Anyone in France?

[MadameMassiveSalad]

What a relief! 🇫🇷👏

Phew!🇨🇵

🥂🍾🥂🍾🥂🍾

Not seen the news yet but hoping this means it's good news...

Amazing results especially after last week's prediction! Can someone explain the withdrawal of candidates by Melenchon and Macron's parties? I understand this was done in response to Le Pen's party winning majority on the first round. Vive le France 🇫🇷

Thank fuck!

It's bad enough in the rest of Europe..... (not all countries, obviously).

I wonder what will happen next with a hung parliament

Tactical.

Where third-placed centre or left candidates pull out, the anti-RN vote is focused on a single candidate, making victory easier over the RN contender.
The leftwing New Popular Front (NPF) – which comprises everyone from centre-left social democrats to far-left anti-capitalists – issued instructions to all of its third-placed candidates to step down and let a centrist reap the anti-RN vote.
The NPF is thus helping two senior pro-Macron MPs – former prime minister Elisabeth Borne and Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin – to win in their constituencies in Normandy and the north.
Conversely a pro-Macron candidate has stood down in order to help radical leftwinger François Ruffin defeat the RN candidate in the northern city of Amiens.

Quite, so glad and pleasantly surprised.

Amazing to see teh daily mail pivot seamlessly from right wing triumph to far left instability. They have this amazing bullshit story about riots which seems to consist of a small fire then 2000 comments by morons about how the election was fixed.

If anyone has ever voted in France, it's the most complicated and secure thing ever.

Thanks @MadameMassiveSalad. Hopefully both parties can put their differences aside and make it work for the good of the country.
@NormalAuntFanny I saw on Twitter that they were riots and talks about how the country has been plunged into instability. Good to know it wasn't widespread.

@VladimirVsVolodymyr there is really nothing, without sounding like a tinfoil hat merchant it's presumably the bloody Russians on SM who have been trying to stir the pot for quite some time now.

Mind you a few cars on fire and a bit of tear gas doesn't even make the news here, just normal protest action!

It’s an amazing result as in some underhand tactics ensured a left wing victory, but it’s not an authentic win and the reasons people voted for Le Pen won’t go away and will now be exacerbated as the voters will feel conned.

How is working together to stop extremists an underhand tactic?

The electoral system is how it is specifically to reduce the chance of an extremist govt because the people who designed it had actually fought a war against the bloody nazis.

Because it’s underhand. Tactically withdrawing candidates and plotting together despite allegedly being separate parties to deprive the country of representation is untrustworthy behaviour.

Some people (in fact many) would’ve called a Corbyn victory an ‘extremist government’, would they have had the right to block his election by whittling alternate candidates down to 1 in all of the Labour constituencies?

If the country doesn’t want right wing politics they have nothing to worry about. But they do, so they did, and forced a shady result on them.

If people such as yourself are so certain that using any measures to keep right wing parties out is justified, why bother with elections at all? Let’s just have a mandatory left wing coalition and leave it there. It means you don’t believe in democracy and what does that make you?

How is it underhand, voters can vote or not as they please, there's no deception?

As for your last paragraph, firstly the FN are not a right wing party, they are a party of extremists. Even if they weren't racist scumbags their economic policies alone are impossibly stupid and dangerous, they have taken money from Putin etc etc.

Secondly the whole point of democracy is to offer a choice, the majority have chosen no fascists, we voted to keep them out! They aren't entitled to a turn just because they wanted one.

Ok, then apply your own logic to our election - if Reform had pulled out their voters would’ve likely gone Conservative and the Tories would’ve probably won the election again as their vote share would’ve been bigger than Labour.

the majority have chosen no fascists, we voted to keep them out

And by this token it means the majority in this country have chosen right wing politics and Labour have been unjustly elected? Or do you reverse your own logic when it’s a party you disapprove of?

I don't really understand your post. France has a two round system precisely to avoid the kind of minority vote but landslide victory results the UK system is designed to create.

You can't compare apples and oranges.

Also you keep confusing the RN with a right wing party, they really aren't, try reading their manifesto. Nor am I a left winger.

But neither Reform nor the Tories nor the Lib Dems pulled out because they didn't feel that the election of a Labour government was an existential threat to Britain. Clearly many members of the French left believe that RN is a threat to the Republic so it is a different situation.

We also have a different voting system. We might have seen, for example, a larger vote for Reform in a two-round system, with a consolidation towards the left of centre parties in a second round. People vote differently depending on the electoral system.

I think anyone cheering this result are like the silly people who ignored similar feeling here until Brexit happened. You can only ignore such a large % of the country for so long, you can’t all say you haven’t been warned!

If you'd have watched the results election coverage you would have seen all the major parties saying pretty much that, except putting it rather better!

But thanks for the warning

I’m not brilliantly up on French politics, and political positions do require local context. But having looked up Melenchon I am a bit amazed that people are joyous that he’s been placed as the leader of the biggest bloc. He’s very extreme. He’s an antisemite for starters. And - on MN this is the sign of wickedness - he’s implacably anti-EU. His economic policies are barking mad left wing.

I can see that keeping out RN is a good thing, but as far as I can see France has given influence to a party and its leader just as bad.