July 5, 2022 - 7:00am
The last time we checked in with Emmanuel Macron, he’d just lost his majority in the National Assembly.
His obvious next move was to forge an alliance between his centrist block and the French conservatives, thus re-establishing a presidential majority. But things haven’t gone to plan. As well as having to reshuffle his government for the second time in six weeks, it’s become increasing clear that the conservatives are determined to stay in opposition.
So what does Macron do now? His Presidential powers give him some latitude — especially over foreign policy, but his domestic agenda relies on the Assembly passing legislation. Without a majority that can only happen by cobbling together temporary coalitions on a bill-by-bill basis.
In this respect it helps that the political groupings are much looser than their British equivalents. The four biggest blocks — the Left, the Macron-supporters, the conservatives and the far Right — are, to varying extents, split between different parties. Furthermore, some of these parties are themselves somewhat flaky.
Macron will therefore try to peel off the more moderate members of the other blocks. However, he’s already picked the low-hanging fruit. His LREM party, and the wider “Together” alliance, includes recruits from the centre-Left and centre-Right.
So if his bid to expand the centre fails, what other options does he have? It is not in the nature or the interest of Jean-Luc Mélenchon — the most powerful figure on the Left — to cooperate. His success is entirely based on belligerent opposition to the neo-liberal establishment. Indeed, his party’s name — La France Insoumise — translates as “France Unbowed”. The only way he’s going to bow to the President is if Macron makes him Prime Minister. However, that would effectively destroy Macron’s entire political project.
The only remaining option, a deal with Marine Le Pen, would do the same — with knobs on. That said, her party has just managed to secure two of the six vice-presidencies of the National Assembly, leading some to suspect that the centrists are dealing with the far Right on the sly. Unlike Mélenchon, it suits Le Pen to be seen negotiating with the President. Her political project is based on normalising the far Right — and, right now, she’s succeeding beyond all expectations. Furthermore, having stepped down down from the formal leadership of her party, she’s free to concentrate on exploiting her leverage in the National Assembly.
The president, therefore, is trapped. His best hope of escape lies with the Republicans, the biggest Conservative party. They’re due to elect a new leader and Macron must hope that Christian Jacob’s successor might more willing to do a deal.
However, it suits the conservatives to leave Macron without a majority. The only way that the Republicans will ever return to their former glory is if the president’s party continues to decline. By deflating the Macron bubble, the traditional centre-Right could re-constitute itself — and become the main alternative to the far Left and far Right.
Macron will not want to spend the next five years as a lame duck president. But as things stand he looks stuffed.
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeHe won’t care. He’s just marking time until his next gig, which will be a lot more lucrative.
Peter Franklin wrote, “The only remaining option, a deal with Marine Le Pen, would [achieve a legislative majority].”
Emmanuel Macron should work with Marine Le Pen to establish an alliance between Ensemble and National Rally. This alliance would have a solid majority in the National Assembly.
Supported by MPs from Natonal Rally, Macron can continue his economic reforms and military reforms. The latter is an ongoing project to establish a European military structure that is independent of NATO. Such independence will be vital for the security of the European Union after the United States, due to its open borders, ceases to be a Western nation by 2040. It will be a Hispanic nation (i.e., a nation in which Hispanic culture is dominant).
The price that Le Pen asks for her support is that Macron support her immigration policies. It includes deporting illegal aliens and halting further immigration from the Middle East and Africa. Any person who loves France as a Western nation built on Western values would gladly pay this price.
Get more info about the immigrant problem in France.
What do you mean by Hispanic nation?
As of 2020, whites made up 57.8% of Americans, whereas Latinos made up 18.7%. Are you suggesting in a mere 18 years they will make up 50% of the population, from less than 20% now?
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.brookings.edu/blog/the-avenue/2018/03/14/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/amp/
The new data shows that, by 2019, the white population share declined nearly nine more percentage points, to 60.1%. The Latino or Hispanic and Asian American population shares showed the most marked gains, at 18.5% and nearly 6%, respectively. While these groups fluctuated over the past 40 years, either upward (for Latinos or Hispanics and Asian Americans) or downward (for whites), the Black share of the population remained relatively constant.
The declining white population share is pervasive across the nation. Since 2010, the white population share declined in all 50 states (though not Washington, D.C.) (download table A), and in 358 of the nation’s 364 metropolitan areas and 3,012 of its 3,141 counties. Moreover, as of 2019, 27 of the 100 largest metropolitan areas have minority-white populations, including the major metropolises of New York, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., and Miami—as well as Dallas, Atlanta, and Orlando, Fla., which reached this status by 2010 (download Table B).
Most noteworthy is the increased diversity in the younger portion of the population. In 2019, for the first time, more than half of the nation’s population under age 16 identified as a racial or ethnic minority. Among this group, Latino or Hispanic and Black residents together comprise nearly 40% of the population. Given the greater projected growth of all nonwhite racial minority groups compared to whites—along with their younger age structure—the racial diversity of the nation that was already forecasted to flow upward from the younger to older age groups looks to be accelerating.
Yes
But the majority of whites will be elderly and irrelevant.
The culture is set by the young
But will that, in itself, be a sufficient condition to fundamentally alter the national interest of the United States?
Last time I looked, “Hispania” was a peninsula in the SW of Europe; in other words, Mexico and Argentina and so forth are as much a part of the Western world as the US or Australia. Both offshoots of Western Europe. Spanish is as European a language as English.
The majority of Americans of Hispanic background are English-speaking monoglots and classify themselves as “white” to the Census Department. “White” is, of course, a social category, not a fact. Benjamin Franklin didn’t consider Germans or Swedes to be “white people”, and published an essay to that effect in 1751. Things done changed.
Hispanic culture is quite different from Western culture.
For example, Hispanics expect, demand, and receive preferential treatment. Get more info about this issue.
Hispanics commit murder at 3 times and 6 times the rate at which Americans of European ancestry or Asian ancestry, respectively, commit murder. Get more info about this issue.
I only wish that Conservative MP’s had the guts and brains to realise that a Macron style party, coupled with a banking secrecy tax haven policy, would capture the vast majority of the voting public AND veritable queues of ” new party donors”… and attract an avalanche of investment capital away from Europe, along with a large number of corporate and ultra high net worth domiciles, and our financial problems would not just be solved, they would give Britain a massive commercial advantage. It is so blindingly obvious and simple… BUT would have to be complemented by a complete ditching of anti freedom of speech ‘ woke’ legislation.
SORRY i mean LE PEN not Mummys Boy Macron!!!
I do not share this or, it seems, the Republicans’ analysis. If le Pen’s far right is ‘normalised’ then it can only be on the Republicans’ ground. Once Le Pen gains a reputation for getting business done, the Republicans are toast. They originally lost their votes to the Macronistes. Their hope is to deal with Macron and then, as he moves on and his party is left as an empty shell, try to reclaim their electorate.
Marine la Formidable!