Cookie Notice

WE LOVE THE NATIONS OF EUROPE
However, this blog is a US service and this site uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and analyze traffic. Your IP address and user-agent are shared with Google along with performance and security metrics to ensure quality of service, generate usage statistics, and to detect and address abuse.

Monday 24 April 2017

French Toast

As will be apparent, France's electoral system is geared at preventing shock change and powerful leaders. Remember that the French bourgeois virtues include médiocrité, which means something a little different there to our jibe of mediocrity. And having soundly rejected the 'constitutional' parties of right and left for the Presidential election, French voters may not have the same choice for the two-stage Assembly elections on the 11th and 18th of June. Well-oiled local Republican and Socialist party machines may cement support, leaving Macron a lame duck President with no support in the Assembly.

And yes, short of some earthquake shock, Macron will be France's next president. 

Marine Le Pen is not finished - France and Britain will both go to the polls again in 2022, and in political terms that's an eon away. As for what this all means for Brexit, I'll guess little change. The Kermits still hate us and want us to suffer because we're so much more successful than they are, yet we need to co-operate even more closely militarily as the only two armed nations in Europe. It's all French toast - brittle with burnt crumbs. Hey ho.

18 comments:

RAC said...

Disappointed that Le Pen didn't get a better result, angry though not surprised all the other losing contenders advised their followers to vote against her in the following round. If the voters there can't see with the evidence of their own eyes that globalism is a bad idea then they'll deserve what they eventually get. Just hope it can be kept on their side of the channel because it can only get worse.

Anonymous said...

Whilst I realise that I warble on endlessly about direct democracy, it of course a hopeless cause... But nevertheless... EVIDENCE IS EVIDENCE, unlike apparently brexit meaning brexit... Or actually, maybe it is the same... depends who is stating the bleedin' obvious.

So in France they are about to gang up on the two majority blocs, in order to keep one out and render the other one useless. Sounds about par for the course!

The evidence of course is on continuous display in two hot spots... California state in the USA, where the people are in general fairly left wing, and often the propositions (aka referenda) mimic that tendency. However, one thing that seems to be consistent regardless of the orientation on the left-right spectrum... Other people's money is actually some people's money... THE VOTER'S! So the Californian government is perpetually broke.

In Switzerland where people tend to be conservative, the money is not such an issue... Depends whether something has potential or not... e.g. A Swiss banker pays into his sickness fund at a hugely different rate to a Swiss McDonalds employee, but when he becomes sick, he receives 90% of his salary as benefit, this for a limited period before work is found. It is the same for the MaccyD worker... FAIR!

But as far as Swiss voting goes, people are engaged... REALLY engaged, they are civic minded, and this is not just because they are krauts, it is because of their political system, it makes you that way, if your vote counts there is a tendency for one to use it.

Meanwhile in the rest of the world, look and listen very carefully, and we can see some MASSIVE confidence tricks coming down the track, a bit like those hand pumped railway carts, that silently kills.

Now it seems to me that, whilst possibly not the majority, a massive minority can see that we are about to be shafted in France, Britain and elsewhere, in an effort to overrule the people's will in those places... Yes it might well NOT be their choice to choose Marine LePen as a package, but they night well like 80% of it, but they are not going to get ANY of it,,, In a direct democracy, they would get just as much Marine as they felt that they needed and not a hairsbreadth more.

I thought that UKIP was fighting for that along with independence from the EU, but the remaining rump has eschewed the party's most important feature too get boots on seats in the commons.... Thus UKIP turns out to be a dumbed down version of the major party's tawdry interests, which virtually never mix with the general public's interests.

So UKIP can take a running jump since they haven't been forced to tread this path, they have chosen it and Nottatall as its dumbed down leader.

Effin' depressin' really Radders,.

right-writes

Anonymous said...

Did anyone witness the BBC being extra careful to ensure that all of the parties get a fair crack of the whip?

Andrew Marr(xist), wheeled Nottatall out and asked him what the UKIP plan was.... The reply was that the manifesto had not been completed but he wanted the Burqua banned....

...And then some woman from Wales came on.

Then tada!!! Jezza, the most qualified and most popular (in the grauniad and at the beeb) politician on the planet.

The serious business of ridiculing the very easy target that is Nottatall, some woman from Wales, and gently Jezza over, and we can get on with the serious business of ensuring that May goes for the soft target, or some bloke called tim goes for the hard one!

Apparently Brexit doesn't mean anything of the kind, or at least it won't by the time we run to the booths with our little pencils.

right-writes

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

Macron... an ENA graduate who was part of Hollande's government and worked for Rothschild et Cie. - he only resigned from his government position last year to run in this race.

Given the "popularity" of the socialist government at the time of Macron's resignation it isn't a stretch to think that the beleaguered socialists sniffed the wind and decided that they needed a stalking horse (and a bogey man in Hamon who's now predictably thrown in with Macron).

Macron as far as I can see hasn't actually held an elected office, the Socialists... I think... have a plan that was dreamed up by Baldrique.

If the candidacy of Macron can be linked to the present incumbents looking to finesse their way through this and effectively

It may well be that the old party machines will sway it for an establishment candidate - but I'm unconvinced that that ruse is actually going to play well with voters - we'll see.

I wonder if this'll be the exception to Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr's famous epigram... :-)

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

odd -partial edit...


and effectively stitch up the electorate by offering faux choices then there's still a game afoot. I'd hope that the French aren't dim enough to swallow a candidate that is so clearly a confection of the socialists.

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

The French Trudeau?


Given the talk about large scale shenanigans in Francophone social media (Facebook mainly apparently) Pat Condell is onto something there I suspect.

Anonymous said...

I just read today's piece by a Mr. George Galloway for Westmoster... I believe that this man is a known proven lefty...

His take was one that I hadn't thought of... That Macron would be the man, since neither the official socialist, nor the conservative party now have a dog in this race, it would be fairly straightforward to manipulate this man into power, whilst ensuring that he doesn't have any.

I would say that there is merit in his contention, which looks further ahead than mine.

right-writes

Budgie said...

Macron is an EU establishment stooge. Our general election is the second referendum. It's all dissolving before our eyes as the EU, the bankers and the cultural-marxists join forces to snuff out liberty.

Macron could divorce his current elderly wife and instead marry Hillary becoming Mr Rodham and One World Emperor, with Tony Bliar, Junker and Trudeau as bridesmaids.

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

@right-writes
GG's expertise in subterfuge is a fact.

@Budgie
M. Macron would be HRFC's second choice at best I'm afraid as David Miliband is Hils' preferred choice.

mikebravo said...

“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe.”
― Albert Einstein

The Frogs have form on voting for whom they are told to. It seems to happen every time they elect a president.

They will go for the establishmnt stooge just like we do in this country.

Anonymous said...

If France leaves the EU who will pay for their traditional,uneconomic way of agriculture?

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

AP reporting that Tajani and Junker -Brussels / Strasbourg crew have thrown their hat in with Macron

I wonder how that'll play with French voters?

Anonymous said...

Raedwald said:

'Marine Le Pen is not finished - France and Britain will both go to the polls again in 2022, and in political terms that's an eon away.'

Indeed it is and deep down she knows she may have to pass the baton to her very able niece, Marion. A few years from now the only game in town will be Globalists versus Populists - and violence will follow as the two cannot occupy the same space.

Steve

mikebravo said...

Anon 14:17

You may well be correct regarding the violence. Passing the baton will make no difference even if Mademoiselle Marion won.

Look at the USA. (Revolutionary) Trump V (Establishment) Clinton. End result - more of the same. It should now be clear to even the dumbest prole that the whole voty thing is a sham to gain consent for 5 more years of etablishment dictatorship.

The winner is just a stooge who can be lauded (Obama) or vilified (Trump) to suit the day.

Anonymous said...

Essential reading:

Macron – The Power of Charm

https://helenaglass.net/2017/02/03/frances-emmanuel-macron-groomed-by-rothschilds/

Steve

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

Macron is a phony (recently endorsed by another phony)

Not a person I'd usually link to but Melanie Philips covers most of it.

Gordon the Fence Post Tortoise said...

@Steve

- what's the idiomatic, colloquial French for "Yes we Can"!

I expect the Economist will do its bit ....

James Higham said...

Fillon's supporters seem to be leaning towards Le Pen.