Mother Of All Tail Risks
"Demagogues and nationalists on the rise is bad for our nation, it's bad for Europe and it's bad for France's place in Europe and in the world," a stern-looking Emmanuel Macron said, dissolving the French parliament and calling a snap vote.
Macron's Renaissance party was summarily routed by Marine Le Pen's National Rally in elections for the EU's legislative body, where "routed" means Rassemblement National doubled him up with 32% of the vote to 15%. France elects 81 of the EU parliament's 720
Belgium too. 1930s echoes?
It is too bad that Macron did not listen more carefully to what the French voters have been trying to tell him, especially with respect to green energy and immigration (and the resulting problems of crime, homelessness etc.).
An effective leader should be able to not only set a vision for the future of the country, but also respond to the current needs of the people. Not an easy path to navigate, but it appears he wasn’t listening as carefully as he should have been.
We have the same problems the US/Biden has.
The laws that govern asylum seeking are broken. To me, they seem to assume that asylum seekers will be few and generally honest (i.e., they’re really running from governments that seek to jail/kill them specifically). In practice, it’s become a way for whole population experiencing difficulties/tragedies at home to run to a safer, better place.
Reforming those laws is therefore crucial. But right wing parties are loath to actually do so when they’re not in power. It’s too damn comfortable to always have a stick to beat the opposition with. And, tbf, at least in the case of the UK, even when they’re in power, they don’t always bother to fix the problem anyhow. Not sure if Orban actually did something.
But, yeah, it feels like a big gamble for Macron. Maybe he thinks that, even if he has to tolerate 3 years of cohabitation (sharing power with a RN prime minister), it’ll be to France’s advantage as they’ll have to run on their track record and, obviously, they’ll fail to fix crime, inflation and immigration (as those problems would require smarts, an iron will, loose morality and an ability to convince our European partners to fix).
My main fear is that Ukraine pays the price if the gamble fails. Ukraine first and then everyone else, as the authoritarian camp adds France to its nauseous Axis…
Yeah, and I mean what happens if Le Pen wins in 2027 and it turns out she’s — you know — actually her father’s daughter, not this cleaned up, polished, relatively moderate version she’s worked so hard to cultivate?
Personally, I don’t doubt it for a second.
Sure, they’ve dressed up and have tighter message discipline. But they’re still fascists at heart. Every time you dig into their entourage background, you get the same load of skinheads, neo-nazis etc
They’d love Putin even if they weren’t paid/bought by him.
I do not understand the UK at all. The people voted for Brexit and then the country continued to have immigrants at a rate of several million/year- under Tory leadership, no less.
Huh?
They needed them, to replace all the EU citizens they discouraged from staying… It’s hilarious, really. Oh, you’re pissed off with the Kowalskis and their Polish ways? Well, welcome Mr. Abubakar, from Nigeria. We hope the culture shock will be less.
The times they are a-changin’…
As a general statement, you, sir, and Bob D are correct. The thing is, how much can they change and still leave our investments/economy, in some balance. There is a tip point where too much change will destroy our asset values and the wealth distribution in our country will be significantly disturbed. People who know my comments know that I frequently point out that the US consumes 25% of the world’s resources to serve only 4% of its population. As more and more nations choose nationalism, they will wake up to this truth and seek redress for better pieces of the pie, surely at our expense. Among the biggest problems will be India and China with equal populations totaling around 2.9 bil people, 35% of the world’s total. India has a per capita GDP of around $2500/yr and China checks in with 5x that much. The US records about $81,000 in per capita GDP, by comparison. Nationalists, I strongly suspect don’t care for this situation very much. There will be no changing of “times” that will benefit the US in the long run. India and China are dividing a total GDP of 20 Tril over 35% of the world while we spread our 25 Tril over just 4.3% of the world. We just can’t keep that up forever.
We either will have to face the reallocation of the pie, as you stated, or we develop a new, unlimited, energy source for all (nuclear and/or solar).
I am, figuratively and literally, voting for the development of unlimited energy.
https://www.terrapower.com/downloads/grounbreaking-press-release.pdf
+1
The pie isn’t fixed. The economy is very much not a zero sum game…
US real GDP/pp may hold while China + India real GDP/pp grow. China has demographic challenges, in addition to other oft-discussed problems. India has all sorts of challenges, including political, education, infrastructure, and (it was pointed out to me) AI.
Its also possible that Macron wagers/hedges, in his Brexit-like gamble with the snap elections, that if the French vote in enough RN representatives, and Bardella is installed as PM, the country will see their inability to govern…and that will forestall the election of Le Pen. And yes she would govern as her father’s daughter, as well as continue being dumb-as-dirt. I’ve watched Macron debate her and she came across like an angry Jehovah’s Witness arguing on your front step before you close the door….
I disagree. Macron is a master debater and knew the subject-matter far more deeply than she did (the man had once an 8 hour marathon session with French mayors in fairly free form Q&A – he had to handle their questions on a very wide range of topics in ways that could satisfy them. That he managed that is nothing short of amazing)… but she’s not stupid and she knows her talking points well.
I’d actually go as far as to say that her sometimes intelligent remarks are wasted on her crowd. They ignore all the not-dumb points she make and only react when she’s throwing them red meat (with shouts of “on est chez nous!” – we’re in our home)
Leaving for a couple of weeks in France tonight. Excellent timing!
The Olympics? God help you!
Mais non! Wine tour of Bordeaux.