| JUNE 29TH 2024 |
 SUBSCRIBER ONLYCover StoryHow we chose this week’s image |
 Zanny Minton BeddoesEditor-in-chief |
| Our cover this week went to the printers hours before the debate in America between Joe Biden and Donald Trump. Although we have written about Mr Biden’s dire situation in our daily app, the weekly features two different elections. In Britain we used our cover to endorse the Labour Party after 14 years of Conservative rule. In the rest of the world we asked what the gloomy fate of Emmanuel Macron says about successful reform in democracies. Mr Macron’s seven years as president have seen a sustained effort to remake France as a modern, business-friendly economy. Growth is above the euro-zone average, and poverty rates below it. Our cover needed to get across the central fact of this election. In spite of all these benefits, French voters want to give Mr Macron’s coalition a kicking. |
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| This is the Etoile in Paris and that great hole in the ground is where the Arc de Triomphe should be. If the arch celebrates Napoleon’s victories, its absence portends Mr Macron’s defeat. And sure enough, although he will remain president until 2027, his Ensemble alliance is heading for humiliation on June 30th: one analyst puts its chance of forming a majority at 0%. Another way to suggest France in peril would be to topple the Eiffel Tower. Paris is the symbol of Mr Macron’s successes. In a month, it will welcome the world to the 33rd Olympiad. The City of Light is now a hub for tech companies and a banking centre that is starting to rival London. Urban renewal, driven by a good mix of public investment and private enterprise, is sprouting in Lyon, Dijon and even once-grimy Lille. Unfortunately, the Etoile was hard to recognise and the Eiffel Tower a bit tired. |
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| Part of the drama in this story comes from the position of Mr Macron. His rash decision to call a snap parliamentary election for Sunday came three years earlier than he needed to and just three weeks after the hard-right opposition National Rally of Marine Le Pen walloped him at the European elections. Remarkably, his move has also united the fractious left-wing opposition, which runs from the traditional Socialist centre-left to Unsubmissive France party, led by a former Trotskyist. Above, we have adapted Jacques-Louis David’s painting of Napoleon crossing the Alps—except instead of riding Marengo, the hapless Mr Macron is mounted on a rocking horse. Or we could be wringing out the tricolore. As the left and the right are twisted, the centre is being squeezed dry. In the same way, votes are being driven out from Mr Macron’s centrist coalition. |
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| We thought that we could bring some life to the Eiffel Tower by showing it breaking. In spite of the benefits Mr Macron’s reforms have brought, French voters want to dismantle them. National Rally is set on reversing pension reform and restoring the wealth tax and promises to slash VAT on energy bills and fuel. It also vows to crack down on migration, deport “Islamists”, ban the veil in public places and reintroduce border controls with other European Union countries. None of this chimes with the open climate for investment Mr Macron has created. This is eye-catching, but it looks less like destroying Paris than pulling the wishbone of a chicken–which is all about claiming good fortune. |
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| We therefore preferred this flag. Mr Macron has chosen to construct an Olympian presidency. He believed that the power of the office would unite the country. Instead it left him seen as arrogant and out of touch. He has no opposition in the centre ground. An axiom of democratic politics is that voters grow tired of incumbents. When they do, they inevitably turn to the alternative. In France, as elsewhere, that alternative could end up doing grave harm. That is why our title alludes to the poem “The second coming” by W.B. Yeats. Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world |
| Britain is on the threshold of a Labour victory so sweeping that it may break records. If The Economist had a vote on July 4th, we, too, would pick Labour, because it has the greatest chance of tackling the biggest problem that Britain faces: a chronic and debilitating lack of economic growth. Our cover, like our editorial, needed to justify that conclusion. |
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| Central to Labour’s case is that its leader, Sir Keir Starmer, has transformed his party by expelling his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, and rooted out many fellow travellers. Sir Keir is right in his diagnosis that nothing matters more than solving Britain’s stagnant productivity. Labour’s young, aspiring, urban supporters will give it permission to build things, in ways that the Conservatives have avoided. That is a lot to read into a news photo. We wondered whether a drawing might be more powerful. |
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| This does not quite work. Sir Keir is too jowly. His smoked-salmon and scrambled-eggs offensive with entrepreneurs has clearly gone on too long. We asked the artist to put Britain’s next prime minister on a diet. The question that hangs over Labour is how radical it will be in pursuit of growth. It has run a maddeningly cautious campaign, choosing to reassure voters rather than seek a mandate for bold change. Having failed to set out a vision to steer by, Prime Minister Starmer could more easily be blown off course by events or sidetracked by growth-stifling left-wing preoccupations. However, if Labour succeeds in overhauling the planning regime, strengthening ties with Europe, giving fiscal power to cities, focusing the Treasury on growth and rationalising the tax system, the picture will brighten and Britain will be better off. Sir Keir and his party have earned the chance to try. |
| Cover image•View large image (“France’s centre cannot hold”)•View large image (“The case for Labour”) |
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