Worried About Frexit

December 9, 2016 Longrider General News, Humour, Political 10

Hopefully, the Brexit vote started a cascade effect. Timothy Garton Ash is clearly worried.

Could President Marine Le Pen trigger article 50 without a parliamentary vote? Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty, that is, to take France out of the European Union, following Britain. Such is the question I find myself discussing in Paris with leading French experts. Provisional conclusion: since France, unlike Britain, is a presidential democracy, she could probably do it herself initially, but it would then require parliament to vote a revision of the French constitution. The mere fact that my French friends raise the question, even very hypothetically and three-quarters-jokingly, is a sign of the times. What was it Rousseau said? “To be sane in a world of madmen is in itself a kind of madness.”

I know how you feel, Tim, old boy. I’ve felt that for a long, long time… However, as with other EU countries, there is an underlying nationalism that is starting to come to the fore and reject the notion of the EU. Brexit seems to have given this a momentum. I recall back in the summer while at the TT, chatting to a German who said that there are many people in Germany watching with interest and hoping that we would vote to leave – not because they wanted to see the back of us; rather they want to see the back of the EU.

I’ve got a feeling, that Fillon will beat Le Pen to the presidency. However, if she does win it won’t be jackboots in the Elysee, nor concentration camps in L’Herault. Her polices are very much about nationalism and protectionism. The term “far right” has, like racist and homophobic, Islamophobic and all those other pejoratives bandied about by the progressives, become meaningless. Really, if she wins, the world won’t come to an end.

It is, of course, unthinkable that the leader of the rightwing, populist, anti-immigration Front National should become president of the French republic in elections next May.

Oh, I dunno, it’s perfectly thinkable. Indeed, a significant proportion of the French electorate are thinking precisely that.

Just as it was unthinkable that Britain should vote to leave the EU and unthinkable that the US would elect Donald Trump.

And they both happened. The world is still turning as well.

I have come here partly to seek reassurance that the unthinkable will not happen again, this time at the very heart of Europe. I will take the Eurostar back to London very far from reassured.

And they wonder why the term”snowflake” is on the rise.

Fillon has a combination of social conservatism and economic liberalism that is unusual in France, and he risks alienating voters on both counts. He takes conservative Catholic positions on issues such as surrogate motherhood and gay marriage. At the same time, he wants to deregulate the economy, slash 500,000 public sector jobs, reform the national health system and cut welfare benefits.

Given my experience of living in France, I can see the appeal…

Underneath is the general sense of malaise, with economic growth barely reaching 1% last year and close to 25% youth unemployment; a resentment one encounters at every turn against a political class seen as remote, self-serving and corrupt; and a widespread desire to give the whole bloody system a good kicking. While Fillon is not from the classic Parisian elite, he is clearly of the establishment. As one person close to Le Pen put it: “Fillon, il est système.” And then history just seems to be going this way at the moment, with Trump and Brexit normalising populist choices.

Ah, yeah, the old irregular verb – I am a democrat, you are a populist, she is a fascist. Any time the MSM uses the word “populism” as a pejorative, I stop listening. Not that I was paying them much attention in the first place…

What would she do about Europe? She wants a referendum on France’s membership of the EU: “I’m not afraid of the people.” She will organise the referendum, she says emphatically, and she will respect the result.

Good.

No, I’m not predicting Frexit. If there’s one thing you can safely say about the French it is that they don’t have a British attitude to Europe.

Uh… Paris isn’t France – even the French know that. Once you get out into the sticks, you will find that attitudes are rather different to those in the metropolitan areas. Much like the USA and here.

But Europe Day next 9 May, two days after France’s presidential decider, could be a gloomy one.

Oh, I dunno, could be fun. I’m going to start ordering in that popcorn mountain now, I think.

10 Comments

  1. I’m completely with you on this, it’s going to be highly enjoyable.
    The French left “progressives” have a difficult decision to make. Should they vote for Fillon with his Thatcher-lite policies to keep out a “far-right” Le Pen with her socialist agenda or vice versa. It’s a problem of their own making and one they thoroughly deserve to implode over.

  2. It’s very unlikely that Le Pen wins the 2nd round, but the margin will be much narrower than the 80-20 her father got. Fillon is a pretty good bet.

    And lest we forget, the French voted against Lisbon back in 2005…which was ignored and ratified anyway. So a referendum now has a better than even odd of rejecting the EU.

  3. I think the one thing we can say about this is that it is possible that Le Pen may be President. One would not have thought that 10 years or even 5 years ago. So, in that way much has changed. Tim Garton Ash just hasn’t caught up yet. When the “unthinkable” happens then the next “unthinkable” is very likely to happen. As for the French, I have no sympathy for a people that have consistently kicked the can into the long grass of easy comfort for decades. They’ve enjoyed their “strike at the drop of a hat” unions, very fat public salaries, hugely long lunches, heavily subsidised farming payments courtesy of the CAP, and sucking at the teat of German War guilt. Not only have they been having the gateaux, they’ve been scoffing it too. They are on the horns of a dilemma of their own making. Now is the time for hard choices.

    Personally I’d like to see Le Pen win, because it will achieve two victories. Firstly, it will put the ROP followers in their place. Being French comes before being muslim as far as FN are concerned, and rightly so. Secondly and more importantly it removes at a stroke the very premise of having an EU in the first place (to prevent France and Germany going to war with each other). Once you remove one of the symbolic protagonists – it’s game over.

    • As regular readers are aware, I spent two years living in France and I was very sorry to have to leave. However, the civil service and the bureaucracy of the public sector that makes ours look minuscule in comparison, was a source of frustration. There was an Asterix cartoon that skitted the process. When we had to register our vehicles out there, we discovered that this cartoon was their operating manual.

    • Amazing how the ‘unthinkable’ seems to have been in the forefront of many minds, because despite Mr Garton-Ash’s disbelief, many have been thinking about a possible Frexit for quite some time.

      Am putting in my next order for popcorn before the price goes sky high. May also have to buy heavy duty ear defenders to tone down the noise from exploding heads.

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