{"id":86501,"date":"2025-10-06T15:02:44","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T14:02:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=86501"},"modified":"2025-10-06T15:02:44","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T14:02:44","slug":"the-neoliberal-centre-cannot-hold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2025\/10\/06\/the-neoliberal-centre-cannot-hold\/","title":{"rendered":"The neoliberal centre cannot hold"},"content":{"rendered":"

The line \u201cThe centre cannot hold\u201d from Irish poet W.B. Yeats feels as if it were written for Emmanuel Macron\u2019s France. In the space of just 21 months, the country has had five prime ministers<\/span>. The latest, S\u00e9bastien Lecornu, resigned after only 26 days \u2014 the shortest tenure in the history of the Fifth Republic. Le Monde<\/i> reports the story here.<\/a><\/p>\n

That is not just a sign of political turbulence. It is evidence that Macron\u2019s \u201cradical centre\u201d \u2014 the project that promised to hold France together \u2014 is disintegrating before our eyes.<\/p>\n

The illusion of the \u201ccentre\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n

Macron came to power selling the idea that France could be rescued from its old left-right divide by managerial competence, technocratic reason and a veneer of modernity. The market would be appeased, the unions pacified, and Europe reassured.<\/p>\n

That idea depended on two things.<\/p>\n

First, that there existed a stable, reasonable \u201ccentre ground\u201d around which compromise could form.<\/p>\n

Second, that politics could be treated as a matter of efficiency rather than conflict \u2014 a question of method, not ideology.<\/p>\n

Both ideas are now dead.<\/p>\n

Why the centre cannot hold<\/b><\/p>\n

First, Macron hollowed out both sides of French politics, leaving nothing in their place<\/span>. The traditional left and right parties were destroyed by his rise. But instead of replacing them with a genuine consensus movement, he built a personal vehicle for power that disintegrated once his charisma faded. With no real party base, Macronism is now an empty shell.<\/p>\n

Second, his policies have alienated almost everyone<\/span>. To the right, his reforms have looked timid and bureaucratic; to the left, they have been a full-frontal assault on social protection and democracy. He tried to be all things to all people, and now no one trusts him.<\/p>\n

Third, the technocratic centre has no moral anchor<\/span>. It claims to be pragmatic, but in practice it defends the status quo \u2014 the power of finance, corporate privilege, and EU budget orthodoxy. Macron\u2019s governments have prioritised market \u201cconfidence\u201d over social cohesion, and now find they have neither.<\/p>\n

Fourth, fragmentation has replaced stability<\/span>. Each new prime minister has served for less time than the one before. None has been able to command a parliamentary majority. Each collapse deepens the public\u2019s cynicism and strengthens the extremes Macron claimed to restrain.<\/p>\n

The result is paralysis: a political system in which no one can govern, no one can compromise, and no one can win.<\/p>\n

The political economy of collapse<\/b><\/p>\n

This is not simply about personalities. It is structural. The neoliberal centre \u2014 in France, the UK, and across Europe \u2014 is based on the belief that markets and managerialism can replace ideology. But politics is about power, and power cannot be neutral.<\/p>\n

In France, as in Britain, the centre\u2019s claim to moderation has been a cover for serving capital and constraining democracy. Fiscal \u201cresponsibility\u201d has meant cutting public investment. \u201cReform\u201d has meant dismantling social protection. \u201cCompetitiveness\u201d has meant keeping wages down.<\/p>\n

When living standards fall, when people feel unseen, when public services decay, when rents and food prices soar, it is not the extremes that break society \u2014 it is the centre that abandons it.<\/p>\n

Yeats was right: the centre cannot hold when it stands for nothing.<\/p>\n

What comes next<\/b><\/p>\n

France now faces an impossible choice. Macron could dissolve parliament and risk handing power to the far right. Or he could cling to office and preside over a drift into ungovernability. Either way, his project is over.<\/p>\n

The danger is that others will learn the wrong lesson, including that democracy itself has failed, when what has really failed is a hollow technocratic politics that pretended to rise above the struggle between wealth and work, privilege and justice.<\/p>\n

If politics is to be renewed, it cannot be rebuilt on the illusion of the centre. It must be rebuilt on principles of equality, solidarity, and accountability that give people something to believe in.<\/p>\n

The task for France, and for every democracy like it, is not to restore the centre, but to reimagine the common good<\/span>. Only then can the state act with purpose again.<\/p>\n

In conclusion<\/b><\/p>\n

Macron has proved what many suspected: that \u201cthe centre\u201d was never a safe place to stand. It was an unstable compromise between the demands of capital and the needs of society, between the rhetoric of progress and the reality of austerity. It could not hold because it refused to choose.<\/p>\n

The lesson is clear. When those who govern deny the reality of conflict \u2014 when they confuse neutrality with virtue and technocracy with wisdom \u2014 the extremes will fill the space they leave behind.<\/p>\n

France has become the warning. The centre cannot hold \u2014 and nor should we expect it to until politics once again dares to take sides.<\/p>\n

\n

James Murphy contributed to this post.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Comments\u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n

When commenting, please take note of this blog\u2019s comment policy,\u00a0which is available here<\/a>. Contravening this policy will result in comments being deleted before or after initial publication at the editor\u2019s sole discretion and without explanation being required or offered.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The line \u201cThe centre cannot hold\u201d from Irish poet W.B. Yeats feels as if it were written for Emmanuel Macron\u2019s France. In the space of
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