The French election has been framed as a significant defeat for Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party. The BBC’s Paul Kirby in an article titled ‘What just happened in France’s shock election?‘ explained:
Nobody expected this. High drama, for sure, but this was a shock.
When the graphics flashed up on all the big French channels, it was not the far Right of Marine Le Pen and her young Prime Minister-in-waiting Jordan Bardella who were on course for victory.
It was the Left who had clinched it, and Emmanuel Macron’s centrists – the Ensemble alliance – had staged an unexpected comeback, pushing the far-Right National Rally (RN) into third.
Of course, the BBC wasn’t alone in proclaiming the second round an unexpected victory for the far-Left, Left and centrists over the forces of the “Right”, sorry, the “far Right”, as I must get used to calling any party without an open borders policy.
Likewise, the Telegraph described how:
National Rally had been beaten by a ragtag alliance called the New Popular Front – comprising Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-Left France Unbowed, Communists, Greens and Socialists.
But even more humiliatingly Le Pen’s party appeared to have been beaten by Mr. Macron’s centrist Together alliance, which polls had predicted would founder in third place.
However, for anyone with even a passing familiarity with French politics this was exactly the outcome we’d expected. It wasn’t a shock. The Leftist alliance didn’t stage an unexpected comeback. And Le Pen’s party wasn’t beaten into third place by Macron’s centrist Together alliance. To understand the consequences in terms of Parliamentary seats Robert Kogon’s recent Daily Sceptic article explains the vagaries of the outcome very succinctly. However, I thought a look at how and why the election is misreported would be of interest.
Of course, regular readers of the Daily Sceptic will be familiar with this tactic of the mainstream media (MSM). Set up a false position. See the false position not come about. Declare a disaster for the person or party you wish to smear. In this case, the MSM set up the position that Le Pen would win the second round of the French elections. An outcome that, once it was clear that Macron had done a deal with Mélenchon – and it was always inevitable that he would do a deal – then Le Pen couldn’t win.
Let’s look at the actual data rather than rely on the BBC’s in-house analysis.
Somewhat surprisingly, Le Pen’s RN Party saw the largest second-round percentage increase in its vote share of any of the political parties or groupings.
Mélenchon’s Left Alliance lost 2.4% in vote share while RN’s share increased by 3.8%, not an outcome you would have guessed from the BBC.
In terms of total votes cast, all the parties and groupings saw fewer votes cast in their favour in round two in comparison to round one. In fact almost 4.8 million Frenchmen who had voted in the first round didn’t vote in the second round. So much for Macron mobilising the forces of democracy!
As can be seen in Figure 2, the Left Alliance lost over two million voters between rounds one and two. This was not a victory for any thing other than the voting system designed to do what it did: prevent (Right-wing) populists getting near the levers of power.
Self-evidently, this wasn’t a rout of the Right. So why is it presented as such? Well, we all know the answer to that one: the ‘Establishment’ wants to frame the “far Right” as a threat. A threat that can only be defeated by the plucky voters of France coming together to see them off. The wish is to show the Right suffering a defeat. It’s exactly the same tactic as we saw the BBC adopt in choosing a Question Time audience devoid of Reform supporters. Or Channel 4 in its use of highly questionable tactics to smear Reform. Take your pick: Andrew Tate, Russell Brand, Donald Trump, Tucker Carlson, Nigel Farage, each framed as a threat to “good order”.
One of the things that we plebs learnt from the Covid pantomime is to never accept any news story at face value. It’s often relatively easy to find the data that allow you to answer that nagging question that comes to mind after any BBC news item: “Am I being taken for a fool?”
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BBC:
France – National Rally 37%
Far Right Rejected
Britain – Labour 33.7%
Far Left Accepted
France ‘saved from Fascism’ by the moderate centrists and their 1/3 support.
Britain ‘saved from Fascism’ by the moderate Labtards and their 1/3 support.
All hail democracy! Our values. Our freedoms. This is why we fight in the Uketopia. This is why we walk naked in no pride mentally ill parades.
[and don’t worry about the Rona fascism, that was health, safety and science]
Where there is concentration of political power in one place it is tyranny not democracy.
Democracy is not voting because voting gives away individual power concentrates it in one place – tyranny… or ‘democratic’ Government as it is called.
Without voting, power resides in each individual equally, meaning interdependency requiring cooperation, voluntary exchange in a free social and economic market.
Britons Broadcasting Communism. Day in, day out.
Nasty, middle and upper middle class narcissists, who imbibed leftism at university and, with their not very strong intellects, thought it sounded such a good idea.
Smash the beeb
My mate said to me “Why would people say there is climate change if it isn’t true?—–I asked him what TV News he mostly watched and his reply was “BBC and sometimes SKY”. ———–There you have it.
I am sure you explained to your mate how lucrative the green scam has been for a few people and very costly for the majority of other people like him.
Even then I cannot imagine the penny dropped as the new narrative is being rolled out that you want to pay more for energy to save the planet.
Point out we live in an ice age and he’s a species evolved in the tropics. If he wants to play science play science.
Yeah, people never lie to line their pockets or get more power, everyone is honest…ffs!
Why would anyone say they had a bridge in Brooklyn to sell if it weren’t true?
Please don’t tar us all with the same brush.
I am upper middle class now from a middle-class background.
Why? Because I was able to go to university, study a good degree, and gain a worthwhile profession.
There again, I completed my degree in 1981.
I do not watch the BBC (except for things like Wimbledon), read the Guardian etc. I did vote Conservative but switched to Reform.
Tbf you’ve opted out of the bien pensant required by yr tribe. I’m from yr tribe also and have done the same, we have to self censor quite a lot in the work place, at least I do.
Thankfully, I am self-employed. Only have to deal with myself and keep well away from the public sector and EDI corporates.
I am completely unemployable in todays world.
But, I am not unusual in my circle of friends, family and connections.
We are just ghosted by the ConLab.
*astards Broadcasting Communism?
Even the halfwit on GB News Eamonn Holmes uses the term “Far Right”. What a total buffoon this guy is. ——-Why does he not sod off to ITV or join Lorraine on the couch for some gossipy tittle tattle as that is all this guy is good for.
This is as blatant a Coup D’état as you can get and Europe has the audacity to call itself “Democratic”.
I disagree. The French people had a choice – they could have all decided to vote for RN. They didn’t, just as the British people had a choice and more than 80% of them voted for parties that support mass immigration, high taxes, net zero and medical fascism.
But NR had the largest majority before the regrouped Motley Crew.
I’m not sure what you mean. In both rounds they got the largest % of the vote, but only 30something – less than the total of the others who went into an alliance against them. Other than the few places where RN had been eliminated in the 1st round, voters could have chosen to vote for them but many preferred to vote for other candidates.
I’ll remind you again: 80% of those who voted, not 80% of the electorate. Between them the four main parties (number 4 is SNP) lost 8.5 million votes from 2019. All of them lost votes, with a larger electorate than 5 years ago.
Indeed and those who didn’t vote presumably don’t care what happens or are happy with the status quo as they had the chance to vote for possible change and didn’t take it.
One more possible reason is being touted in the Beeb. Too difficult to get photo ID.
sheesh.
Mrs SoR still has her paper driving licence and has never needed to get a photo one. As she hasn’t felt the need to travel abroad since her teens her passport has expired, her name has changed and even with my rose-tinted specs on the picture doesn’t look like her now. Basically she has not found any need for photo ID until this election – so she applied for and got a voter ID without any hassle.
I guess it might have tipped a few people over the edge into not voting, but I doubt it is significant
Those who didn’t vote may have seen that they couldn’t change the final result, and forgot that the results would be analysed to death.
I think we have to assume they don’t care or would split in proportion to the people who did vote, otherwise any analysis becomes impossible
Nudge, nudge, say no more especially when it comes international medical interventions.
But they haven’t chosen what was best for themselves, or others: so why is that?
Is it because they live in culture that used to expect everyone valuing each other as human, despite our differences, loving each other as we would love ourselves? So we believed what others said, especially the BBC, and Scientists, like ‘climate scientists’, and (medical) doctors.
Few, very few, understand the basic Sciences, or human nature, so that many choose by appealing to Authority. It’s especially true when the Authority infers that continuing to do the same thing, on a larger scale, like wind power, or in a shorter time scale, like testing medicines, or changing culture, or societies, doesn’t affect it’s ability to succeed.
Institutions know best, except they know what’s best for their organisation, but not even for individuals within them.
Indeed. To an extent it’s understandable – not trusting authority is exhausting.
Who for 1 second doesn’t think David Cameron would install Dianne Abbot as PM over Nigel Farage every day of the week and twice on Sundays?
You can put Lipstick on a Pig, and he would like that.
No. She’s earmarked for Chancellor of the Exchequer.
She’d keep trying to get into No 11 considering her record with numbers.
Very good!
”Andrew Tate”?? Really, Nick? You’d defend somebody who’s a human trafficking, tax evading, sexual predator, paedophile rapist that’s made his money by ‘recruiting’ and degrading girls and young women and sees them as nothing more than a commodity?
But don’t take my word for it, let’s look at the evidence. Because the good thing about the Tate brothers is their egomania ensures that the internet is conveniently bursting at the seams with evidence of them incriminating themselves and demonstrating what disgusting misogynistic slimeballs they are.
P.S Anyone who ‘dislikes’ this post is obviously cut from the same creepy AF cloth and would be totally okay with their daughter going out with somebody of his ilk.
<Prepares for the misogynist toxic manosphere spillover. 3,2,1 GO!!>
https://x.com/TheMilkBarTV/status/1691442074900672513
https://x.com/TheMilkBarTV/status/1773717967173509215
Bonus, seeing as 3 is the magic number. ”Birds of a feather flock together” and all that;
“Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are.”
While awaiting his own trafficking trial, Tate recently met with his buddy Eduard Ivan (Edy Power).
Power was arrested for human trafficking, trafficking minors, child pornography, intercourse with a minor, and pimping.”
https://x.com/CrayonMurders/status/1807715554968662380
Any Jimmy Savile fans ready to out themselves while we’re here?
Not a fan but someone from my school went on Jim’ll fix it. The school had an assembly looking at the Jim’ll fix it badge. I suspect it’s eBay value isn’t what it was. If I was in TV I’d recommission the show with Jim Davidson it would be an absolute smash.
Thanks for the feedback, Misogynist Society and Rape Apologists R Us. I knew you’d be up for partaking. It’s good to be reminded from time to time of the, erm…’quality’ of many of the peeps who frequent this site, and one sure fire way to count on participation is to blaspheme against your incel pin-up hero. It reflects well, always… Well played.
Don’t forget to be full of hell about the Pakistani rape gangs and men in dresses going into female changing rooms though. You need to keep on compartmentalizing your hypocrisy, otherwise you’ll lose the knack.
I wasted almost three minutes of my life listening to this pointless babbling. Can you remind what that was supposed to communicate? Many women – quite willingly – ‘fall’ for men I wouldn’t want to shake hands with without counting my finger both before and after to make sure I have neither more nor less than I initially had. But that’s not exactly news, it’s played in yer local and all over all kinds of night clubs every weekend.
That’s a very basic part of what makes the world go round: Idiots ganging up with other idiots to breed more idiots, both the male and the female variant being exactly as stupid and intolerable.
“An outcome that, once it was clear that Macron had done a deal with Mélenchon – and it was always inevitable that he would do a deal – then Le Pen couldn’t win.”
If enough people had voted for her, she would have won. They didn’t. People are waking up but too many of our fellow citizens seem to want to commit suicide.
It could be close to a Civil War there, and that is a Hub for international travel. Not good.
I think it will come everywhere sooner or later, in the rich world. I doubt I will ever go back to France again – one of a long list of countries I will never go to.
Hmmm…
Isn’t the fact that “almost 4.8 million Frenchmen who had voted in the first round didn’t vote in the second round” explained by the fact that in their system, if a candidate wins a decisive share of the vote in the first round, then there’s no contest in the second?
While sharing the writer’s view of the MSM, countering spin with more spin just doesn’t cut it.
Speaking of News, the BBC reporting on a Russian missile hitting a school or Hospital. Or is this a downed Missile/Drone that was headed for elsewhere?
These vote share analysises are largely meaningless. The French election system doesn’t use proportional representation and hence, what the outcome had been had it happened under a PR system is purely a fictional story.
Like in the UK, French people vote for MPs and not for parties. The system is a bit more complicated¹: There’s a first round of voting and someone will be elected MP during this first round if a majority of voters in a constitutency, ie, more than half of them, voted for him. If nobody is elected during the first round of voting, all candidates who recieved less than ⅛ of the votes are elimnated. A MP is then elected via FPTP method from the remaining candiates during the second round of voting. In order to win the election, RN or any other party, needs to field more candidates people in constituencies actually want to vote for, not increase some mythical vote share.
¹ More complicated should always arise suspicion: The more complicated a system is, the more opportunities to game it usually exist and as voting systems are decided on by the very people who got elected, it’s not far-fetched to assume that this is intentional. An well-tuned voting system, eg, the absolutely hideously complicated German one, will always deliver broadly the same (intended) results, regardless of how people actually vote.
Yep, it was really difficult to find out how many seats Le Pen had actually won…obscure to say the least. Searches just came up with the usual Guardianista MSM when asked that direct question. Back in 2017 Le Pen won just 8 seats, in 2022 she had 89 and this time it was 142. I think that is what they call a trend.
Statism, collectivism, sovereignty of State over the individual, central economic planning and control – this is not ‘Right’ in any degree, Far, Extreme, Hard – it’s Left.
Le Pen’s policies are as above. In fact all French Parties espouse these policies. It’s termed: Dirigisme and has been the modus operandi of all France Governments since 1945.
I also encompasses the EU’s essential ideological outlook.
Exactly…I get fed up trying to explain that on various newspaper comments boards. It is lazy journalism by MSM.
The only thing that gets the Left’s knickers in a twist is Le Pen’s policy on immigration. Jobs for French workers is what she wants. Not exactly right-wing either as policies go.
Even Gordon Brown was going on about British jobs for British workers, back when!
Statism etc something fictional contemporary Americans have come up with as backdrop to position themselves against. That’s presumably because theirs is a toddler state which hasn’t yet existed for 300 years. Humans half self-organized into states for at least the last 7500 years and many ideas we’re taking for granted now where already well-developed by the middle of the last century BC, just on a smaller scale. The notion of ‘state’ also predates the silly left/right divide of politics by about 7290 years.
It’s up the US politicians to remain as ignorant of the history of the world before 1492 and outside of their continent as they desire. But this doesn’t mean they’re in a position to lecture others about this because of their ignorance.
All is not lost, because of this cheerful news:
Patriots for Europe becomes EU parliament’s 3rd-largest group, picks Jordan Bardella as president – POLITICO
“As well as National Rally and Fidesz, the other group members are the League (Italy), Vox (Spain), Chega (Portugal), Action of Dissatisfied Citizens (Czech Republic), Oath and Motorists (Czech Republic), Christian Democratic People’s Party (Hungary), Freedom Party (Austria), Party for Freedom (Netherlands), Vlaams Belang (Belgium), Danish People’s Party, Voice of Reason (Greece), and Latvia First.”
“Bardella said the Patriots “represent hope for the tens of millions of citizens in the European Nations who value their identity, their sovereignty and their freedom. As patriotic forces, we are going to work together in order to retake our institutions and reorient policies to serve our nations and peoples.”
(And best news is that Globalist Fraud Meloni is not in it, but Italy’s True Patriot Leader, Matteo Salvini, is.)
The AfD would belong to this group, hadn’t its top candidate dared to state that not all German conscripts of WWII were war criminals. As such is this the group of people who willingly take German money provided the Germans don’t get so uppity to claim they’re also people. No hope here, save for more of the same.