Something dangerous is happening in French politics, reports Politico.eu.
Forget French president Emmanuel Macron’s difficulties. Forget the Yellow Jackets. Forget the various flavors of far right and far left.
What's missing is that two big dogs have failed to bark a few weeks before the most intriguing European Parliament election in the country’s history.
The center left and center right that dominated French politics for more than 70 years after the end of World War II were humiliated in the 2017 presidential election. Two years later, despite Macron’s unpopularity, despite the longest and most violent social movement in French post-war history, the two establishment parties remain moribund, scattered and leaderless.
That doesn’t mean, however, that the two-party pattern has been banished from French politics. On the contrary, it has been hijacked by Macron’s La République En Marche and far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. The new two-party dynamic is the center vs. the extreme. In a country that has seen frequent alternations of power since 1981, this is alarming.