French politics: houlala!

[Rippounet]

On 11/09/2017 at 8:00 PM, Sullen said:

If anything, Melenchon's strong anti-Macron stance has set him as the default opposition in the eyes of most, even the right, and he's pretty much leading the fight against the Work Law Reform. If the toxicity of Hollande lingers and keeps the Socialistes down for another 5 years, I wouldn't be too surprised to see LFI potentially win the next elections.

The problem is, even if Mélenchon's strong opposition to Macron's "reforms" were to earn him the respect of most people (which is not guaranteed, his personal image is terrible), it's still not certain that this would translate into votes in the next elections. It's one thing to be an opposition leader, it's another to actually win the election (just ask Corbyn, whose position is not unlike Mélenchon's in some respects).

Meanwhile the FN is tearing itself apart, with the left wing of the party being kicked out (Philippot that is). Except history has shown that the FN isn't as weakened by internal stife as other parties are. There is precedent with Mégret founding his own party (around 1998), and Le Pen nonetheless making a spectacular come back four years later in 2002. The xenophobic crowd is rather faithful to its party.

Point is, with the next important elections being so far in the future there's absolutely no guarantee that LFI will manage to attract more votes. If anything, left-wing votes will likely be split between even more candidates (after Hamon founded his own movement), and the FN's popularity has no real reason to go down (and there are several scenarios in which it can grow, alas).

Not that I would indulge in fearmongering. I just think that as long as the left is unable to unite behind a single candidate (who cannot be Mélenchon, for lots of reasons), we're likely to end up with another Macron-Le Pen duel with Macron winning a second term.
But I think it'll be much closer next time. And eventually, the FN might just win at some point.

[Martell Spy]

The Secrets of Emmanuel Macron’s Ruthless Radical Centrism
Take a closer look and Macron’s method of dealing with Trump tells you a lot about how Macron came to power as a centrist in an age of extremes

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-secrets-of-emmanuel-macrons-ruthless-radical-centrism?ref=home

Quote

 

In the meantime, he really is hell bent on breaking old rules in France, including and especially in terms of labor relations. Weeks after his National Assembly majority was installed last summer, he started ramming through changes to the labor code, reducing the rock-hard protections for some workers in hopes that hiring would be more frequent if firing were not such an enormous burden. People predicted upheaval in the streets for September, but that didn’t happen. This spring, the labor unrest has been more organized, and France is putting up with rolling strikes in the transport sector, where the dominant union is the erstwhile Communist CGT, the General Confederation of Labor.

“I think Macron will break them,” says Plowright. A parallel in the United States would be the way Ronald Reagan crushed the air traffic controllers’ union, or, in Britain, Margaret Thatcher’s destruction of the coal unions. As Plowright says bluntly, “It’s a fight to the death for the CGT.”