The reader of Mr. Gapper’s latest essay can’t help but smile, or even chuckle, at his British Exceptionalism, and its focus on The City as the wellspring of the myth of British Prosperity, but only for very select population of that capital city. And his singing the praises of the presumed winner of coming French election Emmanuel Macron, a leader whose historical moment has come. Although the Speed and Shock Neo-Libralism of Fillon, would have been the preference of The Financial Times and it stable of like minded ‘reporters’.
M. Macron is a man without a party structure with which to govern, but in the political fantasy Mr. Gapper spins, using Tony Blair’s successful bid for the 2012 Olympics as its argumentative fulcrum. Although Blair like Bill Clinton has become the object of widespread contempt for rank opportunism. Mr. Gapper’s fulcrum relies on an outdated political nostalgia. Mr. Macron becomes the hero of a France about to enter into the hallowed precincts of Neo-Libralism Lite. Gapper describe Macron as a centrist technocratic leader, instead of just another product of the French educational aristocracy, who is identified as the winner of the June election: foresight or wishful thinking?
The sobering fact that Fillon and Mélenchon, each at a little over 19% each of the vote, combined with the power of the rest of the contenders, in that election, all have the power and the necessary political structures in place to stymie that ‘Reform’. That Macron may offer, which is sure to offend the political sensibilities of the ‘coddled French workers’, the present and soon to be mythical enemy of the forward march of Neo-Liberalism à la française.
Although nothing quite compares with the unintentional comedy of this headline, and sub-headline on the same page as the Gapper essay. Authored by the redoubtable Poisonous Dandy Janan Ganesh.
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