Hello, my name is David Runseman and this is Talking Politics.

And I'm delighted to say we're joined for this special edition today by Tom Arpickity, author of Capital in the 21st Century,

which I think I can say is the most important book about economics that's been published so far in the 21st Century,

that was a way to go. Tom Ars also a very prominent figure in French political life as a commentator also as an advisor.

And I'm joined by Hugo Droschon, who's been writing about the French presidential election for the new statesmen and others.

Tom Ars here, he's just given a pair of lectures on the broad theme of inequality and it's touched a lot on politics.

Those lectures have been filmed and we will post the link so that people can watch them online.

We're speaking the morning after the French presidential debate between Macron and Le Pen, that Macron was thought to have won,

but then Harry Clinton was thought to have won her debate with Donald Trump.

Let's not go there. But we're speaking obviously before the vote this weekend.

We have some idea of what might happen, but we don't know for certain.

But Tom Ars, we could go back to the first round.

The most striking thing was that the two main parties, the mainstream parties, were not able either of them to get a candidate through to the second round.

So broadly, what is driving that, and that's a phenomenon we see in different parts of the democratic world,

will come onto the particular problem for social democracy in a second.

But what do you think is the primary driver of this inability for the mainstream parties to command the vote they used to command?

Well, there are long run evolution in the structure of the electorate of left-wing parties.

There are long run evolution and the challenges that they face, and there are also more shorter run problems.

So in the particular case of France and the Eurozone more generally, in the past 10 years, the parties in power,

and so in particular, the socialist party in the past five years, and the right-wing party,

Sarkozy, the five years before, have done a terrible job with the financial crisis.

So the fact that voters are fed up with them and want to try something else is not so surprising.

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