I don’t think we can be living in the same country if you think France has a fascist government. Also I suppose you aren’t French and I wonder how well you know us.
Yes but he’s nice to look at! 
I see another one bites the dust.
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I like him too… he smiles at me every day… (my niece did a lovely sketch for me…)
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Yes. I think many people in the UK don’t realise how very far to the right the country has drifted.
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Yes - and that includes almost all the UK mass media - which obsesses about ‘right-wing populism’ on the Continent but is blind to it in its own backyard!
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Interesting analysis of the result here too - also placing social divisions in France in an international context…
If this sociological and cultural description bears a striking resemblance to the electoral landscape that took shape during the 2016 US presidential election or during Brexit, it is because the same tectonic shifts are at work everywhere. Globalisation, synonymous with post-industrial decline, the concentration of wealth and graduates in large cities, but also an increase in migratory flows, combined with an educational revolution have profoundly reconfigured western societies.
Except that LePen didn’t win - didn’t in fact come anywhere near winning - so (according to some) the votes blanc movement achieved its aim: the record number of abstentions and blank papers demonstrated to Macron that most people do not support him (or LePen) and he has to modify his behaviour and policies.
And there is indeed some evidence that he has learned this lesson, isn’t there?
I thought the old cartoon made the point quite nicely… of just what can happen. 
Very interesting prog on France Inter tonight le téléphone sonne if you like French politics
and now to the Legislatives…
This is soooo funny… personally, I wouldn’t use The Express as toilet paper in an emergency…
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I see the Socialists, Communists, Greens and France Insoumise have agreed to stand together as ‘The Social and Ecological People’s Union’ for these elections.
Is it likely in your view that this will end in tears?
Considering the German alliances over time when it becomes almost like mating elephants… taking a period longer than any other species to achieve the final political result.
I was listening to Fabien Roussel on Inter this morning and he’s awful. I don’t like Melenchon terrible old sexist windbag, Jadot is a creep, the socialists are a joke, god what a useless bunch. Roussel really irritated me, but Zemmour and MLP and the rest of the swivel-eyed loonies on their end of the spectrum make me feel sick so I really hope LREM do well. That’s who I shall be voting for anyway.
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I see it rather less in personality terms than Véronique!
It’s interesting I think that they’ve agreed the electoral alliance but not a common programme (yet) - one thorny issue will of course be the EU - disagreement over which was the reason Mélenchon left the Socialists in the first place.
I don’t know much about German politics - but generally speaking I think Socialist/Green alliances are both positive and inevitable - and the politics of both are likely to move further left (for the same reasons voters are moving to political extremes - centrism is all about the status quo and not changing anything too quickly, but this is not a sustainable position in the climate/ecological breakdown we are now beginning to experience).
Coalitions between more centrist socialist parties and those further left - including the Communists in Portugal - have of course worked spectacularly well elsewhere.
I’ve been thinking about the ‘personalities vs policies’ issue. (My daughter told me off for saying I thought Mélenchon was a bit maverick, with the words ‘But who has the best programme?’ - and I had to admit he probably did).
But is it a weakness of the French, and American (etc) presidential systems that they focus attention on personalities rather than policies?
Mass media tends to do this anyway, of course, because for a whole range of reasons it doesn’t want people to think about politics as it really is - a struggle between adverse power and economic interests. But perhaps presidential systems like the Irish or Austrian that give far less power to a single individual help inhibit the focus on personalities, whereas France’s facilitates it?
LREM now rebranded as Renaissance - this - and the reasons given for it - seem to indicate that at some level Macron etc share my view that En Marche only succeeded because it was perceived as new and different.
The problem is, of course, that unless it shows itself to be new and different in practice - ie. unless this time Macron radically alters the status quo - it will continue to lose voters to parties that do offer - or seem to offer - real change.
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