“The French don’t see the cordon sanitaire.”
That was the message on Tuesday from Éric Ciotti, leader of France’s mainstream conservatives.
“Cordon sanitaire” is a reference to the de facto ban on alliances with the country’s far-right. Ciotti, during an interview with TF1, suggested tie-ups with Marine Le Pen are no longer politically taboo.
It was an unfortunate display born of desperation. The party’s facing something that looks at lot like irrelevancy. Projections suggest The Republicans will come away with as few as 40 seats following snap elections in three weeks. The party, Ciotti said, is now “too weak” to survive on its own.
French voters, he went on, see not a pariah in Le Pen. Rather, they “see diminished purchasing power, they see insecurity [and] they see the flood of migrants.” French lawmakers, including many from Ciotti’s party, see a coward proposing a Faustian bargain.
“[He] sold his soul for a plate of lentils,” Valérie Pécresse despaired. “Honor, righteousness [and] conviction can’t be bought,” she added. “The Republicans must immediately denounce any proposed agreement with RN.” Olivier Marleix, who heads the party’s parliamentary group, called for Ciotti’s resignation. Gérard Larcher, the president of the French senate, did the same.
Ciotti’s call for an alliance with Le Pen is a big deal. To describe it as a break with precedent would be to materially understate the case. The political establishment in France doesn’t permit the empowerment of the far-right, for reasons I assume are obvious.
Notwithstanding Le Pen’s absurdist claims to Gaullism, forging an alliance between the French Republican right and RN is tantamount to urinating in the churchyard at Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises.
“[T]he heir to General de Gaulle cannot be the crutch of the French extreme right,” Vincent Jeanbrun, mayor of L’Haÿ-les-Roses, seethed. Julien Dive, another Les Républicains lawmaker, was especially brutal. He called Ciotti a Nazi: “We know that Eric would not have crossed the channel in 1940.”
“Jacques Chirac died a second time today,” Yaël Braun-Pivet wrote on social media, accusing Ciotti of “assassinating” The Republicans.
And on and on. You get the idea. It’s bad. What Ciotti did was bad. And shameless. Forget whether he can live it down, he’s just killed the party. Scores will doubtlessly resign. Some already have.
Ciotti’s big idea is to fuse the 40-55 seats The Republicans were likely to come away with in the snap vote with the RN’s projected 235 to 265 seats to secure an absolute majority. If that sounds to you like a pathetic attempt to stave off oblivion by pandering to France’s führer-in-waiting, that’s because it is.
“We say the same things [as RN] so let’s stop pretending to be in opposition,” Ciotti mused, during the same TF1 interview. “This is what the vast majority of our voters want. They tell us ‘reach a deal’.”
Ciotti’s already been on the phone with Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, who apparently promised to spare what’s left of The Republicans by not running candidates against their MPs. Contingent, of course, on an alliance. Join us or die. That was their message.
Bardella also spoke to Reconquest leader Marion Maréchal about a potential tie-up. If you’re unfamiliar, she’s Le Pen’s niece. And Jean Marie’s granddaughter.
Henri Philippe Bénoni Omer Joseph Pétain 2?
Yeah… TBH, the Republicans were indeed dead in the water.
Basically, they have the same problem as old establishment GOP. They want to marry conservative social values (at least conservative within the French context) and fiscal conservatism. That’s basically very few people (in France or in the USA).
What (right leaning) people want is populism – conservative social values and fiscal spending (but only for the in-group). And, slowly but surely, this is what the right is becoming – business elites get overwhelmed, fiscal discipline (always a bit of a lie, if we’re honest) get trampled and you get some sort of more or less soft/hard fascism.
The tie that binds and blinds both the French far right and the US MAGA party (all of the useful part of the Republican party has been swallowed by Trump, with the less useful bits spat out) is the hatred of illegal, non-white immigrants. The insoluble problem of the fleeing of the global poor is the core kernal for both groups, around which is wrapped economic issues, moral or religious issues (cf the emergence of the young political right wing Catholics in France and the let’s go to Latin Mass and have babies and SC justices US Catholics) and the resentment/ressentiment of the working poor….
there’s always been a type of bourgeoisie/old aristocracy we call “catho-facho” (catholic fascist) i.e., strong right wing catholics, with old fashioned social values and a certain protestant (funnily enough) work ethics. That’s your Petain’s “Travail, Famille, Patrie” (Work, Family, Nation) and De Gaulle, apart from disagreeing on surrendering to Germany, was pretty close to that program.
Funnily enough, my neighbours are that. One uncle is a priest who ran into issue with his hierarchy for his political ideas (very right wing ones) and the husband is a notaire/lawyer while the mother works part time for a bank and they have, whatever, 4 or 5 kids and the parents have plenty of siblings too. The grandfather was a military officer etc etc.
You get the picture. But, for all that, they are nice people and very pleasant neighbours.
I wonder if the French language has adopted the term ‘quisling’ in the same way that English has.
Here is one perspective on why the French might be frustrated-
GDP/pp in 1980 for both France and the USA was about $12,000.
In 2024, GDP/pp for France ($47k) was only slightly more than half of the USA ($84k).
I keep seeing those stats and I don’t deny they’re the stats but, I have to be honest, I can’t map them to my lived experience. I am based in Paris these days but I do travel to the US once or twice a year, hitting a variety of cities (In the past 2-3 years, I’ve been to Phoenix, Jackson Hole, Raleigh, Pittsburgh, NYC, Miami, LA and SF. And about 15 years ago, I spent 3 months in Chicago).
You don’t seem to be living twice better than Parisians/French people do…
And before COVID, I spent some time in Detroit and Cleveland as well…
FX is one reason with Euro currently low. Another is share of public sector in economy with public output being underestimated in that measure (think health spending compared actual coverage). Finally I would add that the remaining difference would disappear in a recession (like it did in that 1980 anchor for your comparison). The comparison with neighbor UK have the same factors to consider. I remember travelling from Paris to London in 1994/5 which felt like entering a developing country yet gdp/cap were comparable….
In the US, we waste a lot of our wealth.
I agree- the overall quality of life in France is very good. Where else in the world can one purchase an incredibly delicious baguette for 1.30 euros?
I paid $11 for an “authentic” baguette two nights ago at a French bistro that just opened downtown.
H, pack up your laptop and head to Paris. You can report from here. As fredm421 mentioned- avoid being here during the Olympics.
Pick up a foldable camping chair from Au Vieux Campeur and spend a few hours every morning before the US wakes up on a quai – watching the world go by, both up and down the Seine.
Funnily enough, I live next to the Au Vieux Campeur stores in the 5th. Do let me know if you’re coming to Paris again, it’d be great to meet a fellow Heisenberg fan IRL… 🙂
I hear your take, but I strongly disagree. I’ve lived half my life in Switzerland and travelled to France regularly. I’ve managed businesses there and in the USA. I’ve lived half my life in the US. The quality of life in the US is far above that of Europe. Now people living in Paris are not the norm in France. Go to the more rural and less “well travelled” places. Like Jura for instance. It’s very poor. There is also poor in the USA. But middle income in the US tends to have their own house, 2 cars, a trailer of some sort, maybe a boat, ATV, side by side or dirt bike. In France, all this is luxury and few people can indulge in it.
The income level makes the $1.30 baguette not cheap, just affordable. It is cheap for us, but average income in the USA is 59k, and it’s 31k in France.
My quality of life is so much higher here. Quality of life you have to take into account stuff you can buy. Here, everything is cheaper and you have way more choice, meaning you pay for something that’s pretty close to what you are really looking for. In Europe, amazon is not like it is here, so you have much less choice and you pay more for it.
Does not mean the US is better, it’s mostly younger as a democracy and system, and has much more land. But as density increases, as laws keep being written, the system will get more crippled. But one thing we got going, is this huge polarization, because it prevents from insane laws being enacted. The labor laws in france are just suicidal. You hire someone, you cannot let them go without an extensive formal procedure that has to be approved by public institutions. So you end up saying no to new business.
Ever been to the worst parts of West Virginia? Or upper-upper-east Tennessee? Or the worst parts of Kentucky? Third World poverty. And that’s just barely (barely) an exaggeration.
America’s social safety net is sh-t compared to Europe’s. We print the reserve currency and we let people live on the streets. It’s a disgrace. And your contention that the level of polarization in America is a good thing is — ummm — incorrect, to put it politely. A swarm of angry rednecks stormed our seat of power three years ago, on the off chance you didn’t notice. The social fabric’s fraying beyond repair. The notion that “huge polarization,” as you put it, is something America “has going for it,” is absolutely abhorrent.
You clearly have zero idea what “middle income” means in terms of purchasing power in the United States. Not a surprise if you’ve spent half your life in Switzerland.
“Quality of life” is very, very subjective. Setting aside language and cultural mores (which is a big ask), I think many Americans would appreciate life in France on a day-to-day basis more than you think, even if they were making less money.
I’ll also add to H’s comment, there is a lot of poverty here in the US that isn’t seen by Europeans–hollowed out urban areas and inner ring suburbs, rural areas as farming has lost it’s ability to support families, small and medium sized towns that have seen their manufacturing base disappear overseas.
My parents have settled (after some travelling around in my youth) in the Southern Alps. Not sure how it compares to Jura as the closest I got were some trips to Pontarlier and a Christmas vacation to Colmar. Still, I feel it should be on par.
And, yes, I noted elsewhere that the main thing US suburban/exurban people have and French country people don’t is mechanical toys (boat, snow bike etc). I thought VAT had a lot to do with it and someone mentioned petrol costs as another factor. Houses will also be bigger in the USA, sure. But that doesn’t seem like a lot for twice the income. If my salary doubled, I’d have some serious leeway in my discretionary spending and I’d do more with it than getting a boat!
I would also push back on “everything is cheaper”. Food in restaurants certainly isn’t. I was a bit shocked with a $60 bill in a burger joint in Cleveland when I’m pretty sure it wouldn’t have been worse than EUR 25-30 in France… I also hate the way you got to pay for every single thing in the US. Garbage collection? Pay per lb. With your neighbours then trying to dump their garbage into your bins to save at your expense (happened to us in an property we had purchased in Detroit suburbs). The US is famous for its junk fees. That gets annoying fast. And any service centric activity tends to be more expensive since, well, salaries are higher. So, yeah, STUFF is cheaper (VAT? lower energy cost?) but everything else is more expensive. And that’s without getting into higher ed costs and medical costs.
That said, just to meet you some ways, I agree that the labor laws are exceedingly tight in France and while I cannot find proper data about entrepreneurship (it seems we have a decent cies per capita ratio), I do believe we lack start-ups, we obviously lack fast growing tech companies and somehow our social safety net seems to have made us scared of (business) risk taking instead of encouraging it…
Generally speaking, I do think we could free up some potential growth by first reducing the amount of regulation small companies face and, assuming this does translate into a more vibrant economy, look at reforming our labor/safety net laws to be closer to a Nordic model where greater freedoms for capital are complemented by a pretty solid safety net…
+1
Mr H.
Good day to you. Your references to French politics were pretty niched in there. I’m impressed. You never fail to impress. I hope you are not an AI bot because this is really cool.
My experience with French voters and far right is that you must be careful with vote participation. Take the first time Le Pen got through the first round of the presidential election: moderates had stayed home and came out in droves in the second. This time might be different but maybe not…. We’ll see!
We’re actually all an AI bot. We just like talking to ourself.