Everything Changes or Nothing Does
European elections, insights, predictions, brainstorms. Something to offend everybody. Essay first apeared at Continental Riffs on Substack. You’ll find more over there.
No Return to Normal Predicted
Edited with new data 20 6 24
In the past ten days there have been continent-wide elections for the European Parliament in Strasbourg; the wild success of Right or Far Right populist parties, more an earthquake than the work of twenty-seven bulldozers; on Sunday evening French President Macron added up the numbers and made his move, unleashing five days of frantic jostling across the political spectrum. Elections for a new National Assembly will take place according to a strict timetable, with two rounds in late June and early July. A fantastic turn of events for those who like their politics hot. This cold, wet summer is finally heating up.
The Revolt
The sheer size of the revolt is compelling: in the Netherlands, the first to vote, Geert Wilders’ Freedom party won 37 seats, while ex-EU Commissioner Franz Timmermans’ group scored 25, thus assuring Wilders’ ascension to Prime Minister of the country formerly known as Holland. In dysfunctional Germany, Scholz’s Christian Democrats took their worst pasting in a century, on 30% of the vote, Green parties saw their support fall by half, while Nazi AfD at 15%, a respectable finish for a disreputable bunch of villains. Several smaller alternative parties just over the 5% line necessary for representation. I know almost nothing about Italy so won’t comment.
Maps reveal a continent bleeding populist, a less prejudicial term than Far Right, and one that expresses people’s resentment at mismanaged economies and non-stop immigration, with the not-so-gradual splits in the social fabric resulting from both. (Mentioning those three is sure to set off alarm bells for certain readers. But those were the issues uppermost in voters’ minds, not ecology, euthanasia, LGBT or a host of other liberal goodies. You could add in revenge for the Covid Police State, which the Laptop Class rather seems to have enjoyed.)
We All Know Putin Did It
In Brussels, the Blob reacted with gusts of High Dudgeon. Someone attacked their amour-propre and they knew who done it. Let the finger pointing begin.
Voting in France, commune by commune, can be found at Le Monde . That massive 93% protest vote is colored brown on the Le Monde chart. Subtle, eh ? Is the entire country suddenly goosestepping after morning croissants or are they fed up and had nowhere to turn ? Someone needs to find out.
Rassemblement National, whose public face was no longer Marine Le Pen but the young Jordan Bardella from the suburbs of Paris (Italian father, Algerian mother), won 93% of the vote in France’s 36,000 villages. 93% ! (France has more villages under a thousand residents than half of Europe combined.) Their pent-up anger at being ignored is now upon us.
Before anyone had the time to figure it out, even to wonder out loud what changing the seats at the largely toothless Euro-Parliament meant, someone made a far riskier move.
3D Chess or what ?
A mere hour after results in, French President Macron called together his kitchen cabinet — a Sarkozyest Senator, an advertising executive, a few trusted members of his administration — to announce his decision: the entire Assemblée Nationale would be dissolved, with new elections later this month. Candidates from his Renaissance party for the EU Parliament had taken a beating just short of annihilation. Suddenly everything was up in the air.
If an insider’s account is to be believed, Macron and Prime Minister Attal nearly came to blows during the meeting. (Worth seeing that ! Has either of them ever thrown a punch before ?) Attal, the latest Golden Boy of French politics, has been sharply downgraded, given that his debate with Bardella preceded the debacle. A new Assembly means an end to his reign. Were representatives from American firm McKinsey there ? They’ve advised Macron on everything even before he was elected in 2017. (Who can forget the vans of young Macron enthusiasts fanning out across the country to spread the good news during his first run, only later to be revealed as interns at McKinsey.)
Je prends mon risque, Macron said a few times in his televised speech to the French people. Now he’s in fast water. The European Parliament he can do without; let them make their gaudy speeches. But the French ? He has to govern the country, and if his Renaissance party, as fine a collection of nobodies as ever assembled, gets knocked out in the first round, he will be forced into ‘cohabitation,’ with his Prime Minister coming from either the Left or the Right, whichever has the majority of the 577 seats in the House of Bourbon. Although it’s happened twice before in the last thirty years, the stakes are higher now with a take-no-prisoners Right on the edge of triumph, and a Left that did better than expected, all at Macrons’s expense. Should both sides repeat that result, he looks doomed. (Results for the European Parliament are tabulated proportionally, so every political group above a minimum has a share, while in France First Past The Post, in two rounds, is the model.)
And They’re Off
Thus began the most enlightening and entertaining week of French politics in ages. Suddenly the masks were off and our politicians were revealed for what they are: sharks who scent blood.
The Left quickly pulled together a Nouveau Front Populaire, assuring that left-liberal candidates would not be running against each other in the provinces. A twelve-page manifesto that reads like a nightmare for the Right Wing immediately followed: utilities will be nationalized, Macron’s immigration and retirement reforms undone (retirement age 60, immigrants will receive “a better welcome”), a wealth tax, an inheritance tax, taxes, taxes, taxes, LGBT rights and a better Green Deal. Mitterand would have blushed.
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(Get real. No one reads manifestos except the faithful. Where’s the banging attack on the Right’s plans to cut aid to families, killing off Radio France and public TV along the way ? Wouldn’t a punchy, three-pager on the havoc of neo-liberal economic policies have been better ? Cast Bardella as the French Milei. But no…)
Rightwing parties were more entertaining. They immediately brought out knives — for each other. Leader of the mainstream Les Republicains, Eric Ciotti smashed taboo when he said he was open to an alliance with the formerly-despised Rassemblement National; his party revolted and deposed him. He locked them out of headquarters, where he waved from the balcony, Tony Montana style, and kept his fingers on the finances and the all-important X account. Reconquête!, led by the journalist Eric Zemmour, enjoying its first electoral success, crashed and burned when its star, a dissident Le Pen by the name of Marion, announced live on TV that she was going home to Auntie Marine and taking the four other successful Reconquête! candidates with her. Watching Zemmour’s face fall live was priceless. He called the brainy Le Pen “a specialist in treason.” They’ve since made up.
Unbiased current projections for voting in France in two weeks time follow. Total guesswork, of course.
- Right bloc (Le Pen’s RN and Zemmour’s Reconquête!): in the lead with 362 seats
- Left-bloc (Popular Front): leading in 211 races
- Macron’s Renaissance: leading in 3, all of them seats for French citizens abroad
- Les Républicains (centre-right): in the lead in 1 race
If victorious, we can count on the Insoumise, Communists and liberal Socialists (the business-as-usual party) to start squabbling shortly after roll call. (Is there a better squabbler in chief than Jean-Luc Mélenchon ?) The right looks ready to make any compromise if it means they finally get their hands on power. The High Commissioners of the EU need a scare; unfortunately the days are long gone when populists fulminated about the disastrous Euro, or even the EU itself. How many votes did Florian Phillipot get ? Microscopic.
Macron is the modern man par excellence. Burdened with too many advantages, politics is all about him. Cocksure but aimless, he feels destined to lead, even if he has no idea where he’s going. He’s never given the French any sense of who he is or what he wants the country to be or become. Start-up Nation ? That was the slogan, long forgotten. He’s a ‘Modernizer’. Has he tackled the country’s cumbersome post-war bureacracy ? Negative. World War III ? A rather positive outlook on that — he’ll take his chances. Rapprochement with the largest country on a shared continent ? That would be Russia, still supplying gas to Europe despite all the sanctions and seizure of their bank accounts ? Negative. The U.S., NATO ? No stubborn de Gaulle-like diffidence for him. Africa ? Again negative. We’ve got most of their gold, haven’t we ? So what if the chaos in the Sub-Sahara supplies the vast majority of illegals flooding the cities ? That sort of thing doesn’t touch his class. Forgotten are last year’s riots over his retirement reform. Faced with choosing between militants left and right, he believes voters will chicken out and give him the vote.
And if he loses the wager ? If the Populists really do run the table and force him into ‘cohabitation’ with the 28-year old Bardella from the wrong part of town ensconsed in Matignon as Prime Minister ? He’ll frustrate their every move, which he probably thinks is a stroke of genius but will only inspire popular resentment, endearing him to no one. Right where he is right now.
Or he’ll walk away. Resign. Let them make a shamble of things. He’ll only be 51 in 2027. He can run again. He’ll take his chances.
In any case, comparisons to 1930s anything really don’t work. Even Serge Klarsfeld, the famous Nazi hunter, has come out for the Rassemblement National, suggesting if the RN wins that Muslims are going to take it on the chin.
A Quick Look Behind The EU Curtain
Conflicts Galore…
Like all religious cults, the EU has inherent, irresolvable tensions just below the surface. The cult’s dogma needs a tune-up. It’s not working, and if the popular will is frustrated by the Great Brussels Blob — over issues like ecological policy, immigration, farming and most onerously, the Euro — then I give the EU five years before it implodes. Would that be a bad thing ?
The greatest tension is embedded in the Union’s structure. Its prime, centripetal force is integration, greater and greater integration, a process that has only sped up since the adoption of the Euro and the Lisbon Treaty. Pooled sovereignty. Some hold out against the Integrationists, opposed to the megastate that is turning the continent into Europaland.
Integrationist dogma vitiates local politics. The EU Parliament vote shows that people angry with the state of their country and localities will go the polls to take it out on distant politicians, knowing full well the next set of pols will be absorbed into the blob. The Continent of Peace and Culture is a vassal of the U.S. in endless wars and economic hegemony, staffed by automatons prattling on about ‘European Values.’ C’est quoi ça ?
There is no demos in this democracy. There is no European people. There are 27 nationalities, pooling resources and energies. But when it comes to the European Parliament, all attempts at creating ‘pan-national consciousness’ are frustrated by institutional structure, in which the European Commission, appointed by the European Council with its presidents of 27 states, dictates legislation to the Parliament, which can only approve, reject or offer amendments, initiating nothing. They mainly make speeches.
French President Macron attacked the communes, the most direct democracy in France, and stripped them of some powers, abetting further centralization. Autonomous, regional cultures resist centralization but since left-liberals have never been comfortable around “the locals” they gravitate towards the bureaucratic stasis quo with its iterations of ‘European values.’ Centripetal attraction. Everything turns into a moral crusade.
It would be interesting to know who the men and women behind the curtain are, the ones who throw the switches. We’ll tackle that in a future essay.
Toothless they may be but does the Parliament in Strasbourg have the lungs to cry loud enough to deny Ursula von der Leyden a second term as European Commissioner ? She’s a bleeding warmonger and poll after poll says Europeans are sick of her. The EU Parliament has to approve the Commission’s choice. Will they fold ?
Jeffrey Sachs, economic development guru and frequent presence on ‘disinformation sites’ that people actually read and listen to, has an interesting story from his years advising Gorbachov and Yeltsin. Sitting in one of the Kremlin’s vast marble halls waiting for the next meeting to begin, he watched Boris Yeltsin walk towards him to take a seat. Their faces were inches apart when Yeltsin intoned, ‘As of five minutes ago, the Soviet Union no longer exists.’
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