Macron and Le Pen go through to run off for French president

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Worrying to have Le Pen as a candidate this far in, but hopefully voters will be switching to Macron.

Rorty you seem very confused about whether he has a party or not ...

Legislative elections follow the presidential ones. En Marche will put up candidates but it's quite possible that they will have to form some sort of coalition - this is nothing new in European politics though less common in France than in say Germany. We last had "cohabitation" under the Jospin government.

In the unlikely event that Le Pen wins, she won't have a majority either - she has 2 deputies atm IIRC or under 0.5% of the total.

RortyCrankle
I know Macron has a party - En Marche!

What does this mean if not that I know he has a party?

Legislative elections follow the presidential ones.

Yes I know, on 11 and 18 June.

En Marche will put up candidates

Yes I know.

I know little of French politics apart from the above, which is why most of my thread consisted of questions.

So here's another: Will Macron have to appoint a PM etc before the June elections or does that happen after?

but it's quite possible that they will have to form some sort of coalition

Yes in view of his party being new, that would seem likely.

I really don't think Le Pen has much of a chance, whether she is leader of FN or not but stranger things have happened.

Rorty Your post from 16.02 suggested you were under the impression that neither Le Pen or Macron had a party, hence my confusion.

It doesn't surprise me if people in the UK are confused, because press coverage of French politics is so dire.

Re appointment of a PM, the president has more or less power to do this depending on whether s/he has a parliamentary majority. Since the early 2000s the presidential and legislative election timetable has been coordinated so that they occur roughly at the same time, to limit the likelihood of "cohabitation". But we haven't seen this sort of four way split before so it will be interesting to see how it the legislative elections work out. (They also involve a two round system which disadvantages extremists).

Thank you for the information - I'm learning a lot.

Indeed as Mistry says, the coverage of Union politics is dire. We get daily coverage of the POTUS, but bugger all about our neighbours who are going to have a huge influence in negotiations over the next two years.

Coverage of French politics has been especially dire - in fact the French media has been running exasperated articles about how the British media has failed to understand, well, pretty much anything about the French elections.

Thanks Mistigri as you can probably tell, I try, but don't understand Fr. politics very well either! It's a bit like the language which some of the french people I speak to don't know fully too!

Coverage of French politics in the Economist is succinct and analytical, for those who wish to read further.

FT is also OK on European politics, but the mainstream press are diabolical.

I live in a deprived bit of the 93 where Mélenchon won by a country mile.

Melenchon also won my departement. My timeline is full of white, male, supposedly leftwing wankers going on about how they won't vote in the second round, because obv a former minister in a left-of-centre govt and a fascist are the same things.

I'm going to be defriending a lot of people, not having nazi apologists on my FL.

Same here.

Stupid thing is that natural Melenchon voters (like my teenage daughter who is attracted to his green policies - for which he deserves some credit btw) will be totally put off. She's disgusted by leftwingers refusing to vote against a fascist party, I think it's fair to say that Melenchon and his merry band of melenbros just lost a voter forever.

My thoughts are quite aptly summarised by this article

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/25/le-pen-far-right-holocaust-revisionist-macron-left?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

followed by this clip from Osage County

Replacing fish by chicken

Macron seems to me to be the Tony Blair of French politics (without the lying), in terms of his position politically. He could be in a bit of difficulty getting some of his policies through if his party do not have a large number of seats in the Assembly Nationale.

Marine Le Pen is not as nasty as her dad, but still makes UKIP seem pleasant by comparison. Denying French involvement in the wartime regime, for example (the regime that killed five of my French relatives).

The mairies that are run by FN are vile, as is Béziers with the affiliated Ménard at its helm. They are also pretty corrupt, and their budget choices are clearly oriented by their racist policies and their desire to line their pockets.

I am worried that this is like a rerun of Brexit, with a disastrous outcome caused by a combination of apathy and gullible people hoodwinked by MLP's whitewashing and populist lies. Except the childishly arrogant stance of Mélenchon supporters saying they can't hold their noses and vote Macron is very French...

How people can even listen to her harping on about "les vrais patriotes" after what happened in WW2 is beyond me. That discourse is chillingly familiar and she has recently made remarks that indicate she's likely to try and purge the judiciary and civil service, ensuring they are only for "patriots."

Except the childishly arrogant stance of Mélenchon supporters saying they can't hold their noses and vote Macron is very French

Not really: white male privilege looks the same the world over, whether it's Bernie Bros or Melenchonites or members of Momentum. They can afford their ideological purity. Those of us who are migrants or the wrong colour can't do that.

Latest is that the replacement FN president is an actual holocaust denier who has been caught with his pants down ...

Finding it very hard to understand the mélenchonbros who refuse to vote against this.

As for the UK newspapers cheerleading for the FN, well I suppose some of them do have form.

That's appalling Mist It may get the 'on the fence' types out to vote against the FN with any luck.

What exactly is it that Le Pen wants to do as President of France that makes her so vilified on here? Sorry, I know nothing much about this election.

What exactly is it that Le Pen wants to do as President of France that makes her so vilified on here? Sorry, I know nothing much about this election.

I'll take this at face value although I'm surprised anyone educated needs to ask.

Quite apart from her policies - which are basically far left economics (anti-free trade, pro nationalisation - basically Corbyn on steroids, except that her policies would explicitly favour white French people) with right-of-Ukip social policies. MLP has attempted to improve its public image, notably by sacking her father from the party, but many of its officials are tainted by a similar history of anti-semitism and racism, including holocaust denial (négationnisme in French).

If you were in the least offended by the Ken Livingstone saga, you should be aware that what he said was pretty mild compared to what many FN politicians have said in the past. The new FN president is on record as doubting that the holocaust happened, or at least happened as historians currently believe (he doubts that Jewish people were gassed with Zyklon B), and also has a history of Pétainism (support for the occupied Nazi-collaborator government in WWII).

Only last week Marine Le Pen made waves by saying that the French were not responsible for the treatment of Jews under the occupation - that there was no national responsibility for the Vel d'Hiv, in which thousands of Jewish people were rounded up by the French (not by the Nazis).

A Le Pen presidency would probably be similar to Trump, in that most of her policies will be very difficult to implement - because the money and the political support would be lacking, and because a lot of what she wants to do is objectively very complex (if the UK leaving the EU will be hard, it would be 100 times more complex for France, and it has much less public support) - so very little concrete will get done. But at the same time, as in the US, the state machine would roll back openness, individual freedoms and the rule of law by limiting press access to government (MLP is already "doing a trump" by refusing to allow some media to cover her campaign), cracking down on personal liberties particularly religious freedoms and women's and minority rights, and attempting to circumvent the courts. She is under several judicial investigations and the European Parliament has begun the process of lifting her immunity - but if she were elected she would benefit from a much wider immunity as a head of state.

Is that scary enough or do you want more?!

Most of the intelligent Fr. will have read enough about Fr. in WW2 to know that there were many active Nazi sympathisers among them. They are so ashamed , the older generation won't talk about it.

They did also rescue many people into Switzerland. There was a brave resistance movement too.

There are a lot of older people in Paris who themselves spent WW2 in hiding.

I was absolutely not criticising the track record of the French population in WW2.
I am well aware of how many people died, helped, hid (themselves or others) and resisted.
DH's grandfather was deported to Bergen Belsen in June 1944, after his resistance activities were denounced by a neighbour with a grudge. He survived, and refused ever to speak ill of Germans as a people.

I was referring to the echoes between MLP's vocab and that of the 1930s and 40s.

"Patriot" is not an innocuous term when used by the (suddenly ex-) leader of the FN, many of whose whose members are Holocaust deniers. A considerable number of Jeunesse Patriotique members went on to join the Parti Populaire Français, who actively helped to round up and deport Jews.
Her clean-up job has worked, but is superficial, as revealed by the ephemeral nomination of a Holocaust denier to replace her as leader.
That is why I find it hard to fathom that people could be taken in by her rhetoric, which is so chillingly familiar. But memories are short, and people did indeed not talk much about what happened.

The interim Front National president who turned out to be a holocaust denier has stepped down, and into his shoes has stepped another delightful individual currently under police investigation for sending death threats to a fellow mayor (mayors are elected officials in France) and for publishing hate speech on social media.

And a part of the French left actively supports anti-semitism by refusing to stand up to this.