Victoire?

April 9, 2022 Longrider French Matters, General News, Political 20

Le Pen might yet cause an upset in French politics.

The National Rally leader has closed the gap on Macron as the country prepares to vote – and the far right is scenting victory

This is the Guardian of course where everyone who disagrees with them is far right. Le Pen is a French nationalist and the Guardian likes nationalism – well, the Scottish and Welsh varieties anyway. But the very mention of French and English nationalism and they go into fits of hypocritical apoplexy.

The problem with Le Pen is that she is very much a business as usual French nationalist. The French economy has been stagnating for years – decades even. Certainly when I was living there I observed a public sector that makes ours seem slender and efficient in comparison. The whole thing is a massive job creation industry – bloated, inefficient and heavily unionised in the way that, say, the coal industry was in this country fifty years ago.

As a consequence there is massive bureaucracy and a tax burden that discourages new start-ups getting of the ground. Sarkozy tickled the surface of this with his auto entrepreneur tax scheme that lifted some of the burden off small businesses but it barely touched the underlying leviathan.

Le Pen is unlikely to do anything much about this. She is a pretty classic French nationalist and will keep a steady hand on the tiller – even if it does mean steering to the rocks.

But far right? No, not even close. Oh, she wants to do something about uncontrolled immigration. Ah, of course, silly me. She’s a Nazi like that Farage bloke.

20 Comments

  1. Everyone to the right of socialist Corbyn and Hitler is a far rght extremist according to Left now. Freedom, liberty are far rght extremist demands

    I hope Le Pen wins, it will send establishment into deranged fury again as Brexit, Orban and Trump did

    Little study here

    British media is becoming more divided and hysterical
    Descriptions of opposing ideologies as extreme are the new normal
    https://unherd.com/thepost/british-media-is-becoming-more-divided-and-hysterical/

  2. Wasn’t one of Corbyn’s slogans “For the many, not just the few.”? Soviet style communism was characterized by having a few elites who were doing alright while the rest of the population went without. The only system ever devised that provided for the many was free market capitalism. I presumed that he must have seen the light.

  3. I can’t see Le Pen winning overall. She’ll make it through to the next round, maybe even with more votes than Macron, because the French want Macro to suffer, even be taken down a peg or two.

    They will draw the line at putting Le Pen in the Élysée Palace though. I reckon she’ll lose in the second round, probably by only 10% of the voting margin, but she’ll still lose.

      • If Le Pen wins, and then bans Muslim headscarves, does that mean, in the interests of equality, shed loads of nuns are going to get criminal records?

  4. @John Galt
    I suspect you are right in that the entire Establishment will work against Le Pen if she gets through to the second round.

    Having said that, Macron is probably just ‘one adverse event’ away from losing… and there are so many possibilities at the moment. Possibilities that Macron can’t control.

    • I think the biggest fear the establishment has is that when Eric Zemmour is voted out in the first round he’ll advise those who voted for him to vote for Le Pen in the second round. Le Pen has already seen a huge influx of former Zemmour voters, disgusted with his stance on Russia and Ukraine.

      Macron will probably get a similar (but smaller) bump when Valérie Pécresse is forced out in the first round, but that’ll be it I think. The rest of the refugees (Hard Left through Centre Right) have no clear home to go to in a Macron vs Le Pen fight. They don’t like Macron and they won’t vote for Le Pen.

      My partners French, so we’ve got French election overload this weekend and during the second round. Coming from Midi-Pyrénées though, he thinks they’re all worthless scumbags.

      He might have a point. 😀

        • Agreed, but I’m sure there will be much conspiring to make sure that doesn’t happen, even if that means nominally “opposite” parties working together to bring her down.

          Le Pen would be good for France, in as much as she would hold a mirror up to the problems of the country rather than just ignoring those problems.

          More than likely though her presidential term would be opposed and frustrated by the denizens of the Deep State.

          Ah Well. Fingers Crossed.

          • e.g. Le Trump Francaise

            Agree about the right heads exploding. They need to – that crowd is getting far too smug thinking they will win everything, everywhere, from now on.

  5. I don’t know enough about French politics to definitely comment, but Le Pen would certainly upset the EU apple cart.

    I’m not sure in what way specifically, but, even if she were to become quite conciliatory towards it, the perception that things had fundamentally changed might take hold elsewhere. I don’t see how her election would weaken anti-EU sentiment elsewhere.

    She would have to live up to at least some of her rhetoric though and “defy” the EU, at least publically.

    I don’t know how much genuine anti-EU sentiment there is in France – that is to say actually want to leave rather than just wanting it back as something that exists for France’s convenience.

    Would Le Pen’s apparent disdain for the EU put people of voting for her if they think she might be a genuine threat to its continuation?

  6. Emmanuel Macron is et to face Marine Le Pen, exit polls predict 28% and 23% resepctively of the vote in the first round, according to projections by polling institute Ipsos.

    Left-wing Jean-Luc Mélenchon comes in third, with 20% of the vote. Zemmour got 7% and conservative Valérie Pécresse from Les Républicains 5%. Which implies 20% of the also ran vote was to the left and 32% to the right. Whether those votes transfer directly is questionable, much of the left-wing vote will stay home and some centre-right voters will back Macron rather than Le Pen.

    As expected Zammour has called for Le Pen and Valérie Pécresse has called for Macron (and lost her 15 million Euros in campaign costs for failing to obtain 5% of the vote)

    😀

  7. Le Pen is just a nationalist socialist, so nothing will change in France unfortunately if she gets there. She was dismal in her debate with macron last time and I don’t think she has improved in the last 5 years. She will give macron a run for his money but she won’t win I don’t think.

    It would be great if she did, but only for the reasons longrider suggested as economically and politically, it will be business as usual.

    Regarding the EU, the french voted 55-45 against Lisbon treaty back in 05. Unlike here though, they were promptly ignored by sarkozy. I suspect le pen will be like the italian guy who just folded against the eu.

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