In what may be a forerunner of the US election in November, Macron’s Party came in third in round 1 of snap parliamentary elections.
Note: The above chart is a projection based on round one of the election. Round two is July 7. Macron’s party is Renaissance, part of the Ensemble (Together) coalition.
Snap Elections
As background there were no regularly scheduled parliament elections in France. They are the result of Macron’s Party getting hammered in the European Parliament elections.
I discussed the setup in Marine Le Pen Set for Record Win, Macron Calls Snap French Election
The French President and the German Chancellor both suffered record defeats in the European Parliament election. Macron calls a surprise parliamentary election after defeat.
Understanding French Elections
French members of parliament are not elected on the basis of proportional representation, but instead through a complicated two-round vote across 577 constituencies where local dynamics play a big role.
France will go to the polls on Sunday June 30, with runoffs planned for July 7. In each constituency, if no candidate wins 50 percent of the vote in the first round, the top two candidates advance to the second round, as does any other candidate who got the support of at least 12.5 percent of registered voters. The candidate with the most votes in the second round wins the seat as a member of parliament.
The above explanation from Politico.
Historically, to prevent the far Right candidates from ever winning, the bottom candidates tend to drop out in hope the remaining candidate wins.
Round One of Snap Elections
Politico notes Emmanuel Macron’s election gamble spectacularly backfired, leaving his centrist alliance trailing the far right and far left.
Please consider What the French election results mean for Le Pen, Macron and Mélenchon
Voters have spoken in the first round of the crucial French legislative election, paving the way for a tense, uncertain week of campaigning before the runoff next Sunday.
Projections based on exit polls show an absolute majority is within reach for Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. That would force Emmanuel Macron, the French president, into appointing the first democratically elected far-right government in France’s modern history.
Marine Le Pen: Looking strong
The National Rally is on course to obtain its strongest-ever finish in the first round of a nationwide election. It is likely to have won dozens of seats even before the second round once the final results are tallied, including that of its presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, who secured her seat with more than 50 percent of the vote in her home turf of Hénin-Beaumont, in Northern France.Her sister, Marie-Caroline Le Pen, finished first in the western region of Sarthe, in what used to be a bastion of more conventional center-right candidates.
Jordan Bardella: Seeing himself up there
National Rally President Jordan Bardella, who is eyeing the premiership should his party prevail Sunday, didn’t criticize French President Emmanuel Macron’s camp in his speech Sunday night.Instead, he took aim at the left, which ranked second across the country.
Emmanuel Macron: Beaten and bruised
The biggest losers of the night appear to be Macron and his allies. [Macron’s party ironically is called Renaissance]. Significantly trailing both its rivals, the centrist coalition will likely lose dozens of the 250 seats it currently holds in the National Assembly, with little prospect of forming a new governing coalition. Early estimates showed the presidential camp was eliminated in nearly half of all districts. [Meaning half of Macron’s party could not muster 12.5 percent of the vote/]Many candidates running under the centrist banner refused to put Macron’s face on their election posters out of fear that his image would hinder their chances of being elected.
Gabriel Attal: In hangover mode
Attal, [Macron’s Prime Minister] once considered a rising star of French politics, admitted he was excluded from Macron’s sudden decision to call a snap election — and now has suffered a humiliating defeat in plain sight.Third-place candidates eager to avoid a National Rally win could be prompted to bow out of the race and pull their weight behind the candidate best-positioned to beat the far right.
Attal said “not one vote must go to the National Rally,” but only committed to withdraw when third to a “Republican candidate.” Meaning: not one of those radical leftists.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon: Weakened but not out
The left-wing alliance of France Unbowed, the Greens and the Socialists made a strong showing with 28.1 percent of the vote, but it has little chance of gathering a workable majority.
Demise of Renaissance/Ensemble
Macron’s Renaissance party lost half of its seats outright by failing to get at least 12.5 percent of the vote.
On top of that, Macron’s Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, is telling any Renaissance candidates in third place to stand down out hoping the radical left will win.
Wow.
Ensemble currently has 249 members of the National Assembly. It may shrink to as few as 70. Another wow.
The center in France has blown out.
By the way, Macron did not have the courage to face the nation. He had Attal go on TV instead.
France’s Far Right Celebrates Lead and Seeks Majority
The BBC reports France’s Far Right Celebrates Lead and Seeks Majority
Supporters of Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration National Rally (RN) cheered as she said the president’s “Macronist bloc has been all but wiped out”.
RN was on course to win 33.2% of the vote, with a left-wing alliance behind on 28.1%, and the Macron alliance behind on 21%.
“I aim to be prime minister for all the French people, if the French give us their votes,” said 28-year-old RN party leader Jordan Bardella.
Never before has the far right won the first round of a French parliamentary election. The simple fact that it has become possible is historic, says veteran commentator Alain Duhamel.
What Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella want is an absolute majority of 289 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly.
Seat projections for next Sunday’s second round run-off votes suggest they may fall short.
Majority in Range
There are 577 seats in the National Assembly. It’s possible National Rally pulls off an outright majority.
Given Marine Le Pen’s priority is to become the next president of France, National Rally will be in a better position if it falls short and Jordan Bardella is not the next prime minister.
Debt brakes explain why.
Debt Brakes and Treaty Requirements About to Smash the EU
The EU has launched an Excessive Debt Proceeding against France.
In addition to the Excessive Debt Proceedings against many countries, every EU county has defense spending issues, climate spending issues, and demographic issues.
Be Careful of What You Wish
If National Rally achieves an outright majority, Jordan Bardella will emerge as Prime Minister.
Then what? The EU will immediately enforce debt and deficit rules it let France ignore for decades.
To achieve a government debt-to-GDP ratio of 60 percent, EU countries will have to reduce spending or raise taxes by 2 percent of GDP, on average, every year for 46 years.
Macron’s election gambit may very well be to transfer the problem to National Rally to fix.
Please see Debt Brakes and Treaty Requirements About to Smash the EU for details.
The problem is not fixable. So, if Le Pen wants to be the next French President, the National Rally should not want to be in power when fiscal hell breaks loose.
“The problem is not fixable. So, if Le Pen wants to be the next French President, the National Rally should not want to be in power when fiscal hell breaks loose”
I must disagree with this comment for the following reasons, but the entire subject matter is about to open the eyes of so many individuals, up until now. I am not sure what to expect, but chaos is assured right out of the gate imo…
All problems are indeed fixable, to some degree of betterment. I would prefer my Leader (Le Pen in this case), be in charge trying to at least make the best possible decisions for the Country and its People. Knowing “all hell will break loose” use your time to immediately prepare for it. Take whatever power you have now, and set it all in motion, and with funding to get out on the other side in better condition as a Nation.
That’s what I would prefer to happen, if I were from France…
Barely a year ago Attal had the same role as Karine Jean-Pierre and then he suddenly moved to the minister of Education (although being gay he has no children nor did he ever attend a public school) and after a few months he is named Prime Minister to the surprise of everyone. That hurt Macron because Attal has virtually no real experience in much anything at a time when grave events were popping up everywhere.
The Center was always a fiction in France. Virtually all parties have a strong socialist bent, even Le Pen’s party. Frankly the far Left and the Far Right see eye to eye on many economic issues. Where they differ enormously is in who gets to benefit from these policies. The Far Left wants only the immigrants to get the goodies and the Far Right wants only the French to get them.
We then, it certainly makes sense why the “Far Left” lost and the “Far Right” Won.
The Citizens got tired of watching all the/their goodies going to non-citizens and want to see some immediate change. They would like to have some goodies too, as they are the ones paying for them after all…
Remember, the intentions of wanting the Presidency do NOT include DOING RIGHT FOR US.
IT IS A GREAT FREE RIDE!
The same question arises in our minds with America’s current situation (UTTER FAILURE FINANCIALLY) and:
WHO in their RIGHT MIND would want to inherit the mess that we are in NOW?
I think that the answer is that the POWER, GLORY, FREE RENT, FREE AIR FORCE ONE, FREE FOOD and FREE BOOZE is too much to resist by Trump.
He’s a billionaire… he already had/has those things…
For the most part people hold onto their high-minded liberal ideals as long as the wine is flowing and they haven’t been impacted directly. Once the tap runs dry and reality slaps them in the face….
Socialism/communism fails with every attempt. The end is dire poverty for all followed by revolution. France is there. Haul out the Guillotines and assemble the crowds.
Cincinnati [OH] Bearcats football player Dontay Corleone [21] will be away from the field indefinitely after dealing with a major medical emergency. Cincinnati Bearcats football player Dontay Corleone will be out indefinitely as he undergoes treatment for blood clots discovered in his lungs, the team announced on Friday.
https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/pearl-jam-cancels-show-willie-nelson
What the hell is going on???? Take a guess… come on man… take a guess
Climate change? I’m sure that is what Pete Bettigieg would say.
Yes – he injected the antidote to climate change 🙂
Bad chalupa?
If Macron and Trudeau shared a jail cell, who would …
No problem … they can just harvest more solar panels from the solar panel trees to replace these hahahahaha https://youtu.be/rVaq3a-z9iU
One by one, England’s councils are going bankrupt – and nobody in Westminster wants to talk about it
One in five say they will be insolvent by next year. These local crises add up to a national catastrophe that’s about to explode
The dire predicament of councils all over England now invites an obvious question: at what point might we collectively realise that hundreds of local crises now add up to a national catastrophe? Our political culture is too Westminster-focused to follow the stories and join the dots; the dreaded term “local government” still causes eyes to glaze over. But all over the country, the picture is now the same, and things are rapidly nearing the point of complete breakdown.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/14/englands-councils-bankrupt-westminster
This is what happens… when the oil goes into deep depletion
Britain is producing the smallest amount of energy on record as a plunge in North Sea fossil fuels leaves the country more reliant than ever on imports.
The decades of prosperity that North Sea oil delivered… are over
Perhaps needless to say, few if any western politician will admit that the good days are over. One exception could be France’s Macron, openly floating the idea almost exactly two years ago, that the “end of abundance” is indeed around the corner.
Little did he know back then that the entire collective West would still be on the slippery slope of the long decline two years later, accelerating towards a de-industrialized low-tech future. Just like two years ago, these unfortunate turn of events are still blamed on external enemies.
If one understands the importance and role of energy in the economic life of any country on Earth, however, it becomes clear as daylight that this decline was a) inevitable due to geologic reasons, and b) was only accelerated by the pandemic response and the economic sanctions war.
Consequently, the decline did not start in 2020, or 2022 either, but a year earlier, when the extraction of oil — the master resource, essential to everything this civilization does — hit a peak both in absolute and in net energy terms. None of this could’ve been seen in GDP figures, of course. Economists and politicians alike are flying high and blind, as they fixate on this entirely fictitious metric, which — contrary to common wisdom — has very little to do with economic activity, much more with the amount of monetary transactions taking place.
GDP is thus easily distorted by taking on debt, printing money, measuring the transactional activity of the financial sector, or simply by under-reporting inflation… The prime economic metric used to guide policy is thus an abstraction of an abstraction, not a measure of real life activity or wealth.
What really matters in the economy takes energy to make. Be it a service like running a restaurant, or manufacturing vehicles, every economic activity requires energy, and that in our world unfortunately means burning fossil fuels. Still, after decades of handwaving, only 20% of the economy runs on electricity, the rest — for practical, scalability, economic and yes, hard core technical reasons — still requires massive amounts of fossil fuel inputs to operate…
Including every single step of making “renewables”, or mining and refining mineral resources (from sand and limestone to copper and uranium), or making a range of products from paint to toothpaste, or from batteries to building concrete dams.
https://thehonestsorcerer.substack.com/p/2019-peak-western-civilization
On top of that, Macron’s Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, is telling any Renaissance candidates in third place to stand down out hoping the radical left will win.
I think he only committed to withdraw only if they are behind a “Republican” (center right) candidate.
Attal said “not one vote must go to the National Rally,” but only committed to withdraw when third to a “Republican candidate.” Meaning: not one of those radical leftists.
European budget rules are always largely ignored when a left wing party is in charge, but are suddenly raised whenever a right wing party is elected. France is large/influential enough that it could either ignore those rules, or counter by proposing to end the tax exempt status of the EU bureaucracy.
the last sentences are most telling. It applies to the US too. Who will be the fall guy when the bond vigilantes turn on the US Treasury and demand interest rates that the reckless level of deficits/debt deserve. It won’t be 4 to 5 %
The fed will resort to yield control and buy up all the debt at below market clearing interest rates. The dollar will probably tank as a result.
Macron wants out. No reason to call those snap elections other than get the ball rolling with lots of momentum. A few years ago he tried to establish his own mini-UN with a handful of weak countries. It failed along with everything else he attempted since.
Macron is sitting in the catbird seat, the National Rally gets to steer austerity and fight EU bureaucrats,and take the lead on immigration and the banlieues (Bardella comes out of Seine Saint-Denis). Macron gets to stay President, and play diplomat on foreign policy. That’s even leaving aside who’s on the hot seat for the coming recession.
EU bureaucrats are an easy fix. France prints Francs, pays off the debt and leaves the EU. Sayonara to ECB and Deutsche Bank.
Leaving the ECB is always a good thing.
Printing Francs; otoh;…..
At least the Francs will have much less inertia preventing them from finding their true; non-existent; value.
I’d contest the constant designation of these right parties as “far-right”.
French elections: more instability
The biggest shakeup was in France where French President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling coalition was trounced by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. It won about 32%, more than double the vote of Macron’s Renaissance party.
In response, Macron called snap elections for France’s National Assembly June 30. Polls show the National Rally and the New Popular Front, a class-collaborationist bloc on the left, likely to take first and second place, ahead of Macron’s Renaissance.
For more than a decade, Le Pen has distanced her party from its radical right, antisemitic roots under her father. She expelled him in 2015 for belittling the Holocaust and ditched the party’s name, the National Front, three years later.
She has dropped her proposal for Paris to exit the EU and the euro currency in favor of contesting to advance the interests of French capitalist rulers against their rivals within the EU.
Le Pen’s candidate for French premier, Jordan Bardella, promises to impose further restrictions on the movement of immigrants within the EU and to resist dictates from the EU bureaucracy. Farmers in France and across Europe recently protested against skyrocketing energy and fertilizer prices, and over the EU’s “climate change” rules that also threaten their livelihoods.
On June 24 the center-left government in Denmark announced it is imposing a new tax of just under 100 euros a year ($107) on each cow owned by the country’s farmers.
The French New Popular Front is an alliance of the Socialist and Communist parties, the Greens and the leftist former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon.
Citing Hamas’ Oct. 7 “pogroms on Israeli soil,” Le Pen supports Israel’s right to defend itself and its war on the terror group in Gaza. She attacks the “stigmatization of Jews by the far left.” She combines this with the scapegoating of immigrants and anti-Muslim demagogy.
By contrast, Melenchon refused to condemn the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas and denies there is Jew-hatred among Hamas apologists on the left. Stalinists in the Communist Party voice similar opinions.
https://themilitant.com/2024/06/29/are-working-people-in-europe-flocking-to-join-the-far-right/
”
I’d contest the constant designation of these right parties as “far-right”
”
Touche!
None of them are “far” anything away from Macron’s status quo. Just as Obama to Trump to Biden and back to Trump and then Obama (Michelle): NOTHING of significance will change.
None of them are even able to comprehend anything at all; aside from ever more of the same progressive ever-growing intrusiveness of a totalitarian state ran by card carrying and certified imbeciles too dumb to even comprehend there exists a boat to rock. Whether Bardella or Melenchon: French people will just continue to get poorer. French “industry” will continue its march towards Argentina like irrelevance. While Bardella and Melenchon themselves; along with their immediate social circle of clueless regime profiteers; will continue to live high from feeding off the dying carcass of what I assume at one point was some sort of worth vile society. Just like every Argentinian tinpot since Peron.
Anyone not ditching central banks and income taxes and public eductrination; are not only not “far right”; but indeed not “right” at all; by any historic standard going back further than the past century’s failed experiments with progressivism. Even in Europe, despite their traditionally greater affinity for little princelings than what American citizen militias could stomach. Instead, all that Le Pen and coterie has become; is just yet another look-at-me forum for yet more cheering for “saving the syyystem” that Macron entrenched.
I am told that ‘austerity’ is a dirty word.
Where is Barack Obama when he is needed, to tell the French that they have to eat there peas!
— Except that the French are max-taxed out. And as day follows night, the state is max-spent out.
Voters everywhere are tired of governments using environmental regulations to control them, and tired of uncontrolled unlimited immigration.
Some of the blowback is going to be severe.