Marine Le Pen’s Right-wing National Rally (RN) is projected to win the first round of legislative elections in France, leaving incumbent President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance lagging behind in third. The Mail has more.
The projections gave the RN 34% of the vote, compared to 29.1% for the Left-wing New Popular Front alliance and just 22% for Macron’s centrist camp.
Many French voters are frustrated about inflation and other economic concerns, as well as Macron’s leadership, seen as arrogant and out-of-touch with their lives. The National Rally party has tapped that discontent, notably via online platforms such as TikTok.
Le Pen… said Macron’s alliance was “almost wiped out” during the first round of voting.
The first round of this year’s election, called by Macron after a devastating loss in the European Parliament elections earlier this month, saw record levels of turnout.
Polls suggested 67.5% of people voted in the national election, the highest participation in a regular format legislative election in France since 1981. The final turnout in 2022, the last time national elections were held in the nation, was just 47.5%.
Despite the win, it is still not currently clear whether Le Pen’s party would win an absolute majority of seats in the new National Assembly lower house in the July 7th second round and claim the post of Prime Minister.
The second round will see run-off votes take place in seats where there was no absolute majority, allowing the final shape of the National Assembly to form.
The vote could give 28 year-old RN party chief Jordan Bardella, a protege of its longtime leader Marine Le Pen, the chance to form a government…
Bardella has previously said he would only form a government if the RN wins an absolute majority in the elections, but the party has said that the far-Right wunderkind would become the country’s Prime Minister, while Macron would stay President until his term expires in 2027 in an awkward power-sharing arrangement called ‘cohabitation’ in France. …
Speaking from her constituency of Hénin-Beaumont, in northern France, where she was elected to Parliament without the need for a second round, Le Pen said the RN was finally preparing for power for the first time in its history.
Worth reading in full.
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Some good news at last
Europe heads right, UK heads left! Oh well, you can’t have everything
Yep, so cue the inevitable riots from the usual suspects, which will only just help Le Pen along, let’s face it. Numpties;
”Thousands of left-wing activists join ANTIFA, communists and Islamists to protest against the results of the French election after left-wing parties suffered crushing defeats.
Protesters are rioting across the country after Marine Le Pen’s victory.”
https://x.com/OliLondonTV/status/1807537794392420505
https://x.com/OliLondonTV/status/1807618048032915537
But but but it’s the “far right” that are evil. It always escapes them that Hitler was a self proclaimed socialist and the right/left model of politics is utter cobblers to mask the fact all forms of socialism are murderous.
Socialism is a German term dating back to the 19th century which came from people forming societies for self-improvement of the working class. Eg, there used to be Christian socialism. And secular socialism, as embodied by the SPD (still the same party as today) which pro forma adopted Marxism as its ideology later on. At the time the NSDAP was formed, it (socialism) was a well established term referring solving the so-called social question, ie, lift factory workers out of their often crushing proverty and social and political marginalisation. The nationalist movement (or parts thereof) bascially hijacked the term to emphasize that, they, too, planned to solve this social question, just in a completely different way than former-socialists-now-turned-marxists.
Hitler was a self-proclaimed socialist only insofar as he considered the improvement of the lives of factory workers (by then, the largest segment of the population) a cornerstone of this future policy as he needed and sought the support of these factory workers (‘the masses’). This differentiated his party from the more elitist nationalists, eg, the monarchists of the DNVP, who believed that the social order of the German empire was maybe not perfect but certainly, good enough, and that abovementioned masses should simply keep their humble station.
Socialism also means something in contemporary US domestic politics, namely, essentially the same as Nazism: It’s used a blanket smear term for “people with really disagreeable political opinions” and basically an excuse to fetch that ol’ Hitler effigy — all but gone to pieces in the last 80 years – once again and beat one’s opponents up with it one more time for political point-scoring.
It’s actually a meaningless term but used to draw power from the individual to the state, socialism is just a marketing term for collectivism. As such Hitler is almost as much of a collectivist as Stalin or Lenin just with somewhat different marketing, just doing slightly less theft of individuals property.
It’s actually a meaningless term but used to draw power from the individual to the state, socialism is just a marketing term for collectivism.
And collectivism is just a learned-sounding term for Ayn Rand was a stupid Russian woman (more interested in her sex life than anything else). As such, it can simply be discarded and has no effect on the historical summary I put here (for the upteempth time).
“… from people forming societies…” Russians called these ‘Soviet’s’ – hence Soviet Union, workers control the means of production, etc.
Cut it whichever way you like, all ‘Socialists’ are horses from the same stable out of the same mare.
Hitler was a Socialist, and his National Socialism, like Fascism, involved Collectivism, State direction of economic activity, workers’ activity, to serve the interested of the State as determined by those in charge.
Socialism – in all its iterations – is a Left Wing ideology as it contradicts the Right wing fundamentals: sovereignty of the individual, autonomy, property rights, free market, capitalist economy.
I am still waiting for a Right wing, never mind Far Right or Hard Right Party to come along. Reform is less Left wing than most.
“… from people forming societies…” Russians called these ‘Soviet’s’ – hence Soviet Union, workers control the means of production, etc.
No, they didn’t. In the course of the Russian revolution, so-called councils of worker and soldiers were formed to articulate their political demands. These were called soviets, Russian for council. They even predated the Bolshevists taking control of Russia. A council of soldiers is already mentioned (by German sources) during the Kerenski offensive 1917. After the Bolshevists had taken over Russia, these councils became the nuclei of their early government and administration apparatus. There’s even a term for a state organized in this way, it’s called a council republic (German Räterepublik, no idea if this also exists in English). This has precisely no relation to the origins of socialism in Germany more than half of a century earlier.
As I’ve also written here a couple of times already, left and right as political terms came from the sitting order in the revolutionary national assembly of France and originally denoted people who wanted a democratic republic and people who wanted to keep a constitutional monarchy. Since then, there has been a proliferation of new meanings for them and the neo-liberal shelf warmers from 1980s onward are probably the most recent addition. A right winger at the time of the German empire of even the Weimar republic would have called someone with these specific set of political values a ‘progressive’ liberal radical not really much different from other fringe left-wingers seeking to overturn the established order.
Much more importantly than the names is the practice.
In practice the Nazi Party was revolutionary. They stole children from their parents. (An example of this can be found in the book, Travellers in the Third Reich, by Julia Boyd).
Between the wars the Nazi Party campaigned for the constituency of the left in Germany. And very successfully. Initially the middle classes thought the Nazis were their friends, and a few aristocrats joined them, but they soon found out that taxation was to fall heavily on them.
As explained by the Nazi’s so-called philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg, the Nazi objective was to replace the creeds of the churches with their own. Rosenberg complained at the ‘hotheads’ in the Party who wanted to ban Christianity outright. But, he said, as with banning political parties, the faith would still exist.
One might compare this objective with the current state of the Church of England. The creeds of the state – gay issues, transgenderism, mass immigration, BLM, lockdowns etc – have all been inserted into this Church.
Stole children… Stare education system, now extended up to adulthood, 18, thereafter into ‘National Sevice’.
F A Hayek: Socialism, National Socialism, Fascism share the same roots – elevation of the State above the individual; central economic planning and control.
Sounds a lot like ‘democratic’ governments since 1945.
The ‘Left’ is heavily engaged in saving democracy from the people.
UK heads up its own fundamental orifice.
Which just shows how effective the nudge unit and all those Behavioural scientists really are.
Hasn’t the UK been Left since 1997 – New Labour followed by Continuity New Labour?
Wilders in Holland.
Orban in Hungary.
Le Pen in France.
Meloni in Italy.
Farage in England.
Called a pattern.
UK heads are getting better with the rise of Reform.
I’m no expert on the French electoral system, but it seemed weird that Macron went for a snap election – just three weeks long. However, if you look back a few years, he displayed a somewhat hubristic attitude to what was done politically about the Covid-19 débacle, so perhaps he’s just behaving to type. Maybe that’s a basic personality requirement for someone in a presidential system.
Whether that is a “safe and effective” governmental structure, I’ll stick on the wall.
He’s got clear psychopathic ‘dark triad’ traits. Quite similar to Gavin Newsom (governor of California).
and Jacinda Ardern in New Zealand, and Justin Trudeau in Canada.
During the 2012 elections we watched Macron on TV. He was an outstanding debater, could hold up against three quite trenchant journalists for an hour or so with no problem. Many people really rated him and moderate French folk (who couldn’t stand Le Pen – largely because of her father’s reputation) were keen to vote for him. We were less convinced.
However, I do believe that the far left have done much to destroy his attempts to reform France and the economy through aggressive destructive tactics. My opinion, and it is only an opinion, is that the likes of the gilets jaunes (rioting because of rise in petrol prices and cost of living) were egged on by a fifth column from the far left.
Something else that few MSM mention is that Le Pen does actually have some quite socialist policies in her strategy. What she does stand for is controlling immigration (and getting rid of the birthright citizenship issue). However, she opposes privatisation of public services and social services and is in favour of state intervention in the economy. So, to call her “Far Right” is not really correct.
If it is allowed to be quoted by the DS, the best summary of the RN’s position was made recently in an article by Thomas Fazi in Unherd.
Fazi writes, “The reality is that even if the RN manages to win an absolute majority, they will be forced to toe the EU-Nato line on economic and foreign policy if they want the ECB to play ball and keep the French bond market afloat. After all, all it takes to engineer a fiscal crisis is for Lagarde to look the other way as bond vigilantes do the dirty work.”
I think, like Sushi, he thought he could take the opposition by surprise, too little time to prepare and gain momentum, and let inertia favour the incumbent.
The miscalculation in both cases is the electorate have been mobilising for some time, and whilst the opposition Parties may not have been ready, the voters were.
Le Pen actually got 33%. The Conservative Les Républicains party (10%) refused to advise voters to reject Le Pen in the second round, which I take as an endorsement.
Let’s hope the far left don’t put the kybosh on this. They have formed a (quite unstable) coalition front under Communist Melanchon (LFI) and could still take the crown away from Le Pen during the second round of voting..
We lived in France during the 2012 & 2017 elections. Everyone down our way (SW) gave a huge sigh of relief when Melanchon (he stood as Communist candidate in 2012) didn’t come close to winning. He really had some crazy policies. Not that Hollande in 2012 was much better, carefully reversing the realistic Sarkozy policy of increasing retirement age from 62 to 65 when he came to power. Melanchon wants to bring it back down to 60. It is a hugely contentious issue in France. I remember the endless trouble that Sarkozy went through but he finally made it happen.
The French really know how to spend other taxpayer’s money and have long been feeding from the EU trough to hide the economic problems that they face.
My husband describes Melanchon as the Galloway of French politics.
France’s election procedure of having a second round of votes if no party wins over 50% the first time is a really good idea, and we should adopt it here.
If it were the Netherlands, Marine Le Pen’s hands would be tied like Geert Wilders by all the other parties, then an Unelected Communist would be parachuted in by the Globalists as Prime Minister, in a total farce of democracy.
However, it’s madness to allow Macron to stay in power for years after the true Conservatives have won, so that’s something that needs changing in the French election procedure, in my view.
Yes, agree completely with you, Heretic. If we do eventually start exploring PR, we must at all costs avoid the Netherlands model which creates more problems than it solves.
Chesterton’s Fence: before you decide to remove something, you better make sure you know and understand why it was put there in tte first place.
UK’s ‘first-past-the-post’ system has produced the most stable Government of anywhere with alternatives. That does not mean perfect.
What is needed is constituency boundary reform to get rid of safe seats, and reduce the number of MPs significantly.
PR creates perpetual coalitions where minority Parties have disproportionate influence. Thanks to this in Germany, the Greens were able to foist the climate change horror on Germany, thus on the EU, thus on the rest.
Nowhere is it any different no matter what PR system is used.
I suggest to change to slightly larger constituencies, each producing 5 MPs based on PR within that constituency.
that way the rural vote does not get lost.
You could easily add direct democracy within a constituency, so there is a direct line between people and their MPs.
There are modified systems in use elsewhere in the UK, e.g. the Welsh Senedd one: https://senedd.wales/senedd-now/senedd-blog/how-your-vote-is-used-to-elect-members-of-the-senedd/ To do the rough equivalent in Westminster there would have to be some kind of regional extras – maybe Counties or major cities, or whatever.
This morning I have lost count of the number of times the BBC called the NR the ‘Far Right’. It is the fault of the Globalist Macron and his WEF puppet masters that things are in the state that they are in. The centre and the left are in favour of Agenda 2030 and caused the rise of the YELLOW VEST MOVEMENT. Macron referred to the NR as fascists, I recall his pushing of the jab onto those that refused to take part fascist in my book.