Think you may be right but I just used my last UK address or family addresses. Seems to work and haven’t been arrested yet.
I know that this isn’t marked “stayontopic” but can we please revert back to following the Macron V Le Pen subject as it could have quite an impact on us all if she gets to the Elysee and so will run and run and if we drift too far off it will lose relevance
I wouldn’t worry about thread drift.
If she gets to the Elysée I should imagine there will be plenty of posts on the subject…
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when you say crooks @AngelaR … what varieties of crookery? was it obvious or did you generally work it out bit by bit?
Was it Somerset Maugham who said “sunny places and shady people”
Similar to my question to Angela, @Peter_Bird , how did you rumble them?
Regarding the murderer, he was big news at the time in our area, here’s the story. Eugene lived within our local community for years just like anyone else, weird experience …
The log stealer lived in a village near Champagne Mouton and was soon found out to be a scumbag when he was caught red- handed stealing the neighbours wood. The locals let him get away with it for ages until he went too far. Someone shopped him tho none of the neighbours took any legal action as they felt sorry for him. He and his wife had moved from Brittany after having been convicted of various petty crimes in that area.
Thanks Bettina. The voting system for the Bundestag is particularly interesting I think, this piece here is useful to understand the mechanism (in addition to the wiki).
You may remember that 6 weeks ago (in this thread I believe), I wrote a spiel on the main leftwing parties (Parti Socialiste, France Insoumise, Parti Communiste, Benoît Hamon’s Génération.s party and EELV – the Greens) getting together in mid-April to see if an alliance would be possible at all, and if so, to what extent and what elections (the Regionals & Departmentals were also discussed). The PS and the Greens were particularly keen to put the feelers out to see whether a leftwing alliance would be achievable at all for next year. Mélenchon, who’s only keen on the idea if he leads this alliance, only sent to that Parisian meeting one of his foot soldiers, the MP Éric Coquerel.
As I wrote at the time, in the history of French politics, such a “Union of the Lefts” alliance to defeat the Right has only successfully happened twice:
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in the mid-1930s with the emergence of the short-lived Front Populaire (created despite the strong opposition of the French Communist party, then largely run from Moscow, as a response to the rising threat of fascism following the crisis of Feb 6th 1934), the FP which would win the 1936 elections, with the Jew Léon Blum being elected President of the Council, the highest position at the time (no president in those days, that only came with the creation of the Fifth Republic in 1958 – with the exception of the 1848 presidential election, of Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte, which was a complete one-off).
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and closer to us in the 1970s with François Mitterrand, after he created the Parti Socialiste in 1969 on the ashes of the SFIO (whose main founder was Jean Jaurès, in 1905) and then launched the Programme Commun in 1972 with the Communists and the Centre-Left, and eventually winning the 1981 Presidentials after 23 years of the Right or Centre-Right at the helm.
A second “Union of the Lefts” meeting was held last Monday a week ago, through video conferencing.
Such a wide pan-Left alliance is highly improbable given the ideological differences (esp. as there are deep divisions within the Greens camp and they will need to elect a candidate for the Presidentials), the egos (the traditional “guerre des chefs”) and the fact that there is no dominant leftwing party as we speak (France Insoumise has lost a lot of ground since 2017), making it difficult for a leader to be indiscutable (a shoo-in).
However, what seems to be developing as we speak is a possible alliance between the Greens and the Socialist Party (along what they’re calling “un axe social-écologiste", a bit like what Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo has successfully done in Paris with the Greens), allied maybe to Génération.s, although the latter (more leftwing than the PS and the Greens) is rumoured to be interested by an alliance with Mélenchon’s France Insoumise but with a bit of persuasion - and the promise of ministerial portfolios and a kind treatment in the following Législatives - could probably be persuaded to join the PS-Greens alliance.
Such an alliance (PS + the Greens + possibly Génération.s) would be more than capable of reaching the 2nd round as the electoral dynamic would be reshuffled (namely many centrist/Centre-Left voters who voted for Macron in 2017, instead of plumping for the beleaguered Parti Socialiste as it would have been a “wasted vote”, could well vote for this alliance) and beat any opponent (probably either Macron or M. Le Pen) in the 2nd round face-off.
It’s a long shot still, as several leaders are jostling for position and fragile egos can always scupper such alliances. The Green Yannick Jadot, is said to be “particularly keen” to lead that leftwing coalition and could be that dark horse, but ditto Anne Hidalgo and a couple others. A primary in the autumn or Dec. would have be held to elect their leader if no agreement by then. The Greens registered 13.5% in the Euros 2 years ago and recorded excellent results in the Municipals last year.
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Thanks Frédéric - fascinating stuff.
Green parties are in the middle of a long-term rise right across Europe, and my view is that the traditional socialist parties will in the end have no choice but to co-operate or merge with them. Many members of the UK Labour Party are working for this - I think Labour MP Clive Lewis recently advocated co-operation in a Guardian article.
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It’s the only way forward in France for the Left to have a chance, for the Socialists to form an alliance with the Greens. In the UK, you’re right, now that Labour has lost 40 seats in Scotland, probably a few in Wales, and what with the constituency boundaries going against them (eg, 2017, 42% for the Tories vs 40% for Labour, so only about 750,000 votes between them but the Tories ended up with an extra 55 seats) they have to form alliances, for instance with LibDems, in order at least to withdraw candidates in winnable constituencies, such as mine (Berwick, where if 1 Labour-Libdem candidate would have a chance to win what was a LibDem const. for a long time).
In France, because of the two-round system which favours a multi-party system, coalitions are the done thing, and there’s a long tradition locally of leftwing alliances (eg in the forthcoming Regionals, the Left in the Hauts-de-France is only running 1 candidate, A la tête de la liste EELV-PS-PCF-LFI aux régionales dans les Hauts-de-France, l’eurodéputée écologiste Karima Delli etc.).
But nationally, since Mitterrand in 1981, all attempts of a Leftwing union have floundered and will again this time round (too many ideological differences between the Centre-Left and the Eurosceptic La France Insoumise) so the PS and the Greens are right to unite, if indeed that’s what they have in mind (I think they’ll form a coalition). But first things first, they’ll both have to go through their respective Primaries in September-October and then choose or elect 1 candidate to lead that coalition. It will be a rocky road but it’s the Left’s only chance to win next year and in forthcoming elections as it is difficult to envisage the renaissance of a Parti Socialiste who, like in 2012, could get 27% in the first round on its own and win in the 2nd round, and a month later elect over 300 MPs in the National Assembly where they could then rely on a parliamentary majority (last time round, in June 2017, only 30-odd Socialist MPs were elected…
The Parti Socialiste lost so much money (political funding, by the state, is based on a party’s results in the Presidentials and Législatives) that they had to sell their plush HQs in the upmarket 7th arrondissement in a fire sale (a perfume group, Interparfums, bought the whole building for €125 million in 3 different operations; the wing where the Parti Socialiste occupied went for €46m) and had to lay off 60 staff, as their annual subsidies went from €28 million to €8 million. Now the Parti Socialiste employs 15 permanent staff and is housed in small offices in a nondescript building in the “red” banlieue town of Ivry-sur-Seine, a historic communist bastion.
Early close of poll surveys and first results show very low turnout of around 30% in regional elections and Le Pen not getting the expected strong support. So second round next week may result in RN not getting the first regional win they hoped for.
It;s terrible for politicians, isn’t it.
Marine LP usually does well out of low turn-outs but this time round she complains!
Neither LREM nor RN did well in the regionals from what I see and what the pundits report but the traditional left and right seem to have benefited.
Seconds away, round 2… 
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I have to say I’m surprised. Not by the low turnout - most people I speak to see the regionals in much the same way Brits used to see the European Parliament elections - big budgets but mainly technical issues not that susceptible to political tinkering, and therefore not worth turning out except to register a protest.
But then it seems they didn’t turn out even to register a protest!
Is Macron so vanilla that people can’t even be bothered to vote against him?
I need @Fred1 's commentary to understand what’s going on!
Even though tghese Regional elections are acknowledged to have a low turnout, the weather here in the Clunysois was abysmal yesterday, with the hardest rainstorm we have ever seen here, so not surprising figures are so low.
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Maybe it is confirmation that most people are not unhappy with their regional politicians. Such as Carole Delga in Occitanie, Xavier Bertrand in Hauts-de-France, Valérie Pecresse in Île-de-France. Perhaps the departmentals/regionals have nothing to do with the presidential election at this point. And not much to do with parties.
Appalling weather here too Jane, I’m sure lots of people were put off.
I’ll try to oblige this lunchtime or afternoon!
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[quote=“Geof_Cox, post:133, topic:34318, full:true”]
I have to say I’m surprised. Not by the low turnout - most people I speak to see the regionals in much the same way Brits used to see the European Parliament elections - big budgets but mainly technical issues not that susceptible to political tinkering, and therefore not worth turning out except to register a protest. But then it seems they didn’t turn out even to register a protest! Is Macron so vanilla that people can’t even be bothered to vote against him? I need @Fred1 's commentary to understand what’s going on! [/quote]
(the regions’ budgets are actually very small Geof, ~€35bn for all the 13 mainland regions is peanuts really compared to the State’s €700bn budget. And that’s part of the reason(s) here for these puny turnouts: since the 1980s people/voters have realised that, the fact that the remit of regions is limited and understandably so are their budgets, and people feel short-changed as the original plan, or how many people interpreted it anyhow when the regions were created in great fanfare under the Socialists in the early 1980s, was to make regions big, much bigger than what they are in terms of autonomy , a bit like Landers in Germany. The regions were the cornerstone of the Socialists’ décentralisation scheme, a concept which had been dabbled with in the 1960s and timidly initiated by Pompidou in the early 1970s, but which was made a reality by the Socialists, Mitterrand and Rocard were particularly keen on the idea, they’d wanted to do it since the 1960s but weren’t at the helm of course. A young Rocard’s big motto in the 1960s was “We must decolonise the province!”, i.e to free them from the jacobine’s grasp of Paris. This “decolonisation” came on the back of the wave of independence in the former colonies, and regions also wanted their share of autonomy, they were starting to agitate a bit, to come out of their shell, esp. their languages after two centuries of being battered in the name of national unity, since the French Revolution and the Abbé Grégoire Laws which only started to re-emerge in the late 1960s through a series of laws. This regionalisation in the 1980s promised a lot and the electorate was enthusiastic, hence the first regionals’ turnout of 75% in the first ever regional elections in 1986, but has delivered comparatively little. I’ll come back to that in my next post as it’s one of the reasons of this growing disaffection for the regional elections).
Anyway, sorry for the above detour. It basically boils down to two factors (there’s more to it but I’ll develop later, it will probably be a bit of a messy disjointed series of posts!):
- The very weak “ancrage local” (local presence) of LREM goes against them, to a lesser same problem for the Rassemblement National.
LREM is a new party, and just like La France Insoumise or the Rassemblement National very much a party built by, and around, one person (hence the lack of primaries within those parties and the “cult of personality issue” criticism often levelled at them), and as such they are poorly established locally as they were always a vehicle for power and business (RN for instance is primarily a business concern, a “PME”, and the whole Le Pen family has lived well off it for decades and continues to do so. I wrote recently how Marine Le Pen gets €10,000 a month as leader of the party alone + the same as MP; ditto her young niece Marion; one of Le Pen’s sister is big in the admin party too; ditto MLP’s ex boyf’ or husband, can’t remember, the current Perpignan mayor Louis Alliot, vice-president of the party and on the same party money as MLP or thereabouts, he is an ex MEP, ex MP too – had to resign in 2020 from MP as because of restrictions on the cumul des mandats as since 2014 you can’t be both mayor and MP/Senator/MEP. These people are career politicians who have used that party primarily to make a good living in life. Alliot is already jostling for position to take over the party leadership when MLP hangs up her boots, possibly next year if the results at the Presidentials are deemed disappointing. Alliot will be in competition with young whippersnapper Jordan Bardella for the leadership, seems like Marion Maréchal has given up any hopes of running the party until she reaches 45+, although of course she’d be a shoo-in for an MEP sinecure whenever she feels bored or strapped for cash, her high ed school of politics in Lyon, billed by herself as the “Sciences Po de l’extrême droite”, is a complete flop, hardly any students etc. financially she’s struggling with that one). LREM claims 146 mayors, “investis ou soutenus” (designated or supported) by them in towns > 9,000 inhabitants, and about 10,000 municipal councillors, which sounds quite but “investis ou soutenus” is vague and anyway it’s only about 10% of the total of that “towns >9,000 inhabitants” category and it’s 10K (claimed) municipal councillors out of about 500K.
Their only electoral asset is their MPs, 271 (down from about 309 four years ago, there’s been a few defectors) who it has to be said were elected on a low turnout (in the 40s), in what was a bit of an LREM landslide in June 2017, very much because the tradition in France at the Législatives, held 6 weeks after the Presidentials, is to give the president the necessary support he needs to run the country, especially a new president. In addition, a wind of “dégagisme” (ditching the old guard) was also sweeping across the country in 2017, which made it easier for Macron to have so many MPs elected, especially as 90% of them were total unknowns (not necessarily political novices as many were involved in local politics but still parliamentary newbies). In June 2017, he was given a parliamentary majority (well, at the National Assembly anyhow, the Lower House, the more important of the two) but is very doubtful that such a massive “blanc-seing” (a blank cheque, a ringing endorsement) will be given again to LREM in June 2022 should Macron be re-elected…
- What’s known as “la prime au sortant” in French political jargon, which is the benefit bonus given to the incumbent in local elections (be they municipal or regional). That prime au sortant explains why the traditional mainstream parties which are “bien implantés localement” (well established locally), do much better in those elections than in the Presidentials, the Législatives and the Europeans.
Local issues and national ones are seen as very different by voters and therefore the traditional mainstream parties benefit from that. The “traditional mainstream parties” being the long-standing leftwing and rightwing parties, who are holding well in local elections and particularly the Regionals, partly thanks to the “jeu des alliances” between the two rounds, namely here the otherwise-moribund Socialists and the mainstream Right, which main representative party often changes name in France (6 times since 1946), the latest incarnation is called Les Républicains, created in 2015 on the ashes of the UMP (the latter which was dissolved that same year, because of a number of interconnected factors, in no particular order: the crippling debts, reported to be as high as €75 million!; strong whiffs of fraud, exemplified for instance and inter alia by the massive Bygmalion scandal, trial is on-going; the bitter infighting within the party; the unexpected defeat by Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential bid for his reelection against an unassuming 11th hour kind of thing opponent, François Hollande – who was deemed eminently beatable but who was ultimately underrated. The PS candidate of choice for the 2012 Presidentials was supposed to be the then IMF boss “DSK”, Dominique Strauss -Kahn, whose credentials impressed and was popular within the Left ranks and with centrist voters but obviously that never happened).
It so happens to that this year, in the wake of the Covid crisis, the current regions’ presidents are seen by their administré(e)s as having done a decent job during the pandemic to protect and look after them, “despite” the central Parisian gvt, who many see as too interventionist, too obdurate, too Parisianist/centralist, too keen to put spanners in the regions’ works intentionally or not. So voters, those who turned up at any rate, have been particularly happy to re-elect their region’s president.
Centre-right Xavier Bertrand is a case in point in the Hauts-de-France. He emerges as the big winner of these Regionals: 42%, it is a massive score as he had to fend off the three-pronged threat of the Rassemblement National who is big locally (the list headed by Sébastien Chenu was predicted to record 35% on Sunday – Marine Le Pen registered 31% in the Hauts-de-France in the first round of the 2017 elections – but Chenu’s list only got 24%), the threat of an Union of the Left list and of LREM, but despite all that, Bertrand still recorded nearly 42%.
LREM who had no fewer than 5 gvt ministers in the list (!), goes to show that LREM took these Regionals very seriously, so anxious they are to make inroads in the regions as their local ancrage is weak. Macron even sent some of his biggest guns there to campaign, notably the pugnacious and eloquent Éric Dupond-Moretti, a battle axe and the “star” justice minister and a big household name in France (prior to his debut in politics only last year, he was France’s most high-profile and successful criminal lawyer. He’s an avowed leftwinger and a self-defined “bulwark against the Rassemblement National”. He’s widely regarded as a symbol of republican meritocracy, having being brought up in relative poverty by a Franco-Italian working-class couple in the “deprived north”, as the Image d’Épinal goes anyhow, we’re sometimes not far off Germinal territory here when talking of the North). Dupond-Moretti was Macron’s big “coup de poker” in the Hauts-de-France, a gamble that’s backfired as what most people heard about in relation to Dupond-Moretti’s involvement in the Hauts-de-France is a series of accrochages (run-ins) he had during the campaign with La France Insoumise officials and, in particular, a “lively exchange” with some Rassemblement National gobshite outside a bar in Péronne.
Even Macron personally visited the area last week (his native area), Somme & Aisne, officially for something else but his presence in the Hauts-de-France so close to election day didn’t fool anyone, he was there primarily to lend support to the beleaguered local LREM Tête de liste as he was keen for LREM to at least record a decent score, have councillors elected there and have a say in the 2nd round. But LREM didn’t even get 10% so cannot compete in the 2nd round…
In the end, it’s a resounding success for Bertrand. Big flop too for the Rassemblement National, but also for the Union of the Left list who only got 19% in what used to be a stronghold for them.
Clear case of “prime au sortant” here with Bertrand, ditto elsewhere, in particular big beast Laurent Wauquiez in Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes, Wauquiez who as I wrote a few weeks ago was sent packing a year ago as LR leader following the disastrous Euro 2019 election results (and campaign), where they recorded 8%, the worst ever score of a mainstream rightwing party in yonks. As I wrote in my post on Wauquiez, people in France at the time were at a loss to understand the choice of the Tête de Liste, a total unknown called François-Xavier Bellamy (a young unexperienced anti-abortion philosophy teacher from Versailles, a bastion of “catho tradi” – hardline Catholicism – and a city which was at the forefront of the Manif Pour Tous movement and big demonstrations in 2012-2014, against Hollande’s same-sex marriage bill).
Nobody understood why they’d picked him but it was strongly rumoured at the time that Wauquiez’s hard right persuasion (despite his mild-mannered demeanour and his appearance of a gendre idéal), was very clivante (divisive) within the Républicains party (prompting Xavier Bertrand, Alain Juppé, Valérie Pécresse and a few other big centre-Right guns to flounce off from Les Républicains) and well, very few rightwingers wanted to be associated with Wauquiez, which explains why LR had to scrape the barrel to find a Tête de Liste for the 2019 Europeans and had no option than to rope in that weirdo from Versailles to head the list, who evidently doesn’t represent the majority thinking of the traditional French mainstream Right voters.
Turnout should be nationally higher next Sunday as the enjeux, the stakes, firm up in some regions. For instance, in the 2015 Regionals, the turnout in the 1st round was 50% but 58% in the 2nd round (+5% in 2010 and 2004 between 1st and 2nd rounds).
Normal service will be resumed next year for the Presidentials, it seems to be the only election that really counts for the French now, with the Municipals, and although turnout is lower than 20 years ago, it’s still in the 75-80% mark (although the proportion of “votes blancs” and “votes nuls” last time time round is much higher than it’s ever been in the Fifth Republic: 11.5 % points in the 2nd round.
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A 33% turnout is very low of course but the writing has been on the wall for a while: it was 50% in March 2015 and only 46% in March 2010, 1st round (26 regions back then, vs 18 today – 23 won by the Socialists and 3 by the now defunct rightwing UMP) and these were March elections, so bound to be higher than a June one.
Because of the lockdown/pandemic this Regional election had been moved to June, and elections in June always generate a particularly low turnout, even the Législatives (MPs), 2017 Législatives’ turnout for instance was only 48% in the 1st round and 42% in the second (down from 57 & 55% in 2012 and 60% in 2007).
There is a “demob-happy” factor at work late June, especially after a presidential election in April & May when vote fatigue is acutely felt. (June 2017 in particular: for many people it was the 8th time they were voting in 7 months! There were the 2 rounds of both primaries in November 2016, the one for the Primary of the Right and Centre – it was open to all and 8.7 million people voted – and the 2 rounds of the Socialist primaries, called “Primaire citoyenne”, and again open to all, 3.7 million people voted. Then of course in the spring the 2 rounds of the Presidential elections, and in June the 2 rounds of the Législatives.)
The fact this one (postponed from March) came in after the end of the lockdown, also on Fathers’ Day, also made it slightly worse I imagine.
Generally speaking, feelings of disenchantment in politics and mistrust towards politicians are running high in France and abstention is consequently up in all elections, to varying degrees but sometimes massively up. It’s part of a “tendance de fond” that’s been observed for a generation or so but has accelerated in the last few years as levels of trust in institutions have plummeted.
Since the early 2010s institutions have been openly and sometimes violently questioned. For many, this anger has morphed into disenfranchisement (rather than militancy or greater involvement), into total indifference in the way politics is conducted and that increasingly translates in puny turnouts outside of the “big one” (the Presidential in France, the GEs in the UK etc.), Some by-elections in the last decade in France (and the UK too) have recorded turnouts of 15-20%, although this is not a new phenomenon, especially in the more deprived areas. The U25s barely voted on Sunday, according to a few polls, only 18-20% of them cast a vote.
Across the planet we’ve seen a rejection of the traditional tenets of political life such as voting (even the Brexit referendum had a relatively low turnout at 72% in the UK – only 67% in Scotland – considering the magnitude of that vote). Old school politics has been rejected in favour of grassroots and more participative democracy (eg the Indignados movement in Spain, Nuit Debout in France in 2016 and more recently of course the Gilets Jaunes).
In parallel, we’ve seen a massive rise in conspiracy theories, disinformation/fake news which has substantially eroded the trust in democracy and politicians, and therefore has weakened the general message around democracy, the sanctity of hard-fought voting rights etc, that once-powerful message, that people voted or should vote out of a sense of duty etc. doesn’t imprint anymore.
The belief that voting in local elections is pointless is particularly prevalent, the feeling that whatever happens nothing changes as politicians don’t fulfil their pledges and anyway the real powers lie with central government, that combined with a general depoliticisation or apoliticisation throughout society (mirrored by de-unionisation and decrease of militancy of a political nature).
And regions take the brunt of this backlash as their remit is limited, their budgets are comparatively low as I wrote in my previous post (read this for instance: En France, de grandes régions aux minuscules moyens), people (rightly) think that the real powers are in the hands of the State and a few big cities and they feel short-changed when it comes to regions. It is even worse now with the territorial reforms under Hollande and the rejigging of regions, it’s produced some strange beasts that many find hard to identify with, more of which below.
Turnouts are significantly down compared to 20-30 years ago, except for the presidential elections and, fitfully, the European elections (they are down for the Presidentials but not by much). For instance, as I wrote the turnout at the March 1986 Regionals was 75%. It was the first Regionals (only 1 round) and hopes were high – the Socialists pushed for decentralisation and created the regions in 1982. Regions back then, when they were created, seemed to have a purpose but that’s worn off big time, gradually people have questioned not their existence as such (they are undoubtedly useful) but their sense of purpose and have come to the conclusion that the region’s remit is in reality relatively limited (apart from Corsica and the 5 overseas region, Martinique, Reunion Island etc.). “Devo”, or God forbid Devo Max, never happened (far from it) and that’s left many people feeling that there’s not much point voting in the Regionals and Departmentals, that rightly or wrongly it won’t “change their life”.
There is also the fact that a number of people in some of these new regions (vs the more defined regions in 2015, previous regional elections, so 1 year before the change), find it hard to identify with these big new entities, some of them it has to be said make ni queue ni tête.
You hear that comment a lot, people feeling that some of these new region are “artificial”, they wonder what their department have in common with another one 100s of kms away. There’s a problem of identity here.
The Nouvelle-Aquitaine is a case in point, it covers both north-west France and south-west France, it’s a rather strange entity. It’s hard then to foster a real sense of unity and make people feel they belong to the same region and have a stake. Geographically speaking, pre change in 2016, Aquitaine “made sense” electorally, it was reasonably compact but now that it stretches from the Basque country right up to the Poitou it makes little sense for some people and a sense of disconnect has crept up. Ditto the Grand Est, which goes from Alsace to the periphery of the Greater Paris area.
I was listening to a phone-in a couple of days ago, and that’s how a few Grand Est inhabitants from the Strasbourg area were justifying their abstention, by this lack of proximity. When it was just Alsace, more people could relate to the regional structure but now voting to elect councillors that work in 2 assemblies (Metz and Strasbourg) in a region that stretches from the German border to places like Nogent-sur-Seine south-east of Paris now feels distant and almost alien to many, a bit like the European elections. The fact that the compétences of the region are seen as “pedestrian” by many (transports, schools etc.) explains the lack of enthusiasm and general apathy.
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Good afternoon Frederic,
Many thanks for your amazing analysis.
You have given us all a superb insight into French politics.
So much more now makes sense to me.
Keep it up
Andy
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