Super Manuel the Roi-Soleil

​Emmanuel Macron is, in a sense, a career changer who has chosen the presidency as the first office in which he wanted to be elected. Similarly to Trump, Macron also turns the well-known party system of Western democracies on its head. Trump's throne has been shaking since he became President. Like Trump, Macron also succeeded in winning the election. But the question now is how far he will actually transform the French party system.

His followers declareed full-bodied on the evening of the election on all TV channels, the difference between the right and the left is obsolete. The only difference is between the progressive and the conservative, the reformist and the nostalgic. 

This obscures the hope of a pronounced sense of reality. Such proclamation is tactically justified: Macron's movement "En marche" has to convinced both the left and the right parliamentarians in order to get enough approval. But France’s all mighty unions will blow "En marche" the march. So the French government can decide by secrete only. Forget about consense. After all the argument  is an ideological semantic of the “revolution of the middle class, a little petite bourgeois’s vox populi rant.

The opaque central point of Macron's program is the reform of the labor market. Okay, there is a lot to do. But in reality flexibility of employment law leads to a significant reduction in unemployment and mushrooming of the modern slavery services call “temporary employment agencies”. This may work eventually, but only on the assumption that flexibilisation leads fair  wages. 

More likely is that Macroon's reform agenda will provoke strong redistribution effects, in the interests of the low incomes. The fact that the left-right contrast then does not plays a role would then mean: There are no alternative to such reforms. If you want to reduce unemployment, you will accept lower wages. Whether this analysis is economically correct can be doubted. While reductions in wages would improve France's competitiveness, they also weaken domestic consumption. Politically, such measures are especially in France extremely unpopular. Even in the last few years the wage development was bad - remember that this was the main reason for the crash of Holland's popularity.

I would not be surprised if the classic left-right-contrast will see a increase even more. If so, it does not look good for France's young president, even if it behaves like a Roi-Soleil. It all is looking far more as a attempt to copy the German way of de-solidarise the society with the barbaric tools of the “freedom-of-movement” “free market” the EU is offering its multi-national companies picking the best for themselves and leave the damages to be socialised by the tax payers. 

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