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Le Pen Denied As France’s Left Rolls To Shock Election Win
The firewall held. The firewall held.
Marine Le Pen suffered a grievous blow in the second round of France's legislative snap elections on Sunday, when the National Rally placed third, a wild reversal of fortunes for the country's far-right.
Just a week ago, RN was "at the gates of power" having largely replicated its success in the EU parliament vote during the first ballot for seats in the new National Assembly.
Emmanuel Macron, whose decision to dissolve France's legislature in the wake of
Vive la France!
Populism, that is policies popular with and helpful to the poor masses wins again.
Gotta love it
The sentiment from the French center is that we had “a choice between Peste and Cholera”… and we got Cholera… I guess it’s better?
Both extremes have populist agendas that are misguided and un-implementable. Both, for slightly different reasons, are fond of Russia/Putin. This is an historical defeat for common sense, prudence and the future of France. I shudder to think what 2027 will be like. I hope I can get out of there before that.
FWIW, just like the UK, though less acute (afaict), our problems are structural/come from a lack of economic growth engines. Basically, not enough wealth is being actually generated, regardless of how you split the pie.
And, sure, growing the pie, when you are close to the technological frontier, is not something economists/experts decisively know how to do (as opposed to initiating catch up growth) but populist policies are neither here nor there when there’s no wealth to support any of them.
For my part, and that’s despite being left of center and thus generally thinking Demand has the primacy in Supply/Demand mechanisms, I believe France needs to reform its regulatory structures. For political reasons, I’d avoid starting with workers’ rights. But we have phenomenons like companies stopping at 9 or 49 employees deliberately (as having 10 and then 50 employees trigger a step change in regulatory demands) – this is clearly France leaving tons of growth and employment on the table and, hopefully, whatever extra rules get triggered around having 10 rather than 9 employees aren’t too politically charged/a sacred cow to anyone except lawyers and civil servants…
Between this result and the UK I’m actually slightly hopeful about the upcoming US election.