National front-runner: who can beat Le Pen?

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1:04The Economist Hello and welcome to The Intelligence. From The Economist, I'm Jason Palmer. And I'm Rosie Bluh. Today on the show, inefficiency and injustice in Eastern India's buffer zone and why Argentina is so good at polo. First up though. It's election season in France, a time when politicians who normally wear suits and ties start venturing far from their usual habitats. A leading candidate from the centre right recently turned up at a food truck in an apron to serve fruit to pass us by.

2:09Another one climbed to the top of a wind turbine. Yet another hopeful launched a tour of a thousand bee strobes. All of them are desperately trying to get closer to voters and make inroads on the candidate who's currently soaring ahead in the polls. Marine Le Pen from the anti-immigration right wing national rally. The election next April on May may seem a long way off but it is absolutely a crucial moment for the French because for the first time in 10 years, Emmanuel Macron can't stand again, he's constitutionally bored from running for a third consecutive term. Sophie Peta is our Paris bureau chief. And the poll favourite for the selection is Marine Le Pen. Now she was in the North of France as well launching her own presidential bid.

3:13And with seven months to go now, the presidential race has turned into what seems like a single question and that is who can beat Le Pen. So what do the polls show at the moment? Well, the polls have been remarkably stable. They show Marine Le Pen with a commanding lead in the low to mid-30s for the first round. It's a two round election so the important thing is to qualify. And that is a big lead at least 13 points ahead of her closest rival. Now at the moment that said, well, Philippe, he was one of Macron's prime ministers, the first prime minister in fact. But in each of the three runoff scenarios, so the final round, Le Pen wins according to the poll. If she's pitted against Philippe in the final round, she would win by 55% to 45% so not even close. Which means that the French centre is struggling to come up with someone that they can all rally around and someone who has a strong chance of beating her.

4:16How reliable would you say that polling is this far out from the actual election? Well, it's an interesting one, Rosie, because actually if you look back, polls have often been wrong at this time. Many of Macron, for example, was hardly tested in the polls before his election in 2017. And there are some famous cases where candidates who look like favourites. And I'm thinking of Edward Balladio in 1994 or even Al Azupin in 2016, they just crashed out. So over the past three years, if you look at the polls, Le Pen has only once come in at below 30% extraordinarily high and extraordinarily stable. And when I speak to people in the centre, I spoke, for example, to Clem on Bourne, who was a former Europe minister from a menu at Macron's party. He said that the difference between this election and previous elections is that it is possible this time for her to win. So what is the opposition doing? But if you take the broad centre to mean a very wide space between the socialists on the left and the Republicans on the centre right,

5:18there are at least 15 candidates. Some of those have already declared. Some of them are taking part in a socialist primary, so they're doing that in October. Others still have hinted that they will run. But this kind of fragmentation is incredibly damaging because ultimately it means that none of them might qualify a tool. And instead the French voters will be handed a choice between two extremes. And that would be Le Pen on the far right and Jean-Luc Miller-Shar on the far left. Aside from finding a candidate that the centre could actually unify around, what would they then have to do to beat Marine Le Pen? Well, if you look at centrist candidates who have beaten populous right parties, and it has happened in a number of European countries, you could look at Hungary or the Netherlands or even Poland or Romania, and I would say that besides some of the policy platforms, which are in the hall, have sort of drifted a little bit to the right, so the firm on immigration and crime, what these candidates share are a few traits. One of them is they have a huge amount of energy, so they really are out there talking to people,

6:22crisscrossing the country, and showing how energetic and dynamic they are as candidates. The second trait I say was that they have a kind of rebelliousness about them. That's to say that they manage to present themselves to the electorate as outsiders, even if that's not strictly the case, they've managed to portray themselves as someone who's different, who can upend things and make a difference. And I also say the third thing is a sort of ability to express things really clearly and really simply on issues that voters care about. So this means embracing up to a point, slogans, TikTok videos, having an imaginative way to really capture the imagination of the electorate. In some ways they actually borrow some of those techniques from the populist that they're trying to defeat. And can anyone in France do that, do you think? The bad news for the French Centre is that there are two candidates who are very good at all of these things, and that's the two extremes, Marendra Pannes and Jean-L'Hume-Lonsoin. If you look at the three leading candidates in the centre and the centre of the right, all of them are either former prime ministers like Edward Philippe,

7:24he was the one who was serving chips from the food truck in Northern France, Gabrielle-Letal, or a former interior minister like Bruno Rotario, and the problem for them is that it's very difficult when you've served under a manure macron, and then say that you are the best alternative to him. I suppose that the closest you've got to the sense of an outsider will be somebody like Rafael Guixman, who's standing at the Socialist Primary. He actually is standing on behalf of his own party. It's an allied, much younger movement, but he trails at fourth place in the presidential polls. Up to a point you could say that Edward Philippe has a sort of outsider's quality because he was reelected as Mare of Loiref, which is a port in Normandy. So that gives him a sort of regional flavor, but he is not managing to create the sort of momentum that he needs to to carry him forward as the most compelling candidate in order to get others to rally around him. It sounds then Sophie, like you're predicting a Le Pen presidency. I'm not predicting anything at the moment, Rosie, but I think one thing we can say is it can't be rolled out.

8:24Another thing is that for the centre, they need to and can cling to the hope that polls are often wrong. It's very early and it is possible for some sort of deals still to be done among these centrist candidates. But it's a very difficult thing to achieve. There's already been a rejection on the part of some of them to even talk it through. And I suspect that we won't really get clarity about whether there is a single emerging figure until the end of the year or possibly even early 2027, which is why some people in the centre are looking to the savior, the outside of the grand figure who could come in and rescue the country from the extremes and people mentioned all sorts of characters from Christy LaGoude, the European Central Bank governor or Foswell-Aunder former president. But at the moment, neither of those are running for the presidency and it leaves the centre in a messy and unsatisfactory situation trying to find a single candidate and clarity of purpose for this election. Sophie, thank you very much.

9:25Thanks Rosie, it's always a pleasure. This Economist Podcast is sponsored by Scribt, the knowledge platform with more than 350 million documents shared by real people. Whatever you're working on, Scribt is where you go to find information, build understanding and get it done. And if you're a student or educator in the US, a valid school email address gets you a discounted subscription plan. Head to Scribt.com to claim yours. That's s-c-r-i-b-d.com. Must be 18 or over. Okay, real talk. Every time I open up my inbox, I've got this vision of the day I'm going to have. Deep work. Big ideas. The project I keep meaning to start. Three hours of vanishing to replying to threads and hunting down a file someone sent last week.

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11:29Kira Huyu is an Asia correspondent for the Economist. We are in Hakumpur and the Indian state of West Bengal, which borders Bangladesh. And behind all of us is an uneasy, kilometer-white buffer zone, still within Indian territory, but governed without its freedoms. Our unlike many borderlands, this is not no-mountainsland. 25,000 inhabitants live in its seven villages. A crowd gathered very quickly to complain to me about the kinds of mountain restrictions and security checks that make life really hard in these borderlands. They are undeterred in their complaints by this must-stash gentleman in a track suit who keeps hovering around us. I think by now they are used to playing close offices from India's intelligence bureau. So tell me about this buffer zone. Why is it there? It's supposed to be against so-called infiltrators from Muslim-majority Bangladesh, according to India's Home Minister Amit Shah,

12:34these infiltrators threaten India's security and its economy and demographic balance. Now there are probably millions of Bangladeshis living without the right papers in India, but it's extremely unlikely that there are 20 million, which is the sensationalist government estimate. Either way the Home Minister calls them termites and has promised to kick them all out. Last year around three dozen Bangladeshis died at the hands of Indian border guards according to a Bangladeshi human rights organization. But it's not just Bangladeshis that are caught by India's shrill border politics. That politics is literally trapping Indian citizens as well. And so why are matters at this particular border so tricky? The India-Bangaladish border is almost 4,100 kilometers long and that makes it one of the world's longest and it's also one of its leakyest. So, blowing your history, it's a bit hundreds of millions of Bengali speakers into two separate countries in Bangladesh,

13:34but many still move back and forth across the border. There are actually houses along the border that have a kitchen in India and in a bedroom in Bangladesh. But that's not something that the Hindu nationalist Baratya Janta party, the BJP, which has been in power since 2014, is particularly happy about. And now for the first time, earlier this spring, it got the opportunity to change something about it. How did that come about? So in a historic first, the BJP won West Bengal in state elections in April, which means that it is now in charge of the largest of the five Indian states that border Bangladesh. And it didn't take very long for the parties to start announcing all kinds of measures. In August, Shah's home ministry announced a big increase in intelligence units that will be deployed in border towns to keep taps on extremists and infiltrators and smugglers. The party also likes to talk up so-called pushbacks in which Bengali-speaking Muslims who are allegedly Bangladesh and not Indian,

14:34are rounded up across India, bust border towns and literally shoved into Bangladesh. Now, this is a very improvised method. It flies to process, courts, diplomatic convention. And so we aren't talking about legal deportations here. But Svendu Adukari, the new chief minister is undeterred. He has told police to hunt detainees directly to border security guards instead of presenting them in courts. Since the election, Bangladesh has also massively beefed up its own border patrols and its border, which means that a lot of these people actually now end up in holding centers or get stuck in the buffer zone with Indian citizens. Along the way there, you used the word allegedly Bangladesh. Why did you use that word? So, actually, all those being deported on Muslims and they are often suspected of being foreigners merely because they speak Bengali and have Muslim sounding names. I spoke to the mother of an Indian citizen who was wrongly deported and has now been trying since July to get back into India.

15:44Other people have been picked up after this botched revision of voter lists just before the election. That's marked many residents as ineligible to vote, which then cast doubts over the citizenship. Even if a lot of these people, the vast majority of them, it seems, can actually present credible documents of citizenship. Conversely, locals told me that they've watched paperless Hindus, surrender to border guards, only to be reassured that Hindus, who face increasing attacks in Bangladesh, are welcome to stay in India. And as of 2024, that double standard is actually the lost land. Non-Muslim minorities from neighboring countries can get fast tracked for citizenship. But the buffer zone is not just a place of transit, you're saying plenty of people, Indian citizens even actually live there. Yeah, about 25,000 of them. And life is getting increasingly tiresome for them. Locals were telling me that some of them waste 45 hours daily with guards who dismantle their bikes, they stick rods or fingers into lunch boxes.

16:46In winter fog apparently, sometimes officers aren't really in the mood to man the tech point at all, which means that many stands of thousands of locals are stranded on either side. Rationing, which is meant to deter smuggling gangs, actually ends up depriving villages of adequate food, baby formula, sanitary pads. And all of this is now just status quo, that is all set to continue. That's set to continue or get more difficult for locals. So along the buffer zone, an actual fence is now supposed to come up. And that would permanently strand these citizens behind a literal lock. Carefu would then be from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. And because life is getting so arduous, most locals say we are happy to have a fence here if that's what the government thinks is needed for national security. We have desperate to move out of these borderlands, but these aren't rich folks. And so the government would need to compensate them fairly for their houses in land. And so far, the government doesn't seem interested in doing that. And then on the diplomatic side, it looks like India's domestic politics will continue to sour an already really bad diplomatic relationship with its neighbor.

17:55And you talk to Bangladesh's high commissioner here in Delhi, Riyadh Amadullah. He talks about the South Asian term, Isat, which is a respect or dignity. But it doesn't strike me that the BJP's vocabulary of termites and infiltrator has really leaves a lot of room for that. Kira, thanks very much for your time. Thank you Jason. The Winter Weather Notwithstanding, a great summer game is in full swing at Rohampton where the Whitney Cup final brings the 12 losses face to face with the Panthers. Polo, which is basically hockey on horseback, is perhaps the world's oldest team sport. Hamish Clayton writes about culture. An early version was played in Persia in the 6th century BC. And the modern game was formalized by British officers in India.

18:57It soon became the sport of elites. But now a surprising place dominates the Polo economy. Argentina. So why has Argentina done so well? To succeed in any industry, you need the raw materials. They already have plenty of horses which thrived in the Pampas region. These attracted gout shows, the local version of cowboys. So when the sport of Polo finally arrived in Argentina, it was a natural fit. Soon Argentine players were reckoned the world's best and remained so. 27 of the top 30 professionals are from Argentina.

19:58Industry soon followed. Argentine Polo families have created formidable breeding programs. Pumping out the world's greatest Polo ponies. Thousands of these ponies get shipped all around the world. Argentine breeders have also pioneered the cloning of ponies. Now many of them are copies of past Argentine grates. And some breeders now sell the folds of clones rather than the clones themselves to retain the intellectual property. It's the world, basically. Here's the best Polo in the world, it's here. With where we realize it's the top. This is the best. I caught up with Max Miliano Fernandez, a Polo player and manager, who's worked in the industry for his whole life. The breed in here is the top level. You play the highest school of Polo is here. It's the top top, you can get better than this.

21:02He's seen a huge amount of change in the past 25 years. In the area surrounding Pilar just outside of Buenos Aires. Every scrap of farmland is being bought up and turned into pristine Polo fields, clubs, stables and estates. Part of the success is down to regulators. The Polo Association has resisted red tape and embraced technology. And foreigners still bring plenty of money to Argentina's Polo bubble. As a result of this, the Polo world remains robust, even as Argentina's economy, bucks and rears. That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

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