French politics | Macron calls shock GE

Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
If I can offer an “insider's” take on this?
I should explain that I vote in all French elections, presidential and legislative (they are separate) and have done for many years. I voted on Sunday. I suppose I still have the right to vote in British elections (maybe not, actually) but don't, and haven't for years, because it seems to me to be not quite honest to want to influence the future of a country that I no longer live in, do not pay taxes in, and do not expect to live in again. I hold a British passport and am perfectly proud to have been born in — and grown up in — the UK. No problems with saying that. But it is the business of UK residential citizens to determine the future of their country. That's the way I see it, right or wrong, for better or worse. (And also, to some extent, it is the businees of long-term foreign residents in the UK, but that's another argument, and I'm not interested in getting into it).

These are strange times. Nobody expected Macron to call this snap election. It caught everyone on the hop (maybe not the extreme right). The more I think about it, I think Macron is playing a huge poker game, and for very high stakes.
He is in effect saying, “Ok. You want this? You really want this? Bardella as prime minister? (with Marine Le Pen standing behind him as his « éminence grise »). Living out the next two to three years in an extremely uncomfortable «cohabitation» with me? ” The RN have played their cards very cleverly: Bardella is the acceptable face of the far right, for a lot of people who would otherwise be uneasy about voting for them. He is well turned out, young (28), well spoken. In short, a nice lad, what the French call « le gendre parfait », the pefect son-in-law who you would be happy to have your daughter bring home and who would eventually ask for her hand in marriage. At the same time, he appears to come from impeccably working-class origins, having grown up on a council estate in the 93 (Seine St Denis, « département » heavily connoted for its rap artists, its council estates, its sizeable immigrant population, etc., etc., i.e. all the things that the media seize on). It's a bit more complicated than that, of course: his father, who left when he was very young, is the managing director of a company living in a completely different area. And he saw him every week growing up.
The next presidential election is due for spring 2027. That would be nearly three years of the centre-right attempting to govern with the extreme right. Macron is saying this to all those goodly citizens who turned out on Sunday to vote for the Rassemblement National. By the way, one in two of all those eligible to vote turned out. Historically, the turnout for European elections is always very low (all over Europe, in fact). He's counting on the fact that a) quite a few of those who voted RN, a significant proportion, wanted to register a protest vote, but when push comes to shove, they will vote for Renaissance candidates (Macron's party, formerly known as La République en marche) or one of the centre-right or centre-left parties — in short, that they will defect when it comes to an election that really counts; b) he is counting on the fact that the left parties, the Parti Socialiste, the various green parties, and above all, la France Insoumise, which is well to the left of the centre-left parties, will present a united front and vote strategically for Macron in order to block the way against the RN.
This could really backfire. Precisely because those who voted RN may well say, “No, fuck you, we've had you for several years, we voted for you in the last two presidential elections, believing in a moderate right-wing solution to France's problems. We've not been particularly impressed, we're sticking with Bardella/Le Pen.”

I can well imagine it.

I can also well imagine voters for the Parti Socialiste, and especially La France Insoumise (well to the left of them),
equally saying, with equal vehemence, “No, fuck you, you've depended on our vote, given with bile and bitterness in our throats, to get you in the last two times. We had to turn out to do this as far back as April 2002, when we voted in Chirac (a liar and a cheat, in our eyes) to stop Jean-Marie Le Pen (a crypto-fascist, and not so crypto, actually) becoming president. We're sick of it. You brought this on France. Now live with it.”

I just don't know. Nobody much does, I believe. But all scenarios are plausible. All bets are off.

For anyone who wants a really illuminating background to France and its recurrent political crises, with the advantage of the long view, and written very accessibly: Michel Winock, La Fièvre hexagonale : les grandes crises politiques 1871-1968, published in 2009. Checking Amazon, I see that it does not appear to have been translated — which is a great pity.
Click to expand...
Good post
 
Well, today's the day, and I admit I'm pretty tense. The prospect of having three hundred far-right « députés » in the « assemblée » by this evening or rather, two weeks from now, is deeply disturbing. Imagine three hundred Farage-type M.P.s in the House of Commons, and you've got it.
Off to vote soon. My « circonscription » (constituency) is an interesting case where there is no chance of a three-cornered contest. It's a straight face-off, I'm pretty sure, between the left (far-left if you want to call it that, although I don't) and the far right (and they do have to be called the far right, since they are explicitly repudiated by Macron and most other centre-right parties, and Le Pen's Rassemblement National explicitly repudiates them in their turn).

If I could, I would scan the leaflets we've received several times in our letter box and put them on here.
The RN's one is extraordinary. I've never seen anything quite like it in all the elections I've voted in, both in the UK or France. There is a huge photo of Le Pen standing next to Bardella. To find out who the local candidate is — don't forget that this is not a presidential election, but a « legislative », and thus nominally closer to a British general election: that is, in theory, you're voting for a local candidate who is supposed to be representing your constituency, as well as, obviously, representing the party line on national issues. As I say, you have to actually search around on the leaflet to find a vastly smaller photo of the RN candidate at the bottom. And although nominally Bardella is the head of the RN, Le Pen is standing right next to him and — some would say — if you look carefully you can see that he's got a lever in his back and Le Pen's got her hand on it! She's been photoshopped to look like something out of an American tv series, maybe Dallas or Baywatch. They've bot got bland, reassuring smiles on their faces. They've been cunningly advised and coached by their team of spin doctors.
Fair enough, you might say. The Front Populaire candidate is not exactly scowling on their leaflet. No politician in their right mind would be. Simply, right behind the reassuring facade of the Bardella/Le Pen twinship, there is a phalanx of hard-line Rassemblement National national committee members and behind that a bigger phalanx of hard-line grass roots militants who in the weeks since the election was called have been coming out in social media with brazenly homophobic and racist comments, as if to say, “We're coming, and in a few weeks, you won't be able to do a single thing about it”. Good God, the first round of voting hasn't even taken place yet! But it shows what's in store, if they get the overall majority in the assemblée.
No even vaguely left-leaning, or indeed centre-right leaning, citizen should be staying at home today, if any of them care about what the République represents. It would be downright irresponsible. There are things I don't like about the Front Populaire's programme — they've made some irresponsible claims about things they're going to do, things that they simply can't hold good on (and things that I just simply disagree with, actually) and I've already said that Mélenchon's got an arrogant and testy side to him that puts off a fair number of people who would otherwise have no problem voting for La France Insoumise. But I know which way my vote must go.
Oh, by the way, I'm directly concerned, since the most recent line from the RN has been about how people holding dual nationality are “shady” types, somehow suspect, not to be trusted. So I am all of those things, according to them. I've lived in France for forty-five years (give or take a few in Wales and east Asia), I pay my taxes, I've been a functionary of the French state for over two decades, my son is a member of the French army. But I'm “not to be trusted”, apparently.
Waiting with bated breath, like millions of others, for the results this evening.
 
Last edited:
LesBleuMiserable said:
Is that what the feel is or exit polls? Are the elections not today?
Click to expand...

I think it’s hard to gauge because the election has multiple rounds but what seems clear from the opinion polls is that the centre ground has been lost.

Last I saw RN are expected to get a plurality at 37%, Macron’s centrists 20% and the far left 28%. Those three are all likely to go through to the second round as you need 12.5% of the vote for that - but it is unlikely that anybody gets over 50% for a majority.

Then it’s a question of where the remaining 15% fall in the second round. Whatever the case, the far right are likely to have far more seats and therefore a much bigger voice, but whether it will be enough to form a majority block is the key question.

I don’t know how the lower house works in France but I’m wondering if maybe the centre and left can form some kind of coalition. Because the far left party’s policies are nice in theory but often lack the sense of fiscal robustness that the centre brings to the table. So then you’d hopefully get a situation where the left lead the policy agenda but the centre have to agree the policy can be effectively financed. Somebody more educated than me can tell us if that would work in practice.
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
Well, today's the day, and I admit I'm pretty tense. The prospect of having three hundred far-right « députés » in the « assemblée » by this evening or rather, two weeks from now, is deeply disturbing. Imagine three hundred Farage-type M.P.s in the House of Commons, and you've got it.
Off to vote soon. My « circonscription » (constituency) is an interesting case where there is no chance of a three-cornered contest. It's a straight face-off, I'm pretty sure, between the left (far-left if you want to call it that, although I don't) and the far right (and they do have to be called the far right, since they are explicitly repudiated by Macron and most other centre-right parties, and Le Pen's Rassemblement National explicitly repudiates them in their turn).

If I could, I would scan the leaflets we've received several times in our letter box.
The RN's one is extraordinary. I've never seen anything quite like it in all the elections I've voted in, both in the UK or France. There is a huge photo of Le Pen standing next to Bardella. To find out who the local candidate is — don't forget that this is not a presidential election, but a « legislative », and thus nominally closer to a British general election: that is, in theory, you're voting for a local candidate who is supposed to be representing your constituency, as well as, obviously, representing the party line on national issues. As I say, you have to actually search around on the leaflet to find a vastly smaller photo of the RN candidate at the bottom. And although nominally Bardella is the head of the RN, Le Pen is standing right next to him and — some would say — if you look carefully you can see that he's got a lever in his back and Le Pen's got her hand on it! She's been photoshopped to look like something out of an American tv series, maybe Dallas or Baywatch. They've bot got bland, reassuring smiles on their faces. They've been cunningly advised and coached by their team of spin doctors.
Fair enough, you might say. The Front Populaire candidate is not exactly scowling on their leaflet. No politician in their right mind would be. Simply, right behind the reassuring facade of the Bardella/Le Pen twinship, there is a phalanx of hard-line Rassemblement National national committee members and behind that a bigger phalanx of hard-line grass roots militants who in the weeks since the election was called have been coming out in social media with brazenly homophobic and racist comments, as if to say, “We're coming, and in a few weeks, you won't be able to do a single thing about it”. Good God, the first round of voting hasn't even taken place yet! But it shows what's in store, if they get the overall majority in the assemblée.
No even vaguely left-leaning, or indeed centre-right leaning, citizen should be staying at home today, if any of them care about what the République represents. It would be downright irresponsible. There are things I don't like about the Front Populaire's programme — they've made some irresponsible claims about things they're going to do, things that they simply can't hold good on (and things that I just simply disagree with, actually) and I've already said that Mélenchon's got an arrogant and testy side to him that puts off a fair number of people who would otherwise have no problem voting for La France Insoumise. But I know which way my vote must go.
Oh, by the way, I'm directly concerned, since the most recent line from the RN has been about how people holding dual nationality are “shady” types, somehow suspect, not to be trusted. So I am all of those things, according to them. I've lived in France for forty-five years (give or take a few in Wales and east Asia), I pay my taxes, I've been a functionary of the French state for over two decades, my son is a member of the French army. But I'm “not to be trusted”, apparently.
Waiting with bated breath, like millions of others, for the results this evening.
Click to expand...
Feel for you, mate. I assume that the ‘dual passport owner’ piece is not aimed at you per se, more those coming from middle/east or Africa?
 
The Future’s Blue! said:
Feel for you, mate. I assume that the ‘dual passport owner’ piece is not aimed at you per se, more those coming from middle/east or Africa?
Click to expand...

And you'd almost certainly be right. And that's a racist outlook, if ever I saw one. I occasionally say to people, “Of course, I'm an immigrant, you know.” And some of them do a double take on me, as if to say, “No you can't be — you're white!”
 
Lovebitesandeveryfing said:
Well, today's the day, and I admit I'm pretty tense. The prospect of having three hundred far-right « députés » in the « assemblée » by this evening or rather, two weeks from now, is deeply disturbing. Imagine three hundred Farage-type M.P.s in the House of Commons, and you've got it.
Off to vote soon. My « circonscription » (constituency) is an interesting case where there is no chance of a three-cornered contest. It's a straight face-off, I'm pretty sure, between the left (far-left if you want to call it that, although I don't) and the far right (and they do have to be called the far right, since they are explicitly repudiated by Macron and most other centre-right parties, and Le Pen's Rassemblement National explicitly repudiates them in their turn).

If I could, I would scan the leaflets we've received several times in our letter box.
The RN's one is extraordinary. I've never seen anything quite like it in all the elections I've voted in, both in the UK or France. There is a huge photo of Le Pen standing next to Bardella. To find out who the local candidate is — don't forget that this is not a presidential election, but a « legislative », and thus nominally closer to a British general election: that is, in theory, you're voting for a local candidate who is supposed to be representing your constituency, as well as, obviously, representing the party line on national issues. As I say, you have to actually search around on the leaflet to find a vastly smaller photo of the RN candidate at the bottom. And although nominally Bardella is the head of the RN, Le Pen is standing right next to him and — some would say — if you look carefully you can see that he's got a lever in his back and Le Pen's got her hand on it! She's been photoshopped to look like something out of an American tv series, maybe Dallas or Baywatch. They've bot got bland, reassuring smiles on their faces. They've been cunningly advised and coached by their team of spin doctors.
Fair enough, you might say. The Front Populaire candidate is not exactly scowling on their leaflet. No politician in their right mind would be. Simply, right behind the reassuring facade of the Bardella/Le Pen twinship, there is a phalanx of hard-line Rassemblement National national committee members and behind that a bigger phalanx of hard-line grass roots militants who in the weeks since the election was called have been coming out in social media with brazenly homophobic and racist comments, as if to say, “We're coming, and in a few weeks, you won't be able to do a single thing about it”. Good God, the first round of voting hasn't even taken place yet! But it shows what's in store, if they get the overall majority in the assemblée.
No even vaguely left-leaning, or indeed centre-right leaning, citizen should be staying at home today, if any of them care about what the République represents. It would be downright irresponsible. There are things I don't like about the Front Populaire's programme — they've made some irresponsible claims about things they're going to do, things that they simply can't hold good on (and things that I just simply disagree with, actually) and I've already said that Mélenchon's got an arrogant and testy side to him that puts off a fair number of people who would otherwise have no problem voting for La France Insoumise. But I know which way my vote must go.
Oh, by the way, I'm directly concerned, since the most recent line from the RN has been about how people holding dual nationality are “shady” types, somehow suspect, not to be trusted. So I am all of those things, according to them. I've lived in France for forty-five years (give or take a few in Wales and east Asia), I pay my taxes, I've been a functionary of the French state for over two decades, my son is a member of the French army. But I'm “not to be trusted”, apparently.
Waiting with bated breath, like millions of others, for the results this evening.
Click to expand...
Very disconcerting times for the 5th republic...
Fingers crossed that enough like you hold their noses and do the decent thing..
 
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