforced the point.
By succeeding in getting people to engage with politics, to turnout and vote, Jeremy Corbyn shut down what appears to be the main avenue along which the neoliberal Centre has travelled: abstention.
If this is the case, it makes the pitch made by the Lib Dems over the last few elections and the New Labourite obsession misguided. Pitching to be the party of faceless bureaucrats, the party of government, the party of business, only seems to work if people have lost interest.
Could a new British party of the centre have done better than the Lib Dems? A party of economically neoliberal social democrats, uniting Labour MPs with some liberals and even some Tories, and pitching to as broad a base as possible, under a leader like Yvette Cooper?
The numbers don't really support it. Even with the Tories and Labour getting their largest vote share for some time, abstention was still the largest block. The reality is that Centrism doesn't seem to have a convincing story to tell and so stands still as events move around it.
Macron was the rallying point to see off a threat. And while Justin Trudeau did indeed lead the Liberals to a huge comeback and landslide majority in Canada in 2015, he did so with the support of just a quarter of eligible voters - the gift of an electoral system - against the waning power of an ever more rightward leaning government.
If Renzi wins back to the Premiership in Italy with effective power, it will also be likely thanks to an electoral system. And, in the Netherlands, Rutte held on thanks to support being fractured across the plural options.
While the Right rallies an angry minority around a crude nationalism that makes wild promises and the Left assembles behind a hopeful interventionism, the Centre mostly benefits from disengagement. The the relative recovery of the Centre comes to look more like a holding pattern.
This isn't the sign of a recovery - it's the absence of one.
The Centre remains with a hand on power because disengagement remains a real issue and neither a Left Alternative nor the angry Far Right have, so far, won over enough support with the broader public.
While this does seem to toll the bell for neoliberalism, Centrism need not necessarily follow it. There is a place for Centrism, but right now it seems like the Centre is struggling to understand itself.
The Centre is supposed to be about balance. About inclusion. That is not the same thing as 'equidistance'. And the occupation of the centre ground by neoliberalism is more about 'received wisdom', the present consensus, than the ideals of the Centre.
In a pluralist society, Centrism has an important role to play. It pursues a stake in society for people on all sides and tries to maximise the utility of the society - to ensure the maximum number of people enjoy the benefits.
What that can't mean is accepting conservative narratives on the economy, the trap that the heirs of New Labour have frequently fallen into. That centrism, of neoliberalism, has become like a technical government, a bureaucratic caretaker while we await something better.
Those that values the ideal of the Centre - inclusion - need to wake up. The revival of the Centre is not what it appears. The politics of management is offering nothing and standing still. People are ready to move. Centrists need an answer as to where.
References
Henry Samuel's 'French election: Macron secures absolute parliamentary majority amid record low turnout'; in The Telegraph; 18 June 2017.
Helen Collis' 'Italy’s left splits with Matteo Renzi: "We want to build an open movement... that is also the beginning of a center-left renewal."'; in Politico; 26 February 2017.
Daniele Fulvi's 'Italy: What does Renzi’s win in Democratic Party primaries mean for Europe?'; from Green Left Weekly; 6 May 2017.
'Relief as Far Right falls short in Dutch election, but there's no future in that feeling: Progressives need reasons for optimism'; in The Alternative; 20 March 2017.
'Yvette Cooper ‘sick to death of vitriol’ directed at Laura Kuenssberg: MP defends BBC political editor as she says ‘kinder, gentler’ politics espoused by Jeremy Corbyn must be part of party’s path to power'; in The Guardian; 8 July 2017.
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