Anyone following the European elections?

[NoraLuka]

Apologies if there’s already a thread, I searched and didn’t find one.

I’m watching from France and trying to understand exactly what it means that Macron has dissolved the Assemblée nationale.

I can’t believe how well the far right has done, it’s like all the others have been swept away. Even DD1 who doesn’t care about politics was glued to the TV news this evening.

Yes I saw it

It’s almost like you didn’t see it coming! This has been brewing for years.

Right wing parties have pretty much swept the board in Europe.

Italy, Netherlands, France, Spain, Austria to name but a few have all returned heavily right wing dominated results.

Macron has called a GE that could easily result in Marine Le Pen being the next French President.

The interesting thing about all the results is that all the right wing parties appear to have huge support among the young based primarily on concerns over immigration.

The UK will soon be a political outlier in Europe. I suspect a unified right in the UK would easily oust Labour in 2029.

No, no, no, that's not correct... Macron dissolved the parliament, so we're electing new MPs, there'll be a new PM, but the president stays until 2027 as planned. The far-right in France got altogether about 40% of votes and the turnout was 50%, so that's about 1 in 5 French voter. Terrifying enough, it's true. Macron's party did poorly, as did the Green and the traditional right, but the socialist party did quite well.

I'm also not sure that the concerns in France are specifically about immigration. There's a lot of moaning about Islam and globalisation, but that's quite different from complaining about the number of people coming in, the country being full, foreigners undercutting wages etc. Our Muslim communities are French born, so people are just hating on the religion. It's very sad.

The polls have been predicting this for ages, I think everyone saw it coming. I didn’t think they’d do as well as they have, though.

The way I understand it, we could end up with Jordan Bardella as PM. I can’t imagine how that would work with Macron as President, surely they’d spend all their time disagreeing and never get anything done?

I’m old enough to remember the 2002 presidential election with Chirac vs Le Pen and lots of people who hated Chirac voted for him anyway to keep Le Pen out. I don’t know if similar could happen this time.

As a French person I also find the results hard to believe. I'd better start avoiding French Twitter for my own sanity. I'm suspecting there's been heavy Russian bot activity, tbh... Otherwise I can't explain it. Bardella did veery poorly in debates apparently, yet he appeals to young people? Honestly, who are these twenty year olds who vote National Front? Mind-blowing.

We had this set-up (president and PM from different parties) quite a lot in the 80s and 90s. It does limits what can get done, yes...
You may have read, like me, that maybe Macron is hoping that if Bardella ends up PM in July he'll make such a mess of whatever he tries to do, that he'll put people off voting for Le Pen as president in 2027. I'd be surprised if it was Macron's strategy, but it could well work out that way! As I'm quite sure Bardella will be completely incompetent.

I don’t know any young people (plenty of older ones though) who support the RN but I was thinking maybe the ones who do are taking Bardella at face value and don’t know about when the RN was the National Front, Jean Marie Le Pen etc. I remember a few years ago when Marine Le Pen wanted to clean up the National Front and make it electable, she seems to have managed that!

I did read that about how Macron hopes Bardella turns out to be incompetent but I really hope it doesn’t come to that, it would be awful for France if we spend the next 3 years watching them argue :(

Exactly.
A constant stream of migration from Africa and the Middle East, centre left policy that is ineffective in dealing with it and 'progressive' policies that have got a lot of peoples backs up. Not to mention war and recession.
What's happening in the EU is no surprise.

Dear god what is happening? Scary stuff.

I don’t know what yesterday’s results in France will translate to in practice after the second round next week. The far right got the highest score, but as there’s a second round it’s difficult to tell who people will vote for if their first round candidate was knocked out.

I don’t even want to talk about politics with anyone in real life because people I thought of as friends are happily voting for Jordan and crying it from the rooftops. I’m an almost lifelong veggie who has found a way to get along with people who see hunting as a pastime but these past few weeks have made me wonder wtf I’m doing here (in this part of France, maybe even France at all) be honest.

Very scary stuff in France with the far right movement.

But what about Macron, is it true he wants to 'get into bed' with hard left communists and is asking them to come together? Won't that mean they will have a voice in parliament? That doesnt sit right with me either. It is scary watching from this side of the channel because I dont know what is worse.

So, the National Front came first overall, but with 33% of the votes, that's just about 1 in 5 voting for the fasc. not good at all, but not a majority of the population.
Interestingly, I don't know anyone who voted for them. No one in my large extended family (although some are not on social media and I haven't asked them), no old school friends. (Just as well as I wouldn't have the patience...)
Where do you hear that Macron is going to "get into bed" with the hard left?
It's a very biased way of explaining that a Republican Front is forming against the far-right, whereby all (or most) parties are agreeing to stand down for each other ahead of the second round to avoid giving the FN / RN (whatever it's called) an outright majority. It's crucial that they do NOT form an outright majority, so they don't have an influence on the support for Ukraine.
So yes, some candidates from Macron's party will stand down to let some pretty hard left deputés go through.
At this stage, who cares what happens afterwards, how they are going to govern if they can form a coalition - obviously they may not be able to pass any law as they don't agree on anything, but that's honestly secondary.
"Getting into bed" is not here or there. The RN/FN want to ban the hijab, leave NATO, made noises about allowing peace in Ukraine... No thank you!

Why would they be hating on that one specific religion and not any other e.g Sikh, Jew?

Also, Macron is not "asking" the far left to come together and join him,
It's people, newspaper editorials, former presidents, everyone who is asking for that. It's the only thing left to do. We'll figure out the aftermath afterwards.
The far left is not going to have any power afterwards anyway, the assembly will be too divided to let anything through...

Because the far right already achieved its "final solution" to the Jewish problem last time it was in power, and in four years in France I've never seen a Sikh.

The most worrying thing here is that Macron seems to be focusing his criticism on the left. His party, as well as what's left of the Republicains, are looking more likely to prop up a fascist government than a left wing one.

@Hedgeoffressian for the same reasons the UK does 🤷‍♀️ Bigotry has to land somewhere, preferably somewhere that you can justify with faux pious concerns ("they oppress women" etc).
And yes, the FN has its history in Petainism, so these days they are trying to distance themselves from actual nazi attitudes (superficially, of course).

Say La Vee

As they say over there!

Is that the latest, @Brexile? I know that's how it started this morning...They have until today or tomorrow to decide on who is standing, guess I'll have a listen to France Inter...

I thought Macron had said (via Gabriel Attal) that nobody should vote for the far right? Some in his coalition have also said nobody should vote for LFI (far left) either, so not sure what people are supposed to do if they have a choice between the two!

I’m surprised that Macron hasn’t come out and made some kind of a speech yet. Or maybe he thinks it’s best if he stays out of it for now?

I think that a likely outcome on Sunday is that none of them has a majority and they all spend the next year unable to agree on anything.

Just watched Jordan Bardella speaking on the TF1 news. He came across quite well, still wouldn’t ever vote for him though!

Not the latest, no, but I feel that a lot of damage has been done by all this BS about "the two extremes". Even if some Macronist candidates are standing down in favour of the NFP, I worry that the sort of voters who don't follow politics closely but pride themselves on being centrist/moderate will simply abstain in the second round.

OMG has anyone seen this in today's paper! What on earth is happening over there?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13595437/France-Frexit-disguise-National-Rally-Macron.html

You can ignore, @HotPipe... No chance of that. 👍 What happened is that a Macron ally said two days ago that there was a risk of that as a way to get votes for the centre, but it's not at all on the cards. I mean, literally no one wants that. My advice to you, don't rely on the Daily Mail for updates on the French elections and watch France 24 instead. I've been listening to French radio as soon as I have a free minute, nothing beats primary sources... Only heard of Frexit in the context of "Le Pen used to back it but doesn't anymore because it's not popular".
I've also grown more confident that the FN is not going to get an absolute majority. 65% of French people don't want them anywhere near power. And the Front Populaire isn't going to have a majority either.