English Chess Forum

Following Emmanuel Macron's election as President of France, and the impending electoral success of his 'En Marche' party, is it conceivably possible that a similar figure might arise in UK politics, or are there systematic factors working against this? We don't have a presidential-style political system, for one thing. Is Jeremy Corbyn's rise the closest equivalent?

Christopher Kreuzer wrote: Is Jeremy Corbyn's rise the closest equivalent?

For all his faults, Jeremy Corbyn has never been a Rothschild banker.

If you are looking for an English political parallel to Macron and finding it hard to find one it's because there isn't one.

Corbyn is poles apart from the French quick upstart and Nigel Farage the nearest but still miles away as he has as much in common with Le Pen as he does with Macron.

You could ask - why not Zac Goldsmith?

My answer would be that Goldsmith, too, is not congruent, or even similar enough, because Macron is a 'technocrat' and Goldsmith not even a bureaucrat just another amateur rich boy playing at politics.

The main reason why there is no British Macron is environmental - in the French Republic there is more possibility of social mobility. In the United Kingdom everyone still knows their place in the hierarchy.

We've already had our Macron - a certain A C L Blair.

You might think so, however, my comment would then be that Blair made use of the nest of a long-established party to hatch his monstrous New Labour and other cuckoos (and that is the only sense in which those like Yvette Cooper & Chuka Umunna are big beasts).

Macron has established his new party of pretty little fledglings from scratch(ing around).

Also, as I pointed out above, British politicians are not 'technocrats' in the sense Macron is - Blair was a career politician through and through.

There is no British Macron for the same reasons that Napoleon Bonaparte was not the French Oliver Cromwell.