Macron is the ultimate manifestation of the professional classes, and the professional classes are killing us. They’re too stupid to learn because they’re too arrogant to ever think they NEED to learn; they’re on “the right side of history”, after all. France is going to die under people like him, and the weight of that collapse will be like the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs. No one will be safe.
I think that’s the threat the entire West faces, and it’s all being deliberately engineered by the Davos/WEF set. They are the only ones who, by 2030, will own everything. And will be happy.
You are so right. I cannot stand all this “reason has prevailed” commentary going on today about the election result. Nothing has really prevailed except perhaps a feeling of complete apathy and disappointment that the current political systems aren’t giving the voter any real choices or something to get behind.
But, as sure as Wednesday comes after Tuesday, the self-satisfied commentariat will label this a triumph of right-thinking progressives over the dim populists (can we strike those two odious P-words out of the debate, please?), of EU over the nation state blah blah blah and fail to think about the deeper forces and concerns which are driving voting behaviour. Like you say – nothing can ever be learned if you think you are above reproach.
And when 2027 rolls around, nothing will have changed and we’ll have the whole media rigmarole and drama again, with all the hand-wringing and the pearl-clutching and the leftie-liberal keyboard-worriers again asking “why won’t they just vote how we want them to?”
Spare me, please. It’s so predictable.
The professional classes are illustrated perfectly in Houllebeq’s Submission. People who don’t want to be thought badly of, so they fiddle while their country burns to the ground. And they’re the same on both sides of the channel and the Atlantic.
Peter B
2 years ago
“He [Macron] is the candidate of free trade.” No French politician actually believes in free trade. They are all mercantilists. One reason the EU is a protectionist bureaucracy (hiding behind a mask of “free trade”). Separate note: “common debt instruments” will kill off the EU. Mutualisation of debt will be a disaster and is the key reason the UK needed to get out.
Bruno Lucy
2 years ago
“Former prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy” i stopped reading you piece right there. How can you claim being any kind of French political specialist with such a blunder ? Nicolas Sarkozy was president !!
Katy Hibbert
2 years ago
Half of the guests held aloft the blue-and-yellow banner of the European Union, and, as Macron arrived, it was the Ode to Joy that blared over the loudspeakers. The French cannot say they weren’t warned.
This EUrostooge pulled the same stunt when he was parachuted in five years ago. If this arrogant, preening, Eurobotic Napoleon is what the French want, they deserve all they get.
Brian Villanueva
2 years ago
France faces the same problem as Hungary, but in reverse. IN the election 2 months ago, the Hungarian opposition tried to field a single candidate in opposition to the centrist Orban. (Yes, I know the EU press likes to call him a fascist, but he is the Bill Clinton, triangulating-centrist of his own country.) This opposition candidate, Péter Márki-Zay, had to bridge communists, ex-communists, greens, and Nazis (real Nazis, not made-up Nazis like Le Pen). Needless to say this was a disaster and Marki-Zay lost in a true landslide.
Israel tried the same thing to unseat Netanyahu 2 years ago. It worked in the sense that he is no longer prime minister, but parties that agre on nothing except “get rid of the current leader” make a weak governing coalition, which is what we’ve seen in Israel since.
Demographically, LePen is in the right place. She isn’t the right person, but her platform and party are part of the future. As this article says, Macron’s voters are retired, LePen’s are in the 40’s. Yes, Melechon has the college-age sect, but as France’s immigration and economic problems get worse, that may change (we’re all Leftists until we try to get our first job — socialism often doesn’t survive contact with reality.) The only thing holding the center together is Macron. Once he’s gone, it will collapse. Imagine a National Rally vs Socialist presidential second round. In 5 years, I predict you won’t have to imagine it.
Macon won in every age group except 50-59 year olds, where it was a statistical tie. Just because she lost big amongst retirees doesn’t make Le Pen a winner with younger voters. And in fact she wouldn’t have made it in to the second round at all had she not had a decent lead over Mélenchon amongst the over 60s, offsetting his lead amongst the under 35s.
William Rispin
2 years ago
There is no evidence that Mélenchon would have performed any better than Le Pen. The combined Left-wing vote in the first round amounted to 32%.
Mélenchon would have struggled to have greatly improved this score due the programme he represented. His statist economic policies would have alienated many voters from the Centre Right, while voters from the Far Right would have been put off by his multicultural approach to national identity.
A poll was carried out during the presidential campaign concerning how people would vote in the event of a Macron/Mélenchon run off and the result was around 65/35 in favour of Macron.
Stephen Walshe
2 years ago
A lot of wishful thinking posing as analysis was published by Unherd on this election, particularly after the first round. Le Pen didn’t win 46% of the vote, she didn’t win amongst the working age population, and she’s not the future. She got less than half the swing compared to 2017 that she needed, which was entirely predictable after the first round to anyone who could count. She won’t get another chance due to demographics. The European Right, like the British Left, needs to figure out if it wants to be in perpetual self-rightous opposition or if it is willing to compromise and unite in order to credibly challenge. The era of free money is coming to an end, so presenting the economic garbage on Le Pen’s platform and expecting enough hard working taxpayers to vote for that was delusional.
I agree with a lot of this – BUT, it still seems the centrist globalists have an extraordinary aversion to taxing the uber-wealthy. These are not people who have a large house and relatively low income. That is one reason why it seems that Macron is an out-of-touch elitist, he thinks everyone should pay EXCEPT the new aristocracy.
Even if LePen wanted to compromise, how do you even begin such a project when the major parties all refuse to talk with you? Despite a platform that clearly appeals to 40%+ of the voters (by definition not far-right, unless nearly half of France are closet Nazis), the media has made LePen so toxic that no one else can work with her.
France has a blasé center-right party; it got nowhere, because it stands for nothing. Les Républicains is so centrist they endorsed Macron, which begs the question why they even bothered to field a candidate against him.
The Right needs to unite to win, as they have in the UK, and have not in Germany and France. Had a single candidate from the Right stood in the first round, they could have won 37% of the vote, had a big lead over Macron, and gone into the second round with real momentum. But choosing the dopey daughter of a bigoted old fart as a perennial candidate by reason of inheritance, then to spout anti-capitalist cliches, was never likely to peel away enough centrist voters to win.
tom j
2 years ago
This is normal in Western Politics. Remember the Messiah Tony Blair, in 1997? He got 43.2% of the vote! That was his mandate to remake Britain.
Marine Le Pen is not a nazi, calling her that is just a game to make things a little more interesting. She is just not up to the role of President. We heard that she had spent the last five years working on her program, and training with her experts, and she didn’t deliver.
Training with her cats, surely (though that may make her more endearing)
Cardinal Populist
2 years ago
I predicted Macron would win, albeit with a narrower margin after the 1st rounds of the 2022 election. It was clear that Macron was able to turn this election into a referendum on Putin and Ukraine.
Candidates like Le Pen and Melenchon center their campaigns on the message that global organizations like NATO, the United Nations, WEF, and others are decrepit institutions that funnel taxpayer money into a flaming garbage can. However, for the first time in arguably more than 20 years these organizations finally had a purpose and all rose up to counter Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or at least made him look bad on the global stage.
Voters unfortunately were quick to forget the massive centralization of power that has been taking place in France under Macron, and even with Le Pen’s last ditch effort to try to redirect the election to a referendum on Macron’s economic record it all failed, and in fairness it was doomed to fail from the beginning.
Le Pen never had the media on her side to shift the message of this election in the first place. I’m sure everyone reading this has never once heard a news story that doesn’t start out their report by saying “Far-Right candidate Marine Le Pen”.
The truth is both the right and left in France are doomed to fail because neither one has the institutions of France on their side to have control of the narrative. Until Le Pen or Melenchon can figure out how to turn the French institutions to their side, or get rid of those institutions all together – France’s fate will surely be decided by other countries for years to come.
Noah Ebtihej Sdiri
1 year ago
Someone will have to find a way to unite the populist left with the populist right, that’s the only way to get rid of the centrist behemoth.
elmer fudzie
1 year ago
How in heaven’s name can the educated French, who’s citizenry at large, on average are college educated, can read, speak and write in no less than three languages, re-elect a Goldman Sachs shill? A billionaire in love with his own ilk, detests the average Joe.. Where is your brain France? Find it! Better not to vote at all if you fear the ultra right so much. Isn’t it more logical to bring a total collapse of the election process with a “stop-vote” revolution. This would force new candidates to suddenly emerge… It may usher in a bloodless coup launched against a gangster oligarchy and effete monopoly ruling over France. If the people of the First democracy ever in Europe do this, Americans will take note and follow suit. Why not borrow a phrase from another set of billionaires across the Atlantic, the Walton’s of Walmart; quote “our customers vote with their feet” If this statement is true, and it is, the French need to stop walking into the parlors of the super rich who provide candidates working against all that France once stood for…
Vanessa Beeley, wrote an article @ substack.com Readers may wish to visit: https://beeley.substack.com/p/did-macron-abandon-french-military? Fifty high-ranking French officers were cornered in the Azovstal Metallurgical Plant (Mariupol). Putin did not want them harmed because this would open the flood gates of hell so a corridor was opened for them to leave the plant but that Goldman Sachs shill Macron, sent an order: ‘do not surrender’ during his election push- My God, what a slithering BUM! This order came atop another undiplomatic comment, considering the crucial moment where NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg quipped on a visit to Estonia, “All for one, one for all”’ Ditto Poland’s pouring fuel on the Armageddon fire by sending T-72 tanks and weapons into the Ukraine further provoking Putin with statements like, we are (Warsaw) sending, “forces to Ukraine under NATO peacekeeping flags” The UK, France and now, Poland are entrapping NATO into a situation where invoking the collective defense clause as stipulated in Article 5 becomes necessary. It remains central to the treaty’s existence, thus binding members together, committing them to protect each other in solidarity within the Alliance. Does France really have a “center?” Two hundred years ago, France showed the world how Proles can take power from an oligarchy. The rank-and-file seized political power and took back controls over their destiny. Somehow today’s France made a U-Turn, surrendering to the parasites, to NATO centralization, therefore reneging on personal responsibility handing it over to Parisian bureaucrats ! Vive le France? ?
Macron is the ultimate manifestation of the professional classes, and the professional classes are killing us. They’re too stupid to learn because they’re too arrogant to ever think they NEED to learn; they’re on “the right side of history”, after all. France is going to die under people like him, and the weight of that collapse will be like the meteorite that killed the dinosaurs. No one will be safe.
I think that’s the threat the entire West faces, and it’s all being deliberately engineered by the Davos/WEF set. They are the only ones who, by 2030, will own everything. And will be happy.
You are so right. I cannot stand all this “reason has prevailed” commentary going on today about the election result. Nothing has really prevailed except perhaps a feeling of complete apathy and disappointment that the current political systems aren’t giving the voter any real choices or something to get behind.
But, as sure as Wednesday comes after Tuesday, the self-satisfied commentariat will label this a triumph of right-thinking progressives over the dim populists (can we strike those two odious P-words out of the debate, please?), of EU over the nation state blah blah blah and fail to think about the deeper forces and concerns which are driving voting behaviour. Like you say – nothing can ever be learned if you think you are above reproach.
And when 2027 rolls around, nothing will have changed and we’ll have the whole media rigmarole and drama again, with all the hand-wringing and the pearl-clutching and the leftie-liberal keyboard-worriers again asking “why won’t they just vote how we want them to?”
Spare me, please. It’s so predictable.
The aim is to make voting irrelevant, as it is in the EU so-called “parliament”.
The professional classes are illustrated perfectly in Houllebeq’s Submission. People who don’t want to be thought badly of, so they fiddle while their country burns to the ground. And they’re the same on both sides of the channel and the Atlantic.
“He [Macron] is the candidate of free trade.”
No French politician actually believes in free trade. They are all mercantilists.
One reason the EU is a protectionist bureaucracy (hiding behind a mask of “free trade”).
Separate note: “common debt instruments” will kill off the EU. Mutualisation of debt will be a disaster and is the key reason the UK needed to get out.
“Former prime minister Nicolas Sarkozy”
i stopped reading you piece right there. How can you claim being any kind of French political specialist with such a blunder ?
Nicolas Sarkozy was president !!
This EUrostooge pulled the same stunt when he was parachuted in five years ago. If this arrogant, preening, Eurobotic Napoleon is what the French want, they deserve all they get.
France faces the same problem as Hungary, but in reverse. IN the election 2 months ago, the Hungarian opposition tried to field a single candidate in opposition to the centrist Orban. (Yes, I know the EU press likes to call him a fascist, but he is the Bill Clinton, triangulating-centrist of his own country.) This opposition candidate, Péter Márki-Zay, had to bridge communists, ex-communists, greens, and Nazis (real Nazis, not made-up Nazis like Le Pen). Needless to say this was a disaster and Marki-Zay lost in a true landslide.
Israel tried the same thing to unseat Netanyahu 2 years ago. It worked in the sense that he is no longer prime minister, but parties that agre on nothing except “get rid of the current leader” make a weak governing coalition, which is what we’ve seen in Israel since.
Demographically, LePen is in the right place. She isn’t the right person, but her platform and party are part of the future. As this article says, Macron’s voters are retired, LePen’s are in the 40’s. Yes, Melechon has the college-age sect, but as France’s immigration and economic problems get worse, that may change (we’re all Leftists until we try to get our first job — socialism often doesn’t survive contact with reality.) The only thing holding the center together is Macron. Once he’s gone, it will collapse. Imagine a National Rally vs Socialist presidential second round. In 5 years, I predict you won’t have to imagine it.
Macon won in every age group except 50-59 year olds, where it was a statistical tie. Just because she lost big amongst retirees doesn’t make Le Pen a winner with younger voters. And in fact she wouldn’t have made it in to the second round at all had she not had a decent lead over Mélenchon amongst the over 60s, offsetting his lead amongst the under 35s.
There is no evidence that Mélenchon would have performed any better than Le Pen. The combined Left-wing vote in the first round amounted to 32%.
Mélenchon would have struggled to have greatly improved this score due the programme he represented. His statist economic policies would have alienated many voters from the Centre Right, while voters from the Far Right would have been put off by his multicultural approach to national identity.
A poll was carried out during the presidential campaign concerning how people would vote in the event of a Macron/Mélenchon run off and the result was around 65/35 in favour of Macron.
A lot of wishful thinking posing as analysis was published by Unherd on this election, particularly after the first round. Le Pen didn’t win 46% of the vote, she didn’t win amongst the working age population, and she’s not the future. She got less than half the swing compared to 2017 that she needed, which was entirely predictable after the first round to anyone who could count. She won’t get another chance due to demographics. The European Right, like the British Left, needs to figure out if it wants to be in perpetual self-rightous opposition or if it is willing to compromise and unite in order to credibly challenge. The era of free money is coming to an end, so presenting the economic garbage on Le Pen’s platform and expecting enough hard working taxpayers to vote for that was delusional.
I agree with a lot of this – BUT, it still seems the centrist globalists have an extraordinary aversion to taxing the uber-wealthy. These are not people who have a large house and relatively low income. That is one reason why it seems that Macron is an out-of-touch elitist, he thinks everyone should pay EXCEPT the new aristocracy.
Even if LePen wanted to compromise, how do you even begin such a project when the major parties all refuse to talk with you? Despite a platform that clearly appeals to 40%+ of the voters (by definition not far-right, unless nearly half of France are closet Nazis), the media has made LePen so toxic that no one else can work with her.
France has a blasé center-right party; it got nowhere, because it stands for nothing. Les Républicains is so centrist they endorsed Macron, which begs the question why they even bothered to field a candidate against him.
The Right needs to unite to win, as they have in the UK, and have not in Germany and France. Had a single candidate from the Right stood in the first round, they could have won 37% of the vote, had a big lead over Macron, and gone into the second round with real momentum. But choosing the dopey daughter of a bigoted old fart as a perennial candidate by reason of inheritance, then to spout anti-capitalist cliches, was never likely to peel away enough centrist voters to win.
This is normal in Western Politics. Remember the Messiah Tony Blair, in 1997? He got 43.2% of the vote! That was his mandate to remake Britain.
Not in a simple head to head contest…
Marine Le Pen is not a nazi, calling her that is just a game to make things a little more interesting. She is just not up to the role of President. We heard that she had spent the last five years working on her program, and training with her experts, and she didn’t deliver.
Training with her cats, surely (though that may make her more endearing)
I predicted Macron would win, albeit with a narrower margin after the 1st rounds of the 2022 election. It was clear that Macron was able to turn this election into a referendum on Putin and Ukraine.
Candidates like Le Pen and Melenchon center their campaigns on the message that global organizations like NATO, the United Nations, WEF, and others are decrepit institutions that funnel taxpayer money into a flaming garbage can. However, for the first time in arguably more than 20 years these organizations finally had a purpose and all rose up to counter Putin’s invasion of Ukraine or at least made him look bad on the global stage.
Voters unfortunately were quick to forget the massive centralization of power that has been taking place in France under Macron, and even with Le Pen’s last ditch effort to try to redirect the election to a referendum on Macron’s economic record it all failed, and in fairness it was doomed to fail from the beginning.
Le Pen never had the media on her side to shift the message of this election in the first place. I’m sure everyone reading this has never once heard a news story that doesn’t start out their report by saying “Far-Right candidate Marine Le Pen”.
The truth is both the right and left in France are doomed to fail because neither one has the institutions of France on their side to have control of the narrative. Until Le Pen or Melenchon can figure out how to turn the French institutions to their side, or get rid of those institutions all together – France’s fate will surely be decided by other countries for years to come.
Someone will have to find a way to unite the populist left with the populist right, that’s the only way to get rid of the centrist behemoth.
How in heaven’s name can the educated French, who’s citizenry at large, on average are college educated, can read, speak and write in no less than three languages, re-elect a Goldman Sachs shill? A billionaire in love with his own ilk, detests the average Joe.. Where is your brain France? Find it! Better not to vote at all if you fear the ultra right so much. Isn’t it more logical to bring a total collapse of the election process with a “stop-vote” revolution. This would force new candidates to suddenly emerge… It may usher in a bloodless coup launched against a gangster oligarchy and effete monopoly ruling over France. If the people of the First democracy ever in Europe do this, Americans will take note and follow suit. Why not borrow a phrase from another set of billionaires across the Atlantic, the Walton’s of Walmart; quote “our customers vote with their feet” If this statement is true, and it is, the French need to stop walking into the parlors of the super rich who provide candidates working against all that France once stood for…
Vanessa Beeley, wrote an article @ substack.com Readers may wish to visit: https://beeley.substack.com/p/did-macron-abandon-french-military? Fifty high-ranking French officers were cornered in the Azovstal Metallurgical Plant (Mariupol). Putin did not want them harmed because this would open the flood gates of hell so a corridor was opened for them to leave the plant but that Goldman Sachs shill Macron, sent an order: ‘do not surrender’ during his election push- My God, what a slithering BUM! This order came atop another undiplomatic comment, considering the crucial moment where NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg quipped on a visit to Estonia, “All for one, one for all”’ Ditto Poland’s pouring fuel on the Armageddon fire by sending T-72 tanks and weapons into the Ukraine further provoking Putin with statements like, we are (Warsaw) sending, “forces to Ukraine under NATO peacekeeping flags” The UK, France and now, Poland are entrapping NATO into a situation where invoking the collective defense clause as stipulated in Article 5 becomes necessary. It remains central to the treaty’s existence, thus binding members together, committing them to protect each other in solidarity within the Alliance. Does France really have a “center?” Two hundred years ago, France showed the world how Proles can take power from an oligarchy. The rank-and-file seized political power and took back controls over their destiny. Somehow today’s France made a U-Turn, surrendering to the parasites, to NATO centralization, therefore reneging on personal responsibility handing it over to Parisian bureaucrats ! Vive le France? ?