I’d be remiss on Thursday not to briefly mention Emmanuel Macron’s decision to appoint Michel Barnier as the French prime minister.
A quick glance at the calendar strongly suggests it’s September. The second round of France’s parliamentary snap vote was concluded on July 7. The two-month delay in naming a premier counts as extraordinary, to put it mildly. Macron wasn’t obligated to stick to any schedule, but eight weeks is a helluva long time. The process — if you can call it that — was exceptionally fraught, consistent with the fractious state of French politics.
To recap, Macron was dealt a grievous blow in early June when Marine Le Pen’s National Rally rolled to a resounding win in European parliamentary elections. The results appeared to suggest the composition of the French legislature was woefully out of step with the will of the people.
But Macron saw an opportunity in the apparent rebuke. EU parliament votes serve (or can serve) as a kind of pressure release valve for built-up domestic political tension. In simple terms: The EU ballot can be an outlet for the protest vote. The electorate tends to be less cavalier when it’s time to decide who to send to national legislatures. Macron, in a historic gamble, called French voters’ bluff: He dissolved parliament and dared France to give Le Pen an absolute majority in the National Assembly.
After the first round of the snap elections, Macron’s gambit looked disastrous. Le Pen’s RN matched its showing in the EU vote, and Le Pen was a week away from insisting that the will of the people demanded her protégé Jordan Bardella be appointed prime minister.
Seven days later, in the second round, Le Pen performed far worse. RN increased its seat count, but Le Pen’s hopes of a governing majority were dashed emphatically. The newly-united French left emerged as the big winner, leaving Macron to ponder whether it was all worth it: He was correct that French voters would ultimately deny the far-right. But in proving the point, he ended up beholden to the far-left.
And so the stage was set for two months of intense wrangling for the premiership, with the left insisting that by virtue of their strong showing in the snap vote, they were entitled. To that end, they floated Lucie Castets, a nobody. Macron would have none of it. Instead (and ironically), he ended up in frequent consultations with Le Pen, whose blessing he needed to name a center-right prime minister.
The problem with Barnier is… well, there a lot of potential problems with Barnier, but for the sake of brevity let’s just say the problem’s twofold: He’s a right-wing mainstay and his party — The Republicans — came in dead last in the snap vote among major contenders after being driven to the brink of extinction by Le Pen.
So, you’ll forgive the French left for calling Barnier’s appointment anti-democratic, which is exactly what they did. “The election was stolen,” Jean-Luc Mélenchon, France’s leftist ideologue seethed. “We do not believe for a moment that a majority [in the legislature] will accept such a denial of democracy.” Socialist head Olivier Faure declared the Fifth Republic in a “regime crisis.”
For her part, Le Pen relished an “I told you so” moment. “We’re in the situation that we cautioned about, that of chaos,” she said, referencing RN’s warning after the second round of the snap vote that the maintenance of the “cordon sanitaire” would come at the cost of intractable gridlock. She went on to indicate that RN isn’t interested in participating in a Barnier government. “We’ll see if [he] at least manages to ensure that the budget can be balanced.”
France needs to allay concerns about its fiscal position sooner rather than later. It’s frankly hard to understand how a government, even if one’s formed tomorrow, could possibly meet a series of looming budget deadlines. And let’s be clear: A government won’t be formed tomorrow. The left isn’t going to accept Barnier, which means the whole thing hangs on Le Pen.
Barnier’s odds are long, but he’s at least a known quantity. And having negotiated the EU’s Brexit deal, he’s no stranger to impossible situations.
Meanwhile, the popular Edouard Philippe, Macron’s prime minister four premiers ago, indicated this week he intends to run for president. Some reports suggested he’s betting on Macron to step down as early as next year.
To be honest, my feeling is that Macron, while far from perfect, is too good for France. We deserve to fall, just like the rest of Europe. We’re pathetic.
What strikes me about the anti-establishment / anti-center vote across Western democracies is that it’s by now out of proportion to the share of the electorate who can plausibly claim they’d be materially better off under a far-right or far-left government. A lot of the grievances (blue collar despair in America, immigration concerns, inequality and so on) have merit, but sometimes it feels like voters are just restless and determined to act on that restlessness.
Exactly. A far right or far left government would be an unmitigated disaster for nearly all citizens. What was the saying? “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard”…
I cannot believe that Europe hasn’t learn better after 2 centuries of trials and errors.
OTOH, I’ll give the voters that. It would help if democratic elites listened when people say immigration is going too fast for their tastes…
Yup, propaganda and psychological warfare out of the Kremlin are working in France, in the US, globally. Even those of us who are able to see through the lies and remain planted in fact-based reality still feel the psychological toll.
The first step in fixing the problem is for the governments of the world to be as brave as Brazil and ban Twitter. It’s not the only weapon used in the psy-ops campaigns, but it is the most egregious.
I commented on Seeking Alpha that Brazil can do anything it wants about X. Letters, boy did I get letters calling me a criminal, a communist, and many more wonderful things. When will people in this country understand that there are over 200 sovereign nations on earth and we aren’t in charge of any of them but the USA. They get to make their own mistakes, just like we do. We could talk about world peace and civil liberties, but we actually don’t know anything about that. We’ve just spent 20 years killing people we don’t like all over the world. As to civil liberties, why don’t we start with finishing the job of giving equal rights to the women of our country?
It’s not as if Elon doesn’t know what he’s doing on “X.” I mean, he doesn’t seem to know what he’s doing when it comes to monetizing a social media platform, but he knows full well what Twitter has become, and he seems determined to perpetuate the spiral. You reap what you sow. He’s asking for problems from governments, so that’s what he’s going to get. It’s as simple as that. This idea that it’s some grand struggle for free speech is ridiculous. He’s looking for trouble. So he’s going to find it.
I am actually rethinking my idea that I prefer a country where rights such as free speech and gun rights are protected at all costs.
With “free speech” there should be a duty of responsibility to protect the truth from both mis-information and dis-information, as the Brazilian Court recently stated as they decided to ban X in Brazil.
With guns, sorry- but tighter registration requirements, a license to own a gun and liability insurance (similar to requirements to own and/or drive a car) should be required.
Unfortunately, a few can ruin such liberties for all.
https://phys.org/news/2024-09-brazil-world-greater-social-media.html
Macron generally and genuinely puts France above all else, including himself, with his leadership. It is impossible to please everyone, but it would be difficult to argue that he doesn’t have integrity as a leader.
In the US, we have a lot of very competent and principled leaders at the Congressional, state and local government levels -who are currently being ignored by the DNC and the RNC, but who can hopefully rise up to become Presidential candidates in the 2028 election.
Tim Walz seems like a legitimately good dude that fits the mold. I may be biased as a born-and-raised Minnesotan from his congressional district, but he actually seems to care about people.
Could the left not offer up a credible candidate? One who had been quietly agreed with Macron? Seems like they should blame themselves.
The problem on the left is somewhat similar to the one on the right… i.e., the traditional center left to left party (“le parti socialiste”) is doing barely better than the traditional center right to right party (“les republicains”, ex UMP ex RPR). Melanchon (far left) isn’t as powerful in absolute as Le Pen but, within the left coalition, he’s at least as much of a black hole…
With that guy probably sabotaging every attempt by the more moderate left to work with Macron, I”m not surprised Macron did not have any good option… To be fair, that’s a reflection of the fact that France is cut in three. 1/3rd far right, 1/3rd centrist, 1/3rd far left (more or less, the far right is a bit more numerous than the far left, say 35/40% vs 25/30%)… And not really enough overlap to effectively govern…