NO WESTERN democracy seems immune to today’s backlash against globalisation and economic liberalism. Since the financial crisis of 2008, distrust of markets and a renewed faith in the state has challenged the old orthodoxy and emerged as a resurgent political force. America has elected the protectionist Donald Trump. Britain entrusted leadership of the Labour Party to a far-left veteran, Jeremy Corbyn. Greece brought Syriza to power. Italy’s Five Star Movement helped to defeat Matteo Renzi. Yet, in one unlikely corner of Europe, mainstream politicians are defying the anti-market trend: France.

France? At first glance, there could scarcely be a more improbable recruit for liberal economics. This is a country which romanticises a muscular anti-capitalist struggle, and whose people are more distrustful of globalisation than those anywhere else. Its public sector consumes 57% of GDP, six points above even that stripped-pine model of Scandinavian solidarity, Sweden. France teaches school pupils to answer such philosophy questions as “What do we owe the state?” One candidate for next spring’s presidential election uses the hammer and sickle as her logo—but is not even in the Communist Party, which she regards as too soft.

And yet, while attention on France focuses on the protectionist populism of Marine Le Pen, something strange is taking hold in the political mainstream. The old guardians of statist intervention are packing their bags, by choice (the unpopular Socialist president, François Hollande, has decided not to seek re-election) or eviction (the veteran Alain Juppé lost the centre-right Republican primary). Into their place have stepped leading presidential aspirants who are remarkably liberal and reformist.

Exhibit A is François Fillon, the Republican nominee. An unapologetic admirer of Margaret Thatcher, the ex-prime minister vows to shrink the state and cut the labour code to 150 crisp pages, from over 3,000 today. “If I had to sum up my project in one word,” wrote Mr Fillon in a book, “I would choose: liberty.” Exhibit B is Manuel Valls, who this week resigned as prime minister to run in the Socialist primary next month. He is a disciple of Michel Rocard, prime minister in 1988-91, whose moderate social democracy differed markedly from the orthodox socialism of his president, François Mitterrand. As Mr Valls seeks to broaden his vote, he may sound a less reformist note. Yet he shares more with Tony Blair (including a tough line on law-and-order) than with Mr Corbyn. He once accused the Socialists of being “haunted by a Marxist super-ego”, and wrote that there is “no longer a global alternative to the capitalist system and the market economy”.

Then there is Emmanuel Macron, the young ex-economy minister, who is running for president as an independent. Operating out of offices strewn with take-away food boxes and filled with young people with laptops, he hopes to draw voters from both left and right with a cross-party pitch for a pro-European, innovation-friendly form of “progressive” politics, to take on conservative populist nationalism.

Put these three rival candidates together in a Paris salon and they would vigorously deny common ground. Yet their thinking shares an underpinning: that France needs to tame the state and free the individual if its economy is to grow and create jobs. Polls suggest that, together, the trio enjoy majority support —51%—in French public opinion. In a country that dignifies l’État with a capital letter, this is quite breathtaking.

This shift may hint at Gallic contrariness. The French like to take a hard look at global trends, then wilfully strike off in a different direction. In the 1980s, when Thatcher and Reagan preached laissez-faire economics, Mitterrand nationalised banks and factories, and shortened working hours. In the early 2000s, when Germany deregulated labour markets, France brought in the 35-hour week. But the underlying explanation is empirical observation. French politicians, raised on theoretical principles, are responding to evidence. Decades of above-average state spending have brought fast trains, well-stocked municipal flower beds and high-quality health care—but above-average unemployment and below-average growth. Facts are taking their revenge.

Such a dose of realism does not mean, however, that the battle of ideas has been won. Au contraire. Mr Valls, who secured less than 6% of the vote when he ran in the Socialist primary in 2011, faces sundry far-left rivals at the primary (including Arnaud Montebourg, author of a book on “deglobalisation”), as well as Communist-backed left-wingers outside the party (among them a strong candidate, Jean-Luc Mélenchon). The Socialist Party could yet fluff this historic choice and condemn itself, Corbyn-style, to irrelevance or even extinction.

What’s French for laissez-faire?

The greatest risk of all, though, is not to the party, but the country. It is that these liberal-minded candidates, with all the right instincts, fail to find a way to speak to those left behind by the market forces they endorse. For there is one French political leader who does, and with chilling success: Ms Le Pen. As the Socialist Party retreats into its narrow world of public-sector employees and cosmopolitan parquet-floored folk, the French blue-collar vote has turned to her. Thanks in part to its protectionism, her National Front is now the favourite party of working-class voters.

What lies ahead in France is not just a fight over identity and sovereignty. It is also about how the country can create and defend jobs, incomes, services and pensions. Unfashionable policy prescriptions will be up against populist sloganeering. Ms Le Pen will lose no time accusing her rivals of a plot to strip out the French social safety-net and demolish workers’ rights. She is well placed to beat Mr Valls into a run-off against Mr Fillon next May; her victory cannot be ruled out. France’s election will be a momentous test of the capacity of liberal-democratic candidates to fashion an alternative to populism. They can’t afford to fail.