Macron dissolves French parliament and calls snap election; Meloni’s party leading in Italy, poll says
Emmanuel Macron makes shock decision as far-right make huge gains in France and across continent

Macron to dissolve French parliament after crushing loss to far right

The term “right-wing” is used chiefly as an insult for anyone who stands against the groupthink of received liberal opinion.

The attitude was that anyone who defied the liberal consensus on anything wasn’t just wrong but positively evil and beyond the pale. Now, however, millions of Europeans have voted for “hard-right populists”. So are all these millions also beyond the pale? Yes, say the liberals, and the reason is that evil right-wing people have manipulated them because the public are credulous and stupid. Apparently. One is reminded of the line in Bertolt Brecht’s satirical poem about the East German uprising of 1953 that the government should “dissolve the people and elect another”. It never occurs to the liberal establishment that the problem might be them.

What the “populists” have in common, and what is bringing them to power, is that they represent a revolt against a homogeneous political establishment that ignores, scorns or punishes eminently reasonable, and indeed necessary, concerns. This establishment has turned immigration and the related issue of Islamisation into a taboo. Anyone who opposes mass, uncontrolled immigration and the rapid growth of a minority of which a significant proportion want to Islamise western society is anathematised as a racist or Islamophobe.

Yet it’s reasonable to cherish a culture that you recognise as home, that upholds values you hold dear and that you share with others. It’s reasonable to want this not to be taken away by politicians who have never asked if you wanted your culture and nation to be transformed. It’s reasonable to want your borders to be controlled and the rates of mass and uncontrolled immigration to be scaled back. It’s reasonable to object to being denounced as a bigot or Islamophobe if you want any of these things. The liberal establishment, however, refuses to attend to these concerns and instead terms them unreasonable and “deplorable”. That’s what has fuelled this “populist” surge.


Melanie Phillips

End of an era.





So it may be la fin d'un ère in more than a Macronian sense. De Gaulle's Fifth Republic was designed to straitjacket French politics into a narrow range of alternating bland left-of-centre/right-of-centre choices. Instead, under the dinky boy, the French centre has utterly imploded. In the village I chance to know best ...(on a seventy-four per cent turnout) forty-seven per cent voted for the "far right" and another twenty-six per cent for the hard left; that doesn't leave a lot for the so-called "mainstream" parties.

What will the next week bring? The French establishment is urging "unity" against the Rassemblement National, the elites being so oblivious they think it's still 2002 when Chirac faced off against Marine's dad and the masses could be cajoled to "vote for the crook not the fascist". Mme Le Pen is not her father, and Macron is loathed by two-thirds of the electorate on a scale unknown to the merely conventionally sleazy Chirac. Legions of leftie youth, meanwhile, reacted to last night's results in the traditional manner - doing their bit to "save democracy" by smashing up cellphone shops:

That'll put a dent in some storefronts, but not in Mme Le Pen's vote. The difference between now and 2002 is the much more widespread sense that France itself is unravelling - twelve-year-old girls are kidnapped and gang-raped; Mohamed Amra and the assassination team that sprang him from prison are still at large; a few hours before polling stations opened, "gang" members shot up a wedding in Lorraine, killing one man and wounding a pregnant woman.. Scenes of French cities aflame will not do anything to diminish the rationale for the Rassemblement National. Au contraire...

Still, how Round Two will go is a tough call because nothing like it has happened before. The Fifth Republic's voting system was created to ensure the first round eliminated all but Tweedleleft and Tweedleright. Instead, the high turnout has resulted in a record number of soi-disant "triangulaires" - constituencies in which a third-placed party (in this case Macron's) did well enough to qualify for the runoff. In 2017, there was just one "triangulaire"; in 2022, there were eight; on Sunday there will be over three hundred. In the coming days, there will be a lot of horse-trading between the "centre" and the "left" to reduce the variables. However, down at street level, there are enough lefties who'd rather vote for Le Pen than Macron, and a few centrists who'd rather vote for Le Pen than Mélenchon.

Conversely, the system is supposed to make it difficult to win outright in the first round. Yet Mme Le Pen and some thirty-six of her colleagues did so. For purposes of comparison, at the dawn of the Macron era, in 2017, RN eventually won eight seats in the National Assembly. Last night they won five times as many on the first ballot.

So something is approaching critical mass. On the current numbers, the "far right" would likely fall just a handful shy of a majority (289 seats) in the new parliament. Could the next seven days put them over the finish line? Certainly - especially if the most visible signs of the "united" resistance are the despised globalist tinpot and the anarchist youth. Nevertheless, a more cautious person might bet on Mme Le Pen coming up just a wee bit short - if only because all the forces of the French elites are determined to stop her.

Steyn



Similarly, I am worried about what swifty the Dems are going to pull THIS TIME in the US.

Frank wrote on Jun 12^th, 2024 at 9:52am:


Home? You hate everything our jolly country stands for, dear boy. Our people, our culture, our rule of law.

Ever thought of going back to where you come from?