June 21, 2021 - 10:52am
Marine Le Pen was the obvious loser in the first round of the French regional elections yesterday but the results also pose awkward questions for President Emmanuel Macron.
Five years after he started his pop-up centrist party and four years on from becoming President, Macron’s troops scored just over 10% of the vote nationwide yesterday. The turn-out was a calamitous 35%.
In other words, roughly 3% of potential French voters placed a ballot in an urn for a Macron-allied candidate in the elections for the presidencies of 13 French regions.
This does not mean that Macron is finished. He still has a high popularity rating for a sitting French President (40 to 50% depending on the question asked). He is still favourite to win the Presidential elections next April and May.
But yesterday’s results suggest that Macron remains a one-man-band, a solo artist. He has not built — and he has made little effort to build — a lasting, centrist political movement. Macronism seems unlikely to survive Macron — whether he departs from the Elysée Palace next year or later.
At national level, Macron remains a dominant, although widely disliked and distrusted figure. On the ground, Macron’s party, La République en Marche (LREM), is struggling to build a grassroots movement, which suggests that Macron may have difficulty in winning the parliamentary elections next June, even if he wins the presidential election in May.
What of Marine Le Pen? All opinion polls suggest that she remains the runaway favourite to reach the two-candidate second round of the presidential election next year. They also suggest she will lose to Macron in the second round but much less decisively than her 34-66% loss in 2017.
Yesterday’s first round of the regional elections were supposed to build Le Pen’s momentum towards a close-run thing, even a victory, next year. The polls predicted her party, Rassemblement National, would come first in six out of 13 regions.
Not for the first time, Le Pen did much worse than the polls predicted. She narrowly topped the poll in only one region.
She could still capture that region — the Nice-Marseilles area — in the second round next Sunday. She will still, I believe, reach the second round of the presidential election next year. But her momentum is badly checked.
All this leaves French politics in an odd place — dominated by Macron and Le Pen at national level but by the “old” tired political families of centre-Right and centre-Left at local level.
How long can that last?
John Lichfield was Paris correspondent of The Independent for 20 years. Half-English and half-Belgian, he was born in Stoke-on-Trent and lives in Normandy.
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SubscribeBut I thought the party line was that the Russian army is being destroyed in the Ukraine
They’re certainly taking major losses – particularly in officers (the backbone of the Russian army, since they don’t have an effective non-com layer, the way most Western militaries do). They seem to have already lost more people in Ukraine than they did in their whole time in Afghanistan.
I do think there might be something to the charge that the West is giving the Ukrainians enough support to ‘bleed’ Russia, without provoking a spread of the conflict. The Ukrainians are paying a terrible price, though.
They’re certainly taking major losses – particularly in officers (the backbone of the Russian army, since they don’t have an effective non-com layer, the way most Western militaries do). They seem to have already lost more people in Ukraine than they did in their whole time in Afghanistan.
I do think there might be something to the charge that the West is giving the Ukrainians enough support to ‘bleed’ Russia, without provoking a spread of the conflict. The Ukrainians are paying a terrible price, though.
But I thought the party line was that the Russian army is being destroyed in the Ukraine
A logical next step, if Putin wins.
Right now the Baltic is completely dominated by NATO or NATO friendly nations. For someone like Putin, who tries to go walking around in Peter the Great’s boots (far too big, BTW), the next target has to be the Baltic nations.
And just because he’s stopped in Ukraine doesn’t mean he won’t try somewhere else. He attacked Syria because he’d failed in Ukraine. That in turn made his real goal, the Eurasian Economic Union impossible.
He’ll keep trying to recreate some part of the Soviet Union/Russian Empire until he dies.
That’s his “destiny.”
Come on Martin, take an aspirin and have a lie down you’re driving yourself crazy. The Eurasian Economic Union is not impossible as all those involved have worked out who their friends are and have decided that the belligerent West do not count among them.
The Europeans have only themselves just discovered that they are just cannon fodder as well and are stuck like the rabbit in the spotlight and can’t quite believe what is happening to them. It is a Wily E Coyote moment for them but gravity will rule the day. What they do about it remains to be seen.
yeah Putin attacked Syria
Saved it from ISIS more like
Very hard to say what would have happened in Syria if the Russians hadn’t stepped in to support Assad. Their support made him willing to come down on the opposition; and once that happened, people swung to the Islamic hard-core, who were ready to go kinetic.
Very hard to say what would have happened in Syria if the Russians hadn’t stepped in to support Assad. Their support made him willing to come down on the opposition; and once that happened, people swung to the Islamic hard-core, who were ready to go kinetic.
Come on Martin, take an aspirin and have a lie down you’re driving yourself crazy. The Eurasian Economic Union is not impossible as all those involved have worked out who their friends are and have decided that the belligerent West do not count among them.
The Europeans have only themselves just discovered that they are just cannon fodder as well and are stuck like the rabbit in the spotlight and can’t quite believe what is happening to them. It is a Wily E Coyote moment for them but gravity will rule the day. What they do about it remains to be seen.
yeah Putin attacked Syria
Saved it from ISIS more like
A logical next step, if Putin wins.
Right now the Baltic is completely dominated by NATO or NATO friendly nations. For someone like Putin, who tries to go walking around in Peter the Great’s boots (far too big, BTW), the next target has to be the Baltic nations.
And just because he’s stopped in Ukraine doesn’t mean he won’t try somewhere else. He attacked Syria because he’d failed in Ukraine. That in turn made his real goal, the Eurasian Economic Union impossible.
He’ll keep trying to recreate some part of the Soviet Union/Russian Empire until he dies.
That’s his “destiny.”
Putin has already overextended his military forces in one conflict I can’t believe he has the capacity to take on anyone else particularly a NATO member.
Putin has already overextended his military forces in one conflict I can’t believe he has the capacity to take on anyone else particularly a NATO member.
Hmm the RUSSIAN Orthodox church is spreading anti-western sentiments… Well good thing someone is ringing the alarm bell on that bombshell, otherwise who knows what they could do.
Also, that final quote is hilarious coming from a NATO member after Merkels admissions/justifications regarding the Minsk accords.
Hmm the RUSSIAN Orthodox church is spreading anti-western sentiments… Well good thing someone is ringing the alarm bell on that bombshell, otherwise who knows what they could do.
Also, that final quote is hilarious coming from a NATO member after Merkels admissions/justifications regarding the Minsk accords.
It’s a laugh really. Like the runt of the gang picking a fight thinking the big guys will pull them out of the shit. Perhaps a good idea would be not to get into the shit in the first place. Donate another ten F-16s that you don’t have like the other 10 you have recently announced. I’m sure that will help. Maybe even keep these “planes’ for your own use. Are these people for real?
America is not your friend and looks like it has bitten off way more than it can chew. It would be a good idea to stand back a bit.
You are nothing more than Sovietskaya scatina.
You are nothing more than Sovietskaya scatina.
It’s a laugh really. Like the runt of the gang picking a fight thinking the big guys will pull them out of the shit. Perhaps a good idea would be not to get into the shit in the first place. Donate another ten F-16s that you don’t have like the other 10 you have recently announced. I’m sure that will help. Maybe even keep these “planes’ for your own use. Are these people for real?
America is not your friend and looks like it has bitten off way more than it can chew. It would be a good idea to stand back a bit.
FUC**NG WAITING FOR APPROVAL
SHADOW-BANNING! JUST BAN ME, QUIT THE COWARDLY CENSORING OF A THIRD OF WHAT I SAY. THIS PLACE IS LIKE THE OLD TWITTER.
If so, it’s posting like ‘the old Twitter’ that makes it so.
If so, it’s posting like ‘the old Twitter’ that makes it so.
FUC**NG WAITING FOR APPROVAL
SHADOW-BANNING! JUST BAN ME, QUIT THE COWARDLY CENSORING OF A THIRD OF WHAT I SAY. THIS PLACE IS LIKE THE OLD TWITTER.
I don’t think that Putin is all that interested in sitting down to negotiate anything at all. He has been involved in many negotiations in the past where his opponents have lied and deceived him to the point that there is no way that he would trust anything that they would say. They treat him like an imbecile so why would he bother?
Putin’s pretty good at lying himself. Remember his insistence, a few days before the invasion of Ukraine, that he had no intention of doing such a thing?
Well, he only imitated Walter Ulbricht in 1961: nobody has the intent to build a wall.
Well, he only imitated Walter Ulbricht in 1961: nobody has the intent to build a wall.
Putin’s pretty good at lying himself. Remember his insistence, a few days before the invasion of Ukraine, that he had no intention of doing such a thing?
I don’t think that Putin is all that interested in sitting down to negotiate anything at all. He has been involved in many negotiations in the past where his opponents have lied and deceived him to the point that there is no way that he would trust anything that they would say. They treat him like an imbecile so why would he bother?