As I said just now it is down to us.
So many people are getting together for drinks or shopping or dinner.
Macron does not have a magic wand
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No but he does have the power to call a lockdown for a month to ease the burden on the health service etc.
He has lost the plot.
I fully accept that it’s a tough time at the moment but a crisis such as a pandemic calls for leadership and over the last few months he’s been AWOL leaving Castex and Veran to take any flack.
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Do people keep to the rules that is the question
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Here’s the article.
MlP is correct in saying the EU has failed us with Covid.
https://www.ft.com/content/c197faa3-1cc4-4ac7-9a7f-6ca4d582c716
well if we want dissaster we just need to get voting forMLP and see how all her tunes change
If you step back and take an overview I think the conclusion is inescapable that since the 2008 financial crisis voters all over the world, and especially in the more developed world, have been moving to the extremes - both to the left and right.
This was expressed in places by the almost complete collapse of centre parties (both centre-left and centre-right) and in others by the rise of new parties like Podemos and Syriza and ‘Pirate’ parties on the left - along with Greens everywhere - and also new or revised parties on the right, like the Trumpian Republicans, and I would put the UKIP-ised Tories in this category too (as I would put Labour under Corbyn in the new left category - the UK only avoided the collapse of its formerly centre-right and centre-left parties because both of these actually moved more to the extremes - the vote for the centre party that remained, the LibDems, did collapse).
In some countries entirely new movements and parties emerged that appeared to offer some kind of new politics, and cut right across the old right/left divisions - I would put en marche in this category, along with 5star in Italy, and actually the gilets jaunes movement too. (Though I don’t think any of these are sustainable.)
Clearly, there are local and national versions of all this going on - but at the root of all, in my view, is a fundamental collapse in centrist ideology in the face of the 2008 crisis and events since - especially people’s loss of belief in social progress - that their children will have better lives than their own - and of course in the face of climate/ecological breakdown. The core of centrist ideology - ‘things are not too bad, there’s not really any alternative to capitalism in more-or-less it’s current form, all we can do is mitigate its worst abuses’ - is simply not tenable any more.
Having said that, there is some evidence of some real understanding of this emerging among some politicians. Biden, a centrist all his life, has maybe moved left with his Democrat constituency. There is some evidence that the increase in extreme right votes in continental Europe might have peaked. Maybe even Macron and Starmer might get the message of their deep unpopularity and offer something more radical.
But who knows which way it will go? It’s probably already too late to avoid early symptoms of climate/ecological breakdown like pandemics and mass migrations - the former will certainly push votes on economic policy to the left, but literally millions of refugees from whole areas of the world that can no longer sustain them might well push more voters towards the extreme right.
Maybe, but the next presidential election next year will depend upon who gets Macron’s lost votes. Many will veer towards her. The Greens have just said they will back a socialist/ left coalition which leaves the Républicains and more right to decide where to go. Interesting times ahead.
I have felt for some time that a few of you on here have your heads in the sand, keep your fingers crossed, pretty normal life etc. Macron is now going to have to take stricter measures. If they don’t work, then he will have to lockdown universally again. Sadly for us in the UK it took Johnson a long time to realise and act on the inevitable. There are now more people in ICU in France with Covid than in normal wards with it in the UK. Politically, Johnson seems to have struck it right, despite the appalling and shambolic management. With Starmer looking increasingly flat and uninspiring, we can look forward to uninterrupted Tory government for some time. You may have 5 years of Le Pen to look forward to.
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Johnson et al mixed up in the beginning no two ways. However they have got their act together recently with the latest lockdown and the vaccination programme. You may say you have had a normal life ,fair enough it’s been winter ,now it’s getting spring summer you may find it very different
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I’m in the UK, no normal life here…yet. Fingers crossed.
Me too ,and things are pretty abnormal but it is starting to show a glimmer of hope
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How did you do that, I subscribe to the FT on line, but can only send a few articles each month…if i send a link it normally won’t open for the reader
Good analysis, but how do you account for the rise of the Greens in Germany. There is more than an outside possibility that the next Chancellor will be from that party
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So who would lead France out of the covit threat
Would it be MLP or would she march the etrangers out of France
The rise of the Greens (almost everywhere) is part of the same context - they are generally further to the left than the now virtually defunct ‘centre-left’ parties, in that they generally recognise there has to be very radical change to our lifestyles and economies.
[quote=“Eddie, post:210, topic:34012”]
However they have got their act together recently with the
Difficult to admit but mature enough to do it…Boris Johnson and team have done a good job recently regarding vaccination, EU and therfore France have really fouled (could use another f word).
Some of us were scorned when we critised French/EU approach and supported Boris’s absolute priority on vacinations…we warned it wouldn’t work, looks like the chickens will come to roost at 8pm tonight.
We said an aggressive vaccination campaign was the only way to avoid a second restrictive summer, how right we were!
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One interesting aspect here is that the extreme right and the extreme left/green analyses are both better than the centre.
The right-wing response - that civilisation and globalisation as we have known them will undergo at least a partial collapse under environmental costs/pressures, so we have to exclude immigrants, become survivalists as communities and nations, turn back our own clocks to a more controlled but less caring state, etc - is at least rational, although in my view horrific. There is a small but significant strand in environmentalism (in 5Star in Italy for example) that consciously takes this green-rightist view.
The left response - green new deal, expanded but fairer state, internationalism but not exploitative globalisation (export of jobs), etc - is also rational.
What’s not going to work - either in terms of votes or policy outcomes - is the centre’s ‘let’s not rock the boat too much’ approach. At present, I suspect, Macron is preparing the way for LePen or - eventually - something similar; the only way I think he might avoid this is to move to the left, forming alliances around his own ‘green new deal’, etc. Just as I think unless Biden, to take another example, delivers a really left agenda, Trump or worse will just come back.
Basically I’m a genius John, ahem !
No, don’t be silly. No one will be kicked out. She wants France to have some kind of identity in the world, that’s all. She would probably be the biggest party at best but with no overall majority - just like Macron now.