Daily Times

Poor Marine Le Pen. Fabricated thoughts of how France is not yet ready to be ruled by a woman will be of little comfort. Especially as the man who robbed her of the chance to finally outshine her father was not even contesting this election. He was not even French.

Zut alors!

That particular honour goes to Britain’s most infamous pig farmer, a man by the name of Dave. A man who, during his inglorious days, used to bring home the bacon by way of his premier services to a nation that still likes to call itself Great. And it is this Dave who single-handedly brought defeat to the door of the of the National Front’s presidential candidate.

Not that he meant to, of course. If he only he were that smart he might still be the British prime minister as opposed the man who cut loose from a Europe to which half his country still wishes to remain firmly anchored.

Nevertheless, it is hard not to view the French vote through the Brexit prism. Notorious for her anti-immigrant and anti-refugee rhetoric, Le Pen campaigned equally hard on taking France out of the EU. Ditto the euro. A referendum was promised on both, presumably of the un-gratifying in-out variety that occurred on the other side of La Manche. Yet polls were seemingly not too inaccurate when suggesting more than 70 percent of the electorate opposed such drastic steps.

That is understandable. For quite possibly, French voters saw what a pig’s ear Cameron made of the entire referendum debacle not to mention the 50 billion GBP tip that Britain must drop as she leaves the European party. Underscoring the need not for an alibi — but a fire escape, open window. And then there is the small matter of negotiating with Brussels, the latter a long known byword for jobs-worth bureaucracy. But the news is not all bad. It must be quite a confidence booster for the Prince of Pork to discover that he wields more clout inside Europe now that he is out of No 10. Let’s just hope he doesn’t pull a Blair. Meaning that every time the Brits believe it safe to dip their toes into the sea of domestic politics — there he is, the man who sold his country on the promise that capitalism cares in the community, eagerly threatening to make a return to the frontline.

Yet it would still be a mistake to welcome the victory of Le Pen’s rival, that is, president-elect Emmanuel Macron, as the triumph of French liberalism against an overwhelmingly Islamophobic mandate. That he was the only candidate contesting on a pro-Europe platform is extremely significant. As is the fact that he comes from the banking elite and views the working-class as lazy and thus responsible for their own lack of social mobility. At a demonstration, one protester reportedly remarked to the debonair Macron that he wasn’t able to afford such a suit as his. In true champagne supernova style — the then presidential candidate was said to have retorted: the best way to afford a suit is to work. Though there is nothing really to be done when the emperor has no new clothes at all.

Where there is disdain for the working-class — immigrants and refugees are not far behind. And since the NATO war machine insists on being actively engaged throughout the Muslim world — most of the latter share a common ethno-religious profile. In fact, Charlie Hebdo, the now infamous political satire weekly, got it right for once with its cartoon cover of Aylan Kurdi — the Syrian boy whose dead body washed up on Turkish shores as his family fled Alliance bombing of their homeland that aimed to kill the revolution there dead. In this particular version Aylan is recast as an adult. He and an accomplice are seen chasing a European woman, the accompanying tagline reading: “What would have become of little Aylan had he grown up? A groper of German buttocks.” This was drawn in the aftermath of the Cologne New Year sexual assault scandal that saw up to 80 women groped and mugged by around 1,000 men described simply as North African and Arab in appearance. Thus it seems that Charlie was simply pointing out that the European tears for Aylan were merely of the crocodile variety. We all know how he would have been profiled had he lived to endure the shackles of Fortress Europe. Perhaps more difficult to swallow was the image of the middle-aged and slightly rotund Chinese artist Ai Weiwei recreating the image of the three-year-old Aylan on a Greek beach.

Thus what the outcome of the French election promises, in the short-term at least, is more of the same neo-liberalism that has come to characterise the rule of the western European nations dominating the EU. Meaning that it will be business as usual. For when it comes to the free-marketeers it is remains a case of: none for all and all for none. And that is something that every European Tom, Dick Whittington and his Fat Cat of big industry will only be too happy to keep on embracing.

Bisous

The writer is the Deputy Managing Editor, Daily Times. She can be reached at mirandahusain@me.com and tweets @humeiwei