In any case, Italy’s business establishment has fallen in love with her. At last they have a strong leader who broadly speaks their language, regardless of her anti-neoliberal rhetoric, which she still occasionally delivers in suitably demagogic form.
Business lobbies have been similarly flocking to Le Pen’s door. On paper at least, she looks almost as fiscally irresponsible as Mélenchon; like Mélenchon, she also wants to overturn many of Macron’s business-friendly reforms.
She would similarly bust the bank were she to implement the whole of her policy agenda in one go.
Yet in the choice between the devil and the deep blue sea, it’s wise to choose the devil you know and hope that, like Meloni, Le Pen’s bark is worse than her bite.
These are treacherous waters for business and finance. German business thought that by embracing Hitler it could tame him. Autocracy and totalitarianism are the natural bedfellows of the extremes of Left and Right.
Yet Le Pen is no Hitler. Provided she stays within democratic norms, her style of politics seems well-suited to France’s dirigiste system of government, and might be accommodated relatively easily by the French business and financial establishment.
“I’m respectful of institutions; I do not call for institutional chaos,” Le Pen told Le Figaro this week in apparent repudiation of her less than respectful past. “There will simply be cohabitation.”
Le Pen eyes French presidency
Does she mean it? Nobody knows, but perhaps the best guarantor of good behaviour is that Le Pen still has her eyes firmly set on the bigger prize of the French presidency, which is again up for grabs in three years’ time.
Assuming that RN wins a majority in parliamentary elections, she needs her party to govern well. Fiscal and political chaos in the meantime would surely doom her chances of success.
It may already be too late for La France. As others have observed, the country seems to be degenerating into a state of open civil war, even more so in some respects than the US, where the previously entitled, moderate centre ground is being similarly squeezed.
Given the political turmoil, it is perhaps surprising that credit rating agencies haven’t inflicted even deeper downgrades, and that investors are prepared to buy French debt at all on the still relatively small spreads that preside.
The greatest irony of all is that Le Pen, who once wanted to rip everything up and start afresh, seems to offer perhaps the best hope there is for political and economic stability.