Talking Politics

We revisit our interview with the economist Thomas Piketty recorded the week Emmanuel Macron won the French presidency and David and Helen ask what we have learned since. Where does Macron fit on the left/right political spectrum? What has his cult of personality done to French politics? And are we anywhere nearer knowing how to tackle the problem of inequality? The last in our series of updates from the Talking Politics archive.Show Notes:Why isn’t inequality having a more primary effect on our politics? Are ethnic and nationalist divisions trumping class divisions?Piketty’s research shows that nothing is pre-ordained, but it often takes a crisis to reorient politics.In the 20th century, war plays this role. If you take war out of it, what happens?Can democracies deal with inequality without a crisis? Is there a democratic path to redress inequality? Macron relatively quickly became a politician of the centre-right.This shouldn’t have been a surprise. What was harder t