This puts the UK into a weird position. If Le Pen wins, then it means that Brexit works out as a very conveniently timed survival strategy. This will be bolstered by a conservative win in the UK (loath as I am to admit it). If, however Macron and labour win, then it looks like the EU will continue to wheeze and crawl on in its current form, with no possibility of serious reform any time soon. I don't really see preservation of the status quo as being all that advantageous to the EU as it stands, since it desperately needs rebuilding into something much sleeker and more responsive than it has been for years.
Macron is likely to win but his plans for actually doing anything will come to very little.
Same with a LePen victory, sadly.
Mostly because the National Assembly will be dominated by the regular parties with the presidency held by complete no-hopers for any kind of reform or domestic agenda they can actually influence.
Even LePen hasn't gone so far as to call for Frexit, she's called for a return to the Franc and a withdrawal from Shengen (Something existing members can do) but no further, she doesn't have the power to call for a membership referendum and only one guy was (and he's gone).
France is about to enter a state of zombie government regardless of Macron of LePen winning. Possibly worse than
President Floppy.
Macron's pipedream economics of trying to poach British Business and Banks won't work (French regulations are as bad as everywhere else on the continent) and would need approval from an Assembly he won't control, or have both right wing
and socialists to prop him up.
I can
oh so see the Socialist agreeing to bring in big banks at the tax level necessary to make Paris more attractive. Meaning he will fail to raise the tax base which France needs to do, badly.
LePen meanwhile, would bankrupt France in six months with "more tax spending" and other Gaulic economic nonsense which might finally tip the eurozone over the edge permanently.
Either way, Britannia wins and that's all that I am concerned about.
