I used to be a Figaro abonnée but there were too many pieces by professional “spécialistes de philosophie politique”, like Jean-Loup Bonnamy, and the comments were often rabid anti EU.
I am now an abonnée of le Monde which I used to think was too far to the left, but turns out to be OK, with longer, better written articles on the whole and commenters who I often agree with!
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At what level though John - nothing is absolutely safe and proving a negativ is difficult and the best approximation can only be had after a long period of collecting data.
Breathing can kill you - but not breathing generally gets the job done faster.
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I agree Paul, all risks are relative but M. Bonnamy’s theory that something is safe until proven otherwise doesn’t sit well with my instinct for self-preservation 
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Hi Jane - how/where do you get one of those ?!!
The BBC is wise to VPN’s, so please do not rely on one to get the BBC I Player.
There’s a thread on VPNs here for you to look through:
I thought the joke about Dunkerque was funny and apposite. People are quite happy to post articles from the Guardian, which is every bit as partisan as the other newspapers.
If you want to watch BBC iPlayer, don’t choose the brand PIA VPN (PrivateInternetAccess.com) as BBC have identified it and blocked it. Best to get a recommendation from someone who can verify their VPN company works for iPlayer … once your conscience has resolved itself…
We’ve been doing so with no problems for 12+ years…
Sorry Ron, I missed the Dunkerque reference. I did get the Normandy one though.
To be honest and at the risk of sounding a bit severe, I think the appropriate comment for any colonel who wasn’t actually part of the debarquement to make is thank you - to all the brave men who did. Not to make jokes about them getting sea sick. He’s a bit too gung ho for me I’m afraid. Here’s his Wiki entry.
I think it depends on your VPN provider. We use NordVPN and sometimes I have to change server a few times to find one the BEEB has got the IP address of.
You’ve been lucky. there have been stories here where people have not been able to access it.
Starts at 29mins 47secs. Definitely worth checking out.
Is this the 2022 “official” presidential election thread (or at least the most apposite one)?
Anyway, I didn’t know where to write this so apols in advance if I got it wrong!
Looks like Édouard Philippe might be thinking after all of capitalising on his popularity and have a go at the big prize next year.
It’s early days of course and it’s only speculations but the former PM gave a bit of an enigmatic interview to Le Point (in this week’s issue) where, according to what I’ve heard (haven’t read it), he appears to have an oblique dig at Macron (“Going for a second term isn’t necessarily the norm anymore” - ouch!) and talk in a roundabout way of the possibility of throwing his hat into the presidential ring.
Some say that it’s doubtful he’d do that if he didn’t have a petite idée in the back of his mind (like, lofty presidential ambitions), others think that he’s probably just enjoying rattling Macron’s cage and making him sweat a bit after last year’s forced “resignation”.
« J’aime être aux manettes » : I like to be at the helm. Will he, won’t he? The plot thickens…
After being forcibly sent back to his “pénates” (his Le Havre mayorship) last summer by Macron who, like many presidents before him, felt threatened by Philippe’s popularity ratings (but not only, there were also major disagreements between the two, as reported by many insiders), Philippe has started doing the media rounds of late. He’s releasing a political book next Wednesday and is giving media interviews.
Philippe is not the sort to let rip so it’s all about reading between the lines, for the time being anyhow. He was on France Inter radio a few days ago and will probably continue to pop up in the media in the next fortnight, at least to promote his book. Inevitably, the question of his candidacy next year will be put to him.
Basically, Philippe’s line has always been that he’d like to be president one day but he wouldn’t campaign against Macron as he obviously feels indebted to him, so his plan was to wait for Macron to withdraw from top-level politics. However, politics is not exactly le monde des Bisounours (it’s not Noddy’s world), it is bloody ruthless (as Macron should know, he “betrayed” François Hollande in 2016, which the latter hasn’t lived down and probably never will) and Philippe is hacked off with Macron, so maybe those nice respectful plans are a thing of the past, who knows.
Le Havre might well be "Hipster Heaven and what have you but the man is bored there and he’s intimating that running the show is his thing.
Should Philippe decide to go the whole hog, he’ll most probably have to go through the Primaries of the Centre & the Right (Primaire ouverte de la droite et du centre) in November/December 2021, not technically an obligation of course as he could run as an independent (as Macron did) but it would complicate things for him to eschew the Primaries, logistically, financially etc. (it’s usually preferable to have the backing of a party, especially as Philippe is a Les Républicains man, he was never been in Macron’s LREM party).
In the last 60 years that Ifop has measures popularity ratings of both presidents and PMs, before Édouard Philippe six prime ministers have been popular than the president but none managed to get elected (slate.fr has the details).
Meanwhile, Yannick Jadot, the charismatic Europe Écologie Les Verts leader (EELV, the Greens) and an MEP since 2009, also likes to be in charge. He has reiterated on France Inter (radio channel) on Monday the absolute necessity for the fragmented Left to get together and “talk” (there’s been bad blood between the leaders of the 4 or 5 leftwing parties for a few months, plenty of digs and veiled attacks between them through the media).
Jadot is keen to move towards more unity on the Left(s), or come to some sort of alliance or agreement (to do with the 1st and 2nd rounds of the 2022 presidential, possibly also to do with the forthcoming Regionals), as is their only option to upset the status quo and rightwing electoral prognosis. All these leftwing leaders have apparently agreed to meet next week, IRL. It’s meant to be high profile so the media will be there and report on it.
This meeting looks like it’ll be more of an initial “prise de contact”, to clear the air after months of animosity and talk broadly about their respective party’s direction for 2022, bearing in mind that apart from Mélenchon none of them has actually officially declared that they’ll run for presidency, so there’s obviously no ligne directrice, no manifesto in place etc.
It’s not yet known officially who will attend this meeting but in the main probably Jadot for EELV, Mélenchon for France Insoumise, Faure for the PS, Hidalgo (no official affiliation yet) and possibly Roussel for the Communists.
A “hard alliance” (with only 1 leftwing candidate in the 1st round) is currently unthinkable given the ideological differences between the parties and the personal enmities (eg between Jadot and Mélenchon), and also the fact that Mélenchon is already officially a candidate, has a platform etc.
A broad leftwing alliance is something though that’s been done before successfully, most famously in 1936 with the election of Léon Blum leading the Front Populaire and of course in 1981 with Mitterrand (who’d sealed the leftwing alliance 10 years before with the Programme Commun, and thus by winning the 1981 Presidentials ended 23 years of the Right at the helm).
However the circumstances back then were very different. In the mid-1930s, such a pan-Left alliance had been achieved (with great difficulty) very much on a “needs must” basis, it was the only way to counter the rise of fascism (following the attempted coup of 6 february 1934 by the so-called Far-right leagues), and in 1981, Mitterrand had been the undisputed leader of the Left more or less since the mid-1960s bar a major disagreement with the socialist top brass in the late 1960s (hence his absence in the 1969 Presidentials, replaced by the maverick Marseille mayor Gaston Defferre who only registered a puny 5%, their lowest ever score), a major beef which would lead to the foundation of the Parti Socialiste, created on the ashes of the SFIO (Mitterrand recorded 45% vs De Gaulle in the 1965 Presidentials and over 49% vs Giscard d’Estaing at the 1974’s). But this time round there is no stand-out leftwing leader around whom parties could coalesce and the French Left is even more divided than back then, so there will certainly be no “programme commun”.
The objective of this meeting is more to first agree on a truce (a non-aggression pact) and to start a dialogue between them all, in particular to initiate a discussion on how best to go about tackling the perennial problem of the French Left: the multiple candidates in the Presidentials which split the vote 4 or 5 ways (with the additional problem of Macron last time who nicked plenty of centre-left votes in 2017, as many of these voters didn’t vote for socialist Hamon in the 1st round but for centrist Macron, in a damage-limitation exercise – as Benoît Hamon, presenting the beleaguered Socialist, had zero chance of making to the 2nd round so it’d have been a wasted vote. Indeed, the poor Hamon, very much thrown in at the deep end, recorded a ghastly 6,4%, the Socialists’ second worst score since the creation of the SFIO (the forerunner to the French Socialist Party) in the 1900s by Jean Jaurès, its co-founder).
So, in practical terms, I guess they’ll discuss who’s OK to pull out in the 1st round in order to have as few leftwing candidates as poss, eg as the PC (Communists) did in 2017, Just like in 2012, the PC, didn’t run a candidate, so as not to get in the way of Mélenchon. It was an agreement between the latter and the PC’s voters – there was a national vote –, and in return Mélenchon’s party didn’t run candidates against the PC in some constituencies in the June 2017 Législatives, explains why the Communists ended up with a disproportionate amount of MPs in the Legislatives, 11).
Christ, even the Greens are deeply divided within their party. For instance Jadot hadn’t told anyone in EELV that he would make that comparatively big announcement on France Inter that all the leftwing parties would meet to talk with a view possibly to agree on a common strategy… Apparently, the EELV’s big cheeses went ape shit when they realised they hadn’t been consulted.
The Greens have always been very divided party in France, but more so now that they have emerged in the last two years from years of anonymity. As they have become far more high-profile than previously, so have their divisions.
Historically and roughly speaking there’s always been three distinct factions within that movement: 1/3 of hardline pro-EU “autonomists”, politically on the Centre-Left but keen to go it alone; 1/3 who prefer an alliance with the hard left (currently represented by the Mélenchon’s Eurospectic France Insoumise) and the remaining third who favour an alliance with the Socialists or whoever happens to be on the Centre Left.
In the last few years, exponents of the first two factions have emerged: the “autonomist” Yannick Jadot vs the more radical Green “reds” led by Éric Piolle (Grenoble’s mayor since 2014) who is openly close to Paris socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo, and close to Mélenchon’s hard left La France Insoumise. To make matters even more complicated within EELV and the Left, Hidalgo, who’s been Paris Mayor since 2014, the last time – 2020 – thanks to a coalition with the Greens, and local divisions on the right) has hinted that she’d run for presidency next year, although she hasn’t officially decided.
It is an open secret that Jadot and Piolle, the two leaders of EELV and representatives of two main strands within the party, cannot stand each other. They will both vie to be the EELV candidate for the presidentials. There will be an EELV primary to decide, voting will be open to all (all 48 million voters; upon signing a chart and forking out €1) and it’ll be held in theory before the end of September 2021. It is likely that there will be at least 4 candidates: Jadot, Piolle, Sandrine Rousseau and ex socialist Delphine Batho (who’s an MP – in the same dpt 79 consistuency where Ségolène Royal was an MP for nearly 20 years – and was Minister of Ecology, Sustainable Development and Energy in the first gvt under Hollande).
According to various insiders, Piolle’s is more popular within the “écolos encarté(e)s”, the card-carrying EELV members but Jadot seems to have slightly more traction with the larger EELV electorate. Things are hardening, times are increasingly polarised and centrist Jadot seems to have been losing support of late within the rank-and-files, he’s not daft, he’s probably sensed that so
that could explain why he’s suddenly calling for a meeting that feels premature and a bit pointless to some.
EELV scored a decent 13.5 % in the 2019 Europeans and did very well last year in the Municipals, and although they’ve scored a few own goals in the intervening time they are a force to reckon with.
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[sorry for the mistakes, typos etc. in the above post, I typed too fast and I was cream-crackered!]
Interestingly, there will be a Union de la Gauche list in the 1st round of the forthcoming regional elections in June. It is a very rare occurrence though and I’d be amazed if it was done nationally next year for the Presidentials.
The Green MEP Karima Delli will head it and run against En Marche, the Rassemblement National (quite popular up there, Marine Le Pen is a local MP) and Xavier Bertrand, the current president of the region (and as of today the only declared presidential candidate for the right, the Les Républicains party) whom I actually met several times in the mid-1990s when he was in the Saint-Quentin municipal team in Picardie (Aisne department, Hauts-de-France) and I was running a Work Experience scheme to Saint-Quentin for 6th formers for my comprehensive school near Sheffield and about 8 other schools for the Rotherham LEA.
The St-Quentin mayor back then was a bit of a twunt (although the kids and staff were all given lovely presents every year, watches with the St-Quentin logo etc.) but Xavier Bertrand, in charge then of the “redynamisation” of Saint-Quentin IIRC, youth services and suchlike, was pleasant to deal with. He certainly helped us with setting up and running that complex work experience scheme, which I believe was unique in England (I can’t unfortunately take the credit for creating it! I didn’t do the initial set-up legwork, it was created before I worked in a school located in that Rotherham LEA but it grew and evolved and by 1995 I’d managed to involve about sixty 16-18 year olds and many local employers of all sorts - bars, restaurants, admins, shops, municipal services, sports & leisure departments etc., so help from the St-Quentin municipality was vital in this respect, it represented a lot of work with at times legal complications, paperwork and his help was invaluable, with finding employers happy to receive our teenagers, risk assessment, health & safety etc. No internet in those days - or that dreadful dial-up thing…- so I used to call Bertrand a lot at some point, he was always very helpful and keen to develop this international scheme).
He did a lot for youths in that large town in the summer, he inter alia created artificial beaches in several places in the town (the main one, slap bang in the city centre, was fabulous, I think it was the first city centre beach in France, way before Paris etc.) with lots of daily activities and workshops, volley-ball/pétanque/table tennis tournaments etc. so the local kids wouldn’t get bored during the summer hols. We managed to keep the costs down (a number of our kids weren’t from well-off backgrounds) thanks to the Mairie letting us use the local Youth Hostel for free for a fortnight but all of a sudden the mayor changed his mind and circa 1998 wanted to charge us, fair enough but most of our Rotherham kids couldn’t fork out £600 (as opposed to the ~£300 it was up to then), so that was a no-no and I moved the operations to Blois (of which the inénarrable Jack Lang was the mayor!) where we were welcomed with open arms (a great local teacher found us 40-odd host families, the municipality helped us set it up etc.).
A success in these regionals is vital to bolster Xavier Bertrand’s presidential ambitions and credentials. Should Bertrand lose that one, it’s likely that he’d either have to pull out of the presidential race altogether or would have little chance of winning the Les Républicains primaries next autumn. He is not a terribly popular candidate anyway and it’s likely that Édouard Philippe would beat him in a primary should the latter decide to go for it.
[Régionales 2021 : après les Hauts-de-France, l’union de la gauche peut-elle se généraliser ?
DÉCRYPTAGE - La liste d’union de la gauche annoncée pour les régionales dans les Hauts-de-France a été accueillie chaleureusement par la gauche. Mais va-t-elle se concrétiser en Île-de-France et en Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes ?
L’union de la gauche saluée dans les Hauts-de-France. La députée européenne Karima Delli a annoncé qu’elle sera à la tête d’une liste composée par EELV, le Parti socialiste, la France insoumise et le PCF.
Une décision qui fait office d’exemple tant pour les régionales que pour la présidentielle où le risque d’un embouteillage des candidatures à gauche est à craindre. L’annonce a même donné des ailes au premier secrétaire du Parti socialiste Olivier Faure qui a lancé un appel à multiplier les démarches d’unions et d’alliance.
Mais le secrétaire national du PCF Fabien Roussel ne se fait guère d’illusions et juge peu probable que l’union soit reproduite en dehors de la région des Hauts-de-France. Féliciter la démarche portée par Karima Delli est une chose mais l’incarner à son tour, en est une autre.](Régionales 2021 : après les Hauts-de-France, l'union de la gauche peut-elle se généraliser ?)
A further article in today’s FT. Their correspondents have a good reputation (like the Economist) for objectivity and analysis, (not like the rest of UK media Torygraph, Daily M, Express who just push a standard biased position), so should be taken with a degree of realism…unfortunately !
Our unhappiness of the last few months would pale into insignificance if this were to happen…and whilst we can ride Brexit would or could we ride this?
This really might begin to question life here, though I think we would be ok behind the WA agreement
French politics: Macron faces test of character as Le Pen’s popularity grows
One of the interesting facts is that M le P’s increasing support is in industrial N France that was strongly communist/left wing and has swung to her because of being left behind/forgotten.
So what is that a replay of…northern red wall seats in UK, for years staunchly Labour until they fell in love with BJs promises to level up. We shouldn’t kid ourselves that it couldn’t happen here.
The real expolsive mix will be if the Greens do well in Germany…and their popularity is growing at the expense of the CDU/CSU and their wishy washy successor Armin Lashcet. An RN led France and CSU/Green coalition in Germany really will convulse the EU.
We could be in for an interesting ride living here!
Boris would sit in the side lines and say " we told you so".
I don’t think what happens in Germany will have much bearing on France.
The Rassemblement National (in passing, what a terrible name…) has gone from malfunctioning as a disorganised, libertarian, Maurrassian outfit under the father (so, up to 2010) to becoming a structured, “pro-working class”, left-wing/populist party in the space of a couple of years when Marine Le Pen took over in January 2011, just as the party was at a low ebb and had hit rock bottom in fact (the Front National only recorded 2% in the 2007 Législatives – average of the first and second rounds; followed by a terrible showing in the 2008 Municipal elections with < 0.5 % and they only registered only 10% in the 2010 Regionals – average of the first and second rounds).
She did two vital things upon taking over. She first set about changing the image of the party, she “detoxified”/“sanitised”/“de-demonised” (take your pick) it in order to make it more attractive and appeal to a wider base, sociologically speaking, while keeping some of the anti-immigration rhetoric.
Secondly, she restructured the party substantially in order to widen its electoral base, generationally speaking. She changed much of the personnel (ditched the old guard) she’d inherited from her father and surrounded herself with young/young-ish people, not least her niece Marion Maréchal, with whom she’s now in open conflict and who is waiting in the wings. She appointed plenty of young/young-ish whippersnapper-type more media-friendly leaders & advisers (such as the polished Gaullist Énarque Florian Philippot, who was her main spad until the last Presidentials; replaced by the likes of the high-profile working-class Jordan Bardella, the de facto Number 2 in the party, or Nicolas Bay), some of them being opportunistic transfuges – i.e defectors – from the mainstream rightwing parties where they probably they sussed out that their opportunities and political future were limited.
And it’s worked (stonking results in the 2015 Regionals for instance, > 27%), although they would have been very disappointed with the 2017 Législatives results, only 11% (ditto: average of the first and second rounds).
She massively developed the youth structure nationally and set about harnessing modern technology. Hiring much younger more diverse advisers and strategists massively boosted the Under-35 vote, it was done also through setting up the “Front National de la Jeunesse” groups, who are very militant. They’re very active on social media and canvass and leaflet intensely during campaigns. I’ve seen them canvass on markets even in deprived multi-ethnic Greater Paris estates where only France Insoumise/Parti Communiste campaigners venture these days. They’re not always terribly welcome by many there but their discourse resonate with some in those areas who (rightly) feel abandoned by the State as the public administrations and structures are scaled down (you name it, from police stations to law courts to schools or medical & social structures. People talk a lot in France about rural desertification, in particular in the “Diagonale du Vide”, but many of the more deprived suburbs have been badly hit too by a gradual hollowing out of services).
Even the “gay electorate” was taken care of (Philippot, the then main strategist between 2011 and 2017, is openly gay, and the current Number 2 or 3, Sébastien Chenu, is gay too) and the Front National subsequently attracted a substantial % of the gay & LGBT vote, Le FN séduit de plus en plus d’homosexuels.
She totally changed her father’s hitherto neolib manifesto, which gradually became much more “social” under her (return of the retirement age to 60, creation of a sort of universal income etc.).
Wolves in sheep’s clothing no doubt but it worked. She might be a chip of the old block but for many voters she comes across as different ideologically from her vile father, and it’s paying off. All French political experts concur to agree that she is far more opportunistic than very ideologically marked. So if she feels that a social, sort of light Socialist agenda is what her electorate roughly want, that’s what she’ll go for (Although it is a fine balancing act for her as there are roughly two distinct Front National electorates, in a nutshell: a younger JAM/working class to lower middle class cohort, mainly located in the post-industrial Northern and North East French heartlands, who traditionally voted for the Left and an older/retiree type South-East/PACA - Provence Alpes Côte D’Azur - electorate, more neolib, more comfortable and more focused on immigration and identity issues, who traditionally voted for the Right.)
If the RN manages to win the Hauts-de-France at the June Regionals, it will certainly bolster her candidacy for the 2022 Presidentials.