APPARENTLY, Africa’s struggles with poverty are “civilisational”. Too many women on the continent are having too many children, and all this breeding mean that “one can use and dispense billions of euros” in foreign aid and still achieve nothing.

These racist tropes are common enough in Daily Mail editorials, and this one is easily refuted for anyone who cares to check the facts (of all African countries, only Niger has a fertility rate even approaching seven). But these words aren’t from some hell-bent reactionary. Instead they were spoken at the ultra-elite G20 by the liberal poster boy, French President Emmanuel Macron.

Greek academic Yanis Varoufakis wrote, referring to Macron’s battle with Le Pen, “the imperative to oppose racism trumps opposition to neoliberal policies”. It’s a worthy sentiment, and I can’t disagree with it. Nor can I pretend that French citizens of African descent would be safer under a Front National presidency. However, to portray neoliberalism and racism as opposing forces very quickly leads to trouble, as we see with Macron, who treats the whole continent of Africa as “scroungers”.

Neoliberals believe that rich people get the rewards they deserve in the marketplace. It takes only the slightest stretch of the imagination to claim that the global gap between rich and poor countries must reflect a variation in effort or talent. Why are European nations rich while African nations are poor? Every child asks that question at some point. And the neoliberal Macrons of the world have a childish answer: Europeans are richer because they worked hard and played by the rules.

A veneer of political correctness can often disguise sentiments every bit as racist as a Melanie Phillips column. Contempt for poverty and contempt for black people aren’t always the same thing, but they are related pathologies. Macron’s casual racism springs from his elitism.

He’s contemptuous of his own country too – France simply isn’t as vigorous as Britain and America, so he’s intent on reforming it to tip-top Anglo-Saxon specifications.

Four months after a landslide victory, he’s now, relative to his time in office, the most unpopular leader in French history. Spending £24,000 on make-up probably didn’t help his reputation for vanity. And there’s worse to come: he’s tanking in the polls before he really gets down to business.

In coming months, Macron plans punishing spending cuts and a Thatcherite experiment in labour laws. These will be about as popular as a Findus crispy pancake at a five-star bistro, so his best hope of forcing them through is the absence of any parliamentary opposition.

“Macron’s popularity is even lower than Francois Hollande’s was at this stage, but there is no credible alternative, so Macron remains at the centre of the game,” a French think tank has noted.

Where liberals attack working- class jobs, and mainstream politics offers feeble opposition, anti-establishment parties tend to thrive. Hopefully the French left will gain new forces and influence. Hopefully. Because the most likely beneficiary from Macron’s arrogance will be Marine Le Pen’s Front National: sadly, despite their defeat in May, they are still better organised, better funded and more experienced than the socialists.

Does all this French angst matter over here? It does, because most British liberal commentators adore Macron, while despising say, Trump. Macron stands for the dream of returning to a progressive “pro-European” centrist consensus, Blairism minus the authoritarian, Iraq-invading excesses. He’s the Hillary Clinton who won. He’s the model example of neoliberalism beating populist racism.

Many leftist critics responded that Macron today would mean Le Pen in five years’ time. And I see the sense in this point, Macron’s wager is that, by turning France into a laboratory of neoliberal experiments, slashing working conditions and public spending, he’ll be rewarded with an economic rebound. It’s a risk, to say the least. Putting all ideology aside, Western capitalist economies aren’t looking vigorous anywhere, no matter how unregulated their labour markets are. And everyone else is competing in a race to the bottom, so his tactics are hardly path-breakingly original.

He might get lucky. Maybe there will be a global upswing in five years and he’ll keep his grip on power. But the most likely scenario is failure, and since Macron now dominates the French political centre, a Le Pen victory is certainly a possible outcome.

Socialists are often encouraged to put aside their differences with liberals to fight racism, but this high-minded sentiment only takes us so far. Getting behind the Macrons and Clintons of the world involves us in a limitless counter-insurgency against racist populism. As we know from America’s Heart of Darkness tribute in Iraq and Afghanistan, counter-insurgency without an endgame is a doomed strategy. Doubling down on neoliberalism, a la Macron, will likely produce Western horrors to match Isis.

Centrist leaders briefly tried to learn the lessons of the financial crash in 2007/08. A decade on, they’ve abandoned all critical thought. Tragically, and most dangerously, only the hard right seem to have learned any lessons from the crisis of capitalism.

Liberals are simultaneously petrified of populism and racism, and they are naive about its economic causes. Socialists need independence from these liberals to carve an economic alternative that lifts people out of poverty and empowers workers. Otherwise, we’re simply postponing the inevitable nativist takeover of Europe with platitudes of continental unity.