Well put, Mr. Murray! As for this author, please refer to my previous postings (http://d.hatena.ne.jp/itunalily2/archive?word=%22Douglas+Murray%22). (Lily)
The Sun (https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/3514487/)
Emmanuel Macron is no saviour, and if Europe’s old order continue to ignore the people they will fall
Europe's elites may rejoice at Le Pen's defeat, but they still need to listen to their own people's demands
by Douglas Murray
8 May 2017
EMMANUEL MACRON has won and the problems of Europe have gone away. Or at least that seems to be the response of Europe’s elites.
The defeat of Marine Le Pen in Sunday’s French presidential election is like the slaying of a dragon. We have heard similar noises for months.
In December the EU breathed a sigh of relief when the Austrian Freedom Party (generally, and correctly, described as “far-right”) was beaten at the polls. They lost by 46 per cent to 54 per cent. Everybody behaved not only as if the train had not hit, but as if it had never passed by.
Then in March this year there was rejoicing again when Geert Wilders failed to gain power in the Dutch elections. His party only came second.
Now it is the same with the French result. The European elite have wiped their brows and moved to celebrating. Yet one third of the French public just voted for a member of the Le Pen family.
It is something that would have been unthinkable even 15 years ago when Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, achieved only 17 per cent of the vote.
That leap — from 17 per cent in 2002 to 34 per cent in 2017 — tells a story that European politicians misinterpret at their peril. Yesterday I spoke at an event organised by Google. The speaker before me was Tony Blair, and in response to questions about this populist wave he kept talking of public “perceptions”. But, as I pointed out, the European publics do not inhabit some terrible misunderstanding.
We do not need our “perceptions” ¬corrected. The reason why outsider ¬politicians everywhere are growing is because the politicians of the mainstream have let us down so badly.
Consider the attitude of the average French voter. For years they experienced mass immigration even higher than that into Britain. For years their politicians — like ours — talked tough about this. They talked about a “clampdown” and so on. But as in Britain, while talking one way they acted another. Now the French public are feeling some of the effects.
It should go without saying that ¬immigration brings some benefits. But — as I explain in my new book The Strange Death Of Europe ; it also brings a whole pile of negatives.
For decades, mainstream politicians across Europe have been unwilling to admit these downsides.
Instead they have lived in a virtual ¬reality where immigration is only ever a blessing. We the public, by contrast, live with the downsides as well as the upsides.
In France those downsides have been bloodier than anywhere.
Consider how sour our politics would be if we had just had the years France has. The repeated assaults by Islamic ¬radicals affected all of French society.
They massacred the country’s most famous secular cartoonists in their offices at Charlie Hebdo. They hacked at the throat of a priest while he was saying mass at his altar. They have brought a night of terror, with multiple suicide bombings and Kalashnikov attacks in restaurants, concert halls and football stadiums across Paris.
They have mown down citizens of Nice as they celebrated Bastille Day. It does not make things better that most of these perpetrators were French-born.
It accentuates the problem. For if some of those already here are so badly integrated, why bring in any more?
Currently this is too politically incorrect a question for any mainstream ¬politician to ask. But it is a serious ¬question ¬nonetheless. Perhaps the most serious our continent is asking.
Even before these recent attacks a majority of the French public (67 per cent) said that they believed Islam to be “incompatible” with the French state.
That same year (2013) 68 per cent of the Dutch public said there was “enough” Islam in the Netherlands.
Today these figures are even starker. Earlier this year Donald Trump proposed a 90-day travel suspension on citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries.
The entire civilised world, including all of Europe’s mainstream politicians, denounced the ban as extreme.
But their own publics were thinking far further than Trump was.
A poll out in February by think-tank Chatham House found that a majority of citizens in eight out of ten European countries agreed with the statement “All further migration from mainly Muslim countries should be stopped”.
This included majorities in France and Germany. The UK was one of two countries where this was not a majority view.
A mere 47 per cent of the British public agreed with the statement.
This is Europe’s dilemma. The divide between what is politically “acceptable” and what the public think continues to grow. The gap preceded Macron and it will outlast him.
For there is little that he himself can do, particularly with no party base to support him, to turn around the realities his country has inherited.
But in truth the problem will outlast us all. A generation of politicians have let down the public.
Unless the mainstream reacts with deeds as well as words then one year, if not this year, the public will return the favour.
(End)
