Sky Views: What May can learn from Macron before Brexit

Ed Conway, Economics Editor

If you were after the ultimate outsider in French politics, you'd hardly plump for Emmanuel Macron.

A millionaire banker who went to the École nationale d'administration - the elite government school almost every French president attended; a man who worked in government for a number of slightly unimpressive administrations.

Really, the most intriguing thing about Mr Macron is how he managed to rebrand himself - in a sense Davos man incarnate - as the great disrupter of France's political scene; the insurgent politician from outside the political system.

There are lessons in this for Britain's politicians too.

A year ago Mr Macron, then one of Francois Hollande's ministers, quietly announced he was setting up a new political party, En Marche.

The current political set-up (upon which, it's worth mentioning, he successfully rode to become minister of the economy) was not fit for purpose, he said.

What is all-important, as Britain heads towards the Brexit negotiations after this summer's election, is not so much whether it'll be a hard or soft Brexit, but how it'll be branded.

The incumbent politicians were too craven, too old-fashioned. What France needed was something new.

But unlike most anti-establishment parties, he didn't bring any especially radical ideas to the table.

As far as we can tell from his slightly vague manifesto, Mr Macron's aspirations are comfortably centrist, distinctly Blairite.

What's different is the branding: his party isn't a party but a self-proclaimed "movement"; it is younger, fresher, more engaged with social media.

Crucially, it has none of the baggage of the old established parties, most of them mired in corruption and stagnation.

Having superior technology and novelty isn't everything of course; it helps that Mr Macron himself is charismatic, energetic, good looking and a sharp performer.

But really, the main thing is branding. Mr Macron's mantra was change.

He realised, cannily, that while a majority of the French people had become sick of politicians, desperate for something new and alternative, for most of them that did not mean voting for truly radical policies - the kind of stuff espoused by Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

It's tempting to assume that shallow things like political branding don't count for much, but years of experience have taught us otherwise. Consider attitudes towards the welfare system on the other side of the Atlantic.

Most polling in the US suggests that Americans don't like the idea of welfare.

So over time politicians came up with a wheeze: rather than simply doling out money, they could do it through the tax system as rebates and discounts.

A large part of the welfare system was rebranded as "earned income tax credits".

Almost overnight, support for these giveaways improved. Beneath the surface, not much had changed. It was the branding that made all the difference.

As the behavioural economist Daniel Kahneman has shown us, the human mind is constantly influenced by a series of ultimately irrational biases such as this.

He and his collaborator Amos Tversky came up with the notion of Prospect Theory, which implied that decision making could be wildly skewed by a host of biases.

For instance, when people need to decide between desirable options, they are risk averse.

But when they are confronted with a world of undesirable options, they are risk-seeking.

In other words, they are more willing to take a punt on something different - simply by nature of its feeling different.

The analogies with Brexit are pretty plain. In the run-up to last summer, very few Britons were especially enamoured with the EU; levels of faith in existing political parties and politicians were very low.

In that environment, it became very difficult for politicians to persuade people not to take a risk by voting out. Indeed, their appetite for risk had conceivably increased because of the unattractiveness of the political landscape.

While some voters had of course thought long and hard about the issues - whether the single market, ECJ and so on were good for the UK - others simply wanted something different.

The lesson for UK policymakers now is the same one Mr Macron learned a year ago.

What is all-important, as Britain heads towards the Brexit negotiations after this summer's election, is not so much whether it'll be a hard or soft Brexit, but how it'll be branded.

Frankly, come March 2019, when Theresa May stands up in Brussels and heralds the final Brexit deal, the precise nature of the contents will be far less important than the wrapper.

It is crucial that Britain's deal looks and sounds like a truly new arrangement, a genuinely different relationship from what is in place at present.

Mrs May gets this. Hence why she was swift to ditch Britain's membership of the single market and full membership of the customs union.

Sure, Britain may end up being part of an arrangement which looks very much like the status quo; it may rejoin the single market in all but name, but what's the upside in presenting it that way?

In hindsight, her maxim, coined soon after taking office, which was widely panned by the media, was actually very smart. Brexit means Brexit.

Whatever it is, it must be clear that we can and do call it Brexit. Mr Macron and Mrs May know it: what matters is branding.

Sky Views is a series of comment pieces by Paste BN editors and correspondents, published every morning.

Previously on Sky Views: Sophy Ridge - If Labour want to win, they must stop hating Tories