Posts Tagged ‘French Politics’
Split in French Far Right, as Marine Le Pen’s Number 2, Florian Philippot, Leaves Front National.
Best Mates Fall out.
This was on the French radio this morning, as it happened.
Good start to the day….
It has even got on the BBC site:
Florian Philippot: Le Pen’s top aide quits National Front.
The war began some time back but reached a pic a few days ago when Philippot was found in a Couscousserie .
His one-time comrades in the FN accused him of “collaboration” (espèce de collabo... ) for eating the Arab dish (this one is beyond me, I have eaten Couscous in a restaurant run by Pieds-noirs).
Philippot, apart from being the major player behind the move to make Marine le Pen acceptable, playing down anti-Semitism and racism generally, and being liberal on gay issues (he is gay), s best known as a virulent ‘sovereigntist’ who has applied to the ‘left’ nationalist strain of the same name. On the radio this morning the name of former Socialist Minister and arch sovereigntist, Jean–Pierre Chevènement got mentioned in this context.
Philippot already has his own ‘micro-party’, “Les Patriotes“, to fall back on.
Split looms in French far right as Marine Le Pen’s key aide quits.
France 24.
Florian Philippot, for many years the closest aide of French far-right politician Marine Le Pen, said on Thursday he was quitting the National Front party, opening up a likely split in the country’s far-right ranks.
Philippot, whose responsibilities for strategy and communications were earlier removed by Le Pen, told France 2 television that he did not like being “ridiculed”.
“They told me that I was vice-president of nothing,” he said. “Listen, I don’t have a desire to be ridiculed. I have never had the desire to do nothing, so of course I am quitting the National Front.”
Philippot’s departure is a big blow for the far-right as it struggles to portray itself as the main opposition to President Emmanuel Macron.
After Philippot’s announcement Thursday, the leader of the National Front said she was ‘sad’ about his decision.“It’s sad to witness such a waste, but unfortunately, since this is how he wanted things, it can’t be stopped,” Le Pen told Le Figaro. “There were many attempts to reason with him, but they were always rejected.”
“The National Front is in a period of crisis,” RFI’s political editor Philip Turle told FRANCE 24. “Marine Le Pen’s tenure is no longer assured.”
Cracks have been appearing ever since the party’s election defeat earlier this year. After the National Front lost to centrist president Emmanuel Macron, Philippot started his own group ‘The Patriots’. His movement fast became a source of tension but when Marine Le Pen asked Philippot to leave it, he refused.
Philippot wanted to steer the party away from its traditional anti-immigration focus towards economic nationalism. His rivals in the National Front blame him for turning off many voters by pushing France to quit the European Union and leave the eurozone.
But Marine Le Pen appears not to want to soften her party’s stance on the issue.
“National sovereignty is a mainstay of our struggle,” she told LCP television on Thursday morning. “We will continue to fight the European Union with all our soul because it is an instrument for the elimination and impoverishment of our people.”
The firing earlier this month of regional official Sophie Montel, a close friend of Philippot, set off more sparks. Montel was a vice president of Philippot’s association. Shortly before she was fired, Montel said that the party was “re-toxifying”.
Party officials believe the rift between leading party figures over policy has drawn supporters to other parties, including to the far-left party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who is emerging as the main opposition.
(FRANCE 24 with REUTERS and AP)
French Union Protests Make a Good Start Against Macron’s Labour ‘reforms’.
Protests took place yesterday in cities across France against changes to the country’s labour laws.
Libération today carries extensive reports on the 12th of September day of action against the new wave of labour code ‘reforms’, which will weaken workers’ bargaining ability and rights, including their compensation from Employment Tribunals. (Loi travail : de Lille à Marseille en passant par Grenoble, la rue gronde).
La mobilisation syndicale presque au niveau des débuts de la fronde anti-loi El Kohmri
Le Monde notes that at 5000,00 people across France (230,000 according to the police) the level of people taking part was nearly at the same level as those against the previous Labour ‘reform’, the El Khomri law – despite the fact that this time around two union federations, the CFDT and FO did not take nationally take part. There were some welcome local exceptions of total union unity (Front syndical uni : des manifestations rares, mais qui mobilisent).
The first anti-El Khomri marches on the 9th of March 2016 gathered 450 000 et 500 000 ( 224 000 police figures).
The main organiser, the CGT, joined by the small left union grouping, the Solidaires, education and student unions, the FSU and UNEF announced that the day had been a success. The government has aid it remains “serine” faced with the protests. (Réforme du code du travail : l’exécutif affiche sa sérénité face aux manifestants.)
The left daily, l’Humanité, called it a promising springboard for future action (400 000 contre la loi travail XXL, un beau tremplin pour la suite).
On the 23rd of September Mélenchon’s rally, La France insoumise has organised its own event, the “marche contre le coup d’Etat social”.
This has been criticised, some noting Mélenchon’s claim to be effecting the “replacement” ( remplacement) of both the Parti Socialiste and the rest of the left, and, some accuse him, trade unions, by his own movement.
The CGT and the Parti communiste français (PCF) are participating in Peace marches on that day (Le Mouvement pour la Paix appelle à une grande journée de mobilisation partout en France le 23 septembre).
However, former Socialist Presidential candidate ( 6,36 %), Benoît Hamon who has left the PS and founded the Mouvement du 1er juillet, is going to join Jean-Luc Mélenchon (19.58% in the same first round of this year’s election) on the 23rd (Contre toute attente, Mélenchon et Hamon s’allient)
The CGT has its own next moblisation on the 21st of September (Journée d’actions, de mobilisations et de grèves).
This is the report in France 24.
France 24 puts this story under the headline, no doubt for the benefit of its transatlantic readership under the heading, “Hardliners protest French labour reform as Macron chides ‘slackers’.
Translation, “Militant Trade Unions Protest Against French Labour Reform as Macron condemns ‘lazy’ workers.“
The word used against workers was ” fainéant”, literally, “do-nothings”.
Hitting back at Macron‘s pledge to give no ground to “slackers”, some in Paris carried placards reading: “Slacker on Strike” while in Bordeaux demonstrators chanted: “Macron you’re screwed, the slackers are in the streets.”
The Paris prefecture said 24,000 protesters turned out in the capital, where riot police clashed with hooded youths in isolated skirmishes on the fringe of the march led by the Communist Party-linked CGT union.
That was under the 28,000 estimated by police during March 2016’s demonstration.
Labour unions have scuppered previous attempts to weaken France’s labour code, but this time there was comfort for Macron as two other unions, including the largest, the CFDT, declined to join the protests.“We’ve been passing laws which take apart the labour code for 20 years. The answer (to unemployment) doesn’t lie in rolling it back further,” said Maxime Durand, a train driver on strike.
After weeks of negotiation, the government last month set out measures including a cap on payouts for dismissals judged unfair and greater freedom for companies to hire and fire.
The reform makes no direct reference to the 35-hour week, a totem of the labour code, though it hands firms more flexibility to set pay and working conditions. The government plans to adopt the new measures, being implemented by decree, on Sept. 22.
During a trip to Athens on Friday, Macron told the local French community: “I am fully determined and I won’t cede any ground, not to slackers, nor cynics, nor hardliners.”
He said the “slackers” comment was aimed at those who had failed to push through reforms in the past, although political opponents and some unions took it as an attack on the unemployed or on workers making the most of job protection.
“We will make Macron back down,” far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon, who has become Macron’s most vocal opponent in parliament, said on the sidelines of a protest in Marseille.
Cherished rights
French workers have long cherished the rights enshrined in the labour code, but companies complain it has deterred investment and job creation and stymied economic growth.
Unemployment has been above 9 percent for nearly a decade.
Macron’s reforms are being followed in Germany as a test of his resolve to reshape the euro zone’s second-biggest economy, a must if he is to win Berlin’s backing for broader reforms to the currency union.
The CGT is France’s second-biggest union, though its influence has been waning. Its leader Philippe Martinez said Tuesday’s nationwide protests were the “first phase” and more would follow. He called Macron’s reference to “slackers” an insult to workers.
“The president should listen to the people, understand them, rather than cause divisions,” Martinez told France 2 television.
CGT workers from the rail, oil and power sectors heeded the strike call but by the afternoon there was no apparent impact on power and refining production, spokespeople for utility EDF and oil major Total said.
Just over 11 percent of the workforce at EDF, which operates France’s fleet of 48 nuclear reactors, took part in the strike, a spokeswoman for the state-owned utility said.
The demos saw people with handmade placards with slogans that strongly suggest, dare I say it, something very similar to a British or Irish sense of humour,
Macron: a Good for Nothing is Worth Two of You Mate! Lazy-bones of the World Unite!
Here: Lazy. Cynical and Extreme!
Too idle to Find a Slogan!
Brouhaha over New York Times Op-Ed: “Emmanuel Macron Will Be Yet Another Failed French President.”
French President Macron, as his Fans see Him.
For reasons most people will find hard to grasp a rude article about French President Macron in the New York Times, a paper of very limited circulation in France, or indeed elsewhere in Europe, including Britain (this is the first time I have read anything in it since…for ever), has been met by outraged brouhaha in France.
One thing that is easy to get is the idea that “fake news” is spreading like bad margarine over our daily political bread.
Libération today has this article, a factual piece in answer to claims that it was an editorial (apparently somebody can’t tell the difference between Op-ed, an American expression which I think means opinion piece), Editorial and report, and (Confusion entre tribune d’opinion, édito et article.) as well as demolishing the idea that the author is a Le Pen supporter.
L’auteur de la tribune anti-Macron n’est ni journaliste au «New York Times»… ni lepéniste
A Government type (Secrétaire d’État auprès du Premier ministre, chargé des relations avec le Parlement, porte-parole du @GouvernementFR. Team #Forcalquier#AlpesdeHauteProvence) claimed the Le Pen link, soon afterwards followed by another professional Macron fan (Hugues Renson @huguesrenson Vice-Président de l’Assemblée Nationale – Député #LaRepubliqueEnMarche – 13eme circonscription de Paris – Commission des affaires étrangères).
The tale is taken apart in even more rigorous detail here: Comment une tribune du New York Times a assassiné la presse française
Emmanuel Macron Will Be Yet Another Failed French President
President Emmanuel Macron of France is liberalism’s new poster boy. Hailed as the answer to Europe’s populist tide, he has brought a buzz back into French diplomacy by facing down President Trump and President Vladimir Putin of Russia. “The Macron method,” a leading European think tank gushed recently, is the new Third Way, threading the needle between technocracy and populism.
At home in France, it’s a very different story. A recent poll found that Mr. Macron’s popularity fell by 14 points in August, after a fall of 10 points in July. Only 40 percent of respondents said they were satisfied with the president’s performance.
To be fair, Mr. Macron never had much popular support to begin with. In the first round of the presidential election in April, when the vote was split among four main contenders, he won just under 24 percent. (By comparison, François Hollande received 28 percent of the vote in the first round in 2012. Nicolas Sarkozy won 31 percent in 2007.) Mr. Macron won the second round handily, but only because he was the lesser-evil candidate in the runoff — his competitor was Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right populist National Front party.
Electoral arithmetic explains only so much. Mr. Macron’s popularity suffers from something more fundamental: Macronism. His entire political project has been far too focused on his personality. Much of his appeal has come from his youth, his dynamism, his good looks and his oratorical skills. This hyper-personalized approach always carried the risk that once his charm wore off, there would be nothing left for his supporters to like, which is exactly what is happening.
Since taking office, Mr. Macron has put off many people by trying to recapture the grandeur of the presidency. In a phrase that may stick to him for the rest of his time in office, he said he wanted to make the presidency more “Jupiterian,” comparing himself with the powerful Roman god Jupiter, who ruled the skies. When he brought the Senate and Parliament together at the Versailles palace and spoke to them about his ambitions for the presidency, many in France bristled at the monarchical overtones.
The above Chris Bickerton, who shows few signs of more knowledge of French politics than can be picked up from a few newspaper articles, is a pro-Brexit tosser, claiming to be on the internationalist ‘left’ for reasons which remain obscure but are apparently linked to the idea that being anti-EU is a hand of friendship to the world, whose views count for very little anywhere.
To just cite the pillock, on why people should vote Leave, (Brexit is not the property of the political right. The left is disenchanted too.
I believe we can make this into the basis for a new internationalism in Europe, one that gives Europe a political meaning far more profound than the shallow cosmopolitanism that comes with the economic integration of the single market. A vote for Brexit is also a universal message to all other Europeans that politics can be about change and not just about defending the status quo.
The main interest of the story, apart from indicating the mechanisms of fake-news, is that it shows just how twitchy Macron’s mates are.
Meanwhile this demo is taking place tomorrow , against Macron’s Labour Code reform: Code du travail : première épreuve de rue pour Macron
Les syndicats, à l’exception de FO et de la CFDT, manifestent mardi 12 septembre contre les ordonnances sur la réforme du droit du travail.
Macron’s Government Launches New Labour ‘Reforms’, Protests Already Planned.
First Demo Against Macron’s ‘Reforms’, 12th of September.
Macron’s government unveils controversial labour reforms.
France 24.
After meeting with trade unions on Thursday, the French government unveiled President Emmanuel Macron’s controversial labour reforms, vowing to “free up the energy of the workforce” by making it easier for employers to hire and fire.
French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe and Labour Minister Muriel Pénicaud met with trade unionists on Thursday before publicly unveiling the labour reform measures, which are detailed on some 200 pages.
The highly anticipated and controversial labour reforms, a centerpiece of Macron’s election pledge, are aimed at creating jobs.
The changes will be implemented via executive order, allowing Macron to avoid a lengthy parliamentary debate. The overhaul will be adopted by the government in September and must then be ratified by parliament, where the president’s La République en Marche (Republic on the Move) party has a large majority.
..
Criticism from trade unions
Right after the announcement of the reforms, some unions voiced criticism, denouncing measures that they perceive to be more favourable to companies than to employees.
Philippe Martinez, secretary-general of the CGT trade union, lashed out Thursday, saying, “All our fears have been confirmed and the additional fear is obvious and has been written: It’s the end of the working contract.” He qualified the reform as “old recipes which will not change the lot of the people.”
The communist-backed CGT has opposed the changes outright and is set to mobilise its supporters on September 12 for a street protest. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the far-left leader of France Insoumise (Unbowed France) and a fierce opponent to Macron, is organising another protest on September 23.
France’s biggest private sector union, the CFDT, declared itself “disappointed” but said it would not be calling its members to join the CGT’s planned street protest on September 12.
Nevertheless, the CFDT is unhappy with the level at which dismissal awards in France’s labour courts will be capped, and unhappy with a section of the reforms in which employers will be allowed to negotiate directly with staff in companies with fewer than 20 workers.
The boss of the hard-left Force Ouvrière (FO) union, Jean-Claude Mailly, said he disagreed with some of the changes, but like Berger suggested he would not recommend his members join street protests.
Meanwhile, François Asselin, president of France’s confederation of small and medium-sized companies, the CPME, has praised the reform for being “particularly pragmatic”.
The CGT wants their Day of Action and Strikes to be the occasion to begin a serious moblisation against Macron’s ‘reforms’. (La CGT veut faire du 12 septembre la journée « contre la réforme du code du travail »)
To the lack of support from the two other main union federations there is also this.
La France insoumise (LFI), 17 deputies strong, to repeat, is organising its own demonstration on the 23rd of September, without the unions and any other group on the left. Jean-Luc Mélenchon appelle à un “rassemblement populaire” contre la réforme du travail le 23 septembre à Paris.
Macron has already seized on this to declare that Mélenchon is claiming not just to be the only real opposition to the President but also to be a “rival to the trade unions”. (Mélenchon à la tête de l’opposition ? Une chance, selon Macron. Le président de la République estime que le leader de la France insoumise se pose en “rival des syndicats” sur la réforme du Code du travail. RTL)
Whether this division exists, or whether the LFI march will have any impact, is not at all sure.
A few days ago the Parti communiste français PCF, which has 11 MPs, and close ties to the CGT, expressed reservations about this division amongst left parties. Their leader Pierre Laurent contented himself with noting a “lack of respect” (manque de respect) in the way LFI operates (le Monde. 26.8.17). A young member added, ” that for LFI “everything is built around his personality and his inner circle (tout est construit autour de sa personne et de sa garde rapprochée – literally his “bodyguard”).
One thing is clear: the serious campaign will be launched by the Unions.
By contrast LFI declares that they are leading the movement, ” «Nous proclamons en septembre la mobilisation générale contre le coup d’Etat social»” – we declare in September that there will be a mobilisation in September against the social coup d’Etat by Macron.. La France insoumise suggests that Mélenchon may soon be called for government if Macron is defeated, and they are ready to govern is need be. ” Jean-Luc Mélenchon affirmait ainsi : «Nous sommes prêts à gouverner demain s’il le faut” (Des «élections anticipées», nouveau credo de La France insoumise. Libération).
The wags are already laughing at this one:
In the meantime…
For the best analysis of these reforms seems Gérard Filoche: Leurs mensonges sont énormes, Ils font le pire, ils ont passé le code du travail à l’acide
Commemorating Jean Jaurès.
A YEAR has passed since the death of the greatest man of the Third Republic. Events the like of which history has not previously known have welled up almost as if to wash away Jaurès’ blood with new blood and to divert attention away from him and to swallow up even his memory. But even the very greatest events have only partially succeeded in this. In France’s political life a great void has been left behind. New leaders of the proletariat answering the revolutionary character of the new era have not yet arisen. The old leaders only make us remember the more clearly that there is now no Jaurès.
The war has thrown on one side not only individual figures but a whole era with them: the era during which the present leading generation in all spheres of life had been educated and brought up. Today this departed era on the one hand attracts our thoughts by the obstinacy of its cultural heritage, the uninterrupted growth of its technology, science and workers’ organizations; and on the other seems petty and characterless in the conservatism of its political life and in the reformist methods of its class struggle.
After the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune (1870-1871) a period of armed peace and political reaction set in. Europe, if one excluded Russia, knew neither war nor revolution. Capital developed on a mighty scale outgrowing the framework of nation-states and overflowing into the remaining countries and subjugating colonies. The working class built its trade unions and its socialist parties. However the whole of the proletarian struggle of this period was impregnated with the spirit of reformism, of adaptation to the existing order and to the nation’s industry and the nation’s state power. After the experience of the Paris Commune the European proletariat did not once pose the question of the conquest of political power in a practical, that is, a revolutionary way. This peaceful, “organic” character of the era reared a whole generation of proletarian leaders thoroughly steeped in distrust for the direct revolutionary mass struggle.
When the war broke out and the nation-state embarked on its campaign with all its forces armed to the teeth, this generation could without difficulty place the majority of the “socialist” leaders down on their knees. The epoch of the Second International has thus ended with the violent wrecking of the official socialist parties. True they are still standing as monuments to a past age and supported both indirectly and forcibly by the governments. But the spirit of proletarian socialism has fled them and they are doomed to collapse. The working masses who have in the past accepted the ideas of socialism are only now, amid the terrible experience of the war, receiving their revolutionary baptism of fire. We are entering upon a period of unprecedented revolutionary earthquakes. New organizations will be brought to the fore by the masses and new leaders will stand at their head.
The two most outstanding representatives of the Second International have left the scene before the onset of the era of storms and earthquakes: namely Bebel and Jaurès. Bebel died in ripe old age having said everything that he was able to say. Jaurès was killed at the age of 55 in the full flower of his creative energy. A pacifist and a sharp opponent of the policies of Russian diplomacy, Jaurès fought right till the last minute against French intervention in the war. It was considered in certain circles that the war of “liberation” could not commence its march other than by stepping over Jaurès’ dead body.
Two important and recommended books on Jaurès
Gilles Candar – Vincent Duclert, Jean Jaurès, Fayard, 2014.
This biography has set a new standard. Beautifully written, with a proper ‘critical apparatuses’ (not a noted feature of many French biographies or indeed works of political theory), it is the best study of the French socialist leader that I have come across.
Candar (of the Société d’études jaurésiennes and Duclert (a specialist on the Dreyfus affair) point out that, while never held office, Jaurès remains one of the most influential figures in the country’s history, revered on all sides. Amongst its many merits the book is illuminating on the general history of the 3rd Republic, from the Dreyfus Affair, in which the Socialist, initially reluctant, was drawn to take the side of those defending not just the unjustly accused by the universal values of human rights, to the separation of state and Church, the foundation of French Laïcité . The authors do not skirt around one issue, which has always irked me, the absence on the French left at the time (indeed up till say, the 1970s…) of any recognition of the importance of feminism. The socialist leader, active in the Second International where these issues were raised more frequently than in France, was they illustrate, was committed to women’s rights, if, as a homme du Midi of the age, he was marked by patriarchal culture.
Jaurès’ struggle for peace on the eve of the Great War and the ferocious hatred that he inspired on the French nationalist right, today, on the anniversary of Passchendaele has passed, and xenophobia has returned throughout Europe, serve to underline the grandeur of one of the greatest leaders of international socialism.
Jean-Paul Scot, Jaurès et le réformisme révolutionnaire, Seuil, 2014.
For many Jaurès’ socialism is summed up in the phrase, “the republic must be made social“. Scot argues that it rested on deeper foundations. Tracing his intellectual development the author of unravels a dialectic between a belief in the reformist (though not ‘revisionist’) belief in ‘evolution’ and the need for radical change. Taking from Marx the concept of “évolution révolutionnaire” to bring the two sides together Scot, illustrates this through the socialist leader’s speeches, articles and political career. Jaurès began as a republican, much as his British counterparts in the late 19th century, started as “radicals”. He became a ‘collectivist’ and republican socialist, but, with his reading and experience began, Scot argues, to offer a perspective that went beyond the structures of capitalism.
Lucid and always readable this essay ploughs into the world of 19th century socialism. We are spared the details of the rifts between the Marxism of Jules Guesde and the Parti ouvrier français,, pure republican revolutionaries (Parti socialiste révolutionnaire), mutualists, the allemanistes, the electric ‘integral socialism’ of Benoît Malon, and the wider current of reformism, (possibilistes) as Scot underlines Jaurès’ ability, as an “Independent” to bring most of the left together for the creation of the Section française de l’Internationale ouvrière (SFIO, French Section of the Workers’ International), the first French Socialist Party in 1905.
This hopeful essay, which does not skate around the difficulties Jaurès lyrical French republican side leaves us, but focuses on the profound problems created by capitalism, is a tonic against those who imagine that the division between Right and Left can be wished away by the election of a new President.
Front National, split internally, decides to keep opposition to the Euro.
Marine Le Pen and her Ideologue: Florian Philippot.
The decision came after a two-day, closed-door meeting at the group’s headquarters west of Paris, to learn the lessons of May’s presidential election that saw its candidate Marine Le Pen lose by double digits.
But while the policy position remains, a statement said it had been pushed back to the end of the five-year term of any future FN government, in what appeared to be a concession to critics.
Some inside the party — and many commentators outside — think this issue helped sink Le Pen’s campaign.
And according to some of those present at the meeting, several of the group’s leading members abstained in a vote on the final text.
Le Pen, campaigning on an anti-EU and anti-immigration platform, lost with 34 percent of the vote to centrist Emmanuel Macron’s 66 percent in the May 7 runoff.
In parliamentary elections just weeks later, the FN won a mere eight seats in the 577-member National Assembly, missing its target of 15, as Macron’s centrist party captured a comfortable majority.
As late as Friday, FN secretary general Nicolas Bay told FranceInfo radio he thought the party could reverse its stance on the question of an exit from the euro.
“I think we need to listen to what the French people said,” he told the broadcaster. “We did not convince people with this idea.”
But the party’s deputy leader Florian Philippot, a strong supporter of the euro withdrawal policy, had warned against abandoning it.
He insists the party needs to speak to French voters “on issues beyond the traditional subjects of the National Front, such as immigration and crime”.
Le Pen herself has said the FN will hold a “wide consultation” with party members, probably in September.
Le Monde talks of the FN “Tearing itself apart” over the issue and over whether to keep its line based on triple themes of “security-immigration and identity”, advocated by the hard-line Florian Philippot and his opponents whoa rgue that modifying their programme on these issues is a condition for a new “union of the (nationalist) Rights.
Le FN se déchire entre la ligne de son vice-président, Florian Philippot, qui place l’hostilité à l’euro au-dessus de tout, et celle de ses adversaires internes, pour qui le parti ne gagnera qu’à la condition de revenir à son triptyque fondamental « sécurité-immigration-identité » et de réaliser l’union des droites.
As yet there seems no indication that Marine le Pen and her leadership intends to go ahead with the idea, floated earlier, of a name change, Front national : une « transformation » qui pourrait passer par un changement de nom.
Just before this meeting a report indicated that apart from the Euro, the far-right party had put this, the issue of alliances with other forces, and making the organisation more “open” to its voters, would be on the table, Alliances, nom du parti, sortie de l’euro… Le Front national à l’heure de la « refondation .
Such disputes are rare inside the Front National.
The last one ended in a split and the formation of the Mouvement National Républicain by Bruno Mégret in 1998.
We await the “grande consultation” in September.
Background on the FN: see Yves, A propos de quelques livres récents sur le Front national.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, as his own EU Fraud Scandal unrolls, Defends French honour in Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup of Jews.
France’s charismatic far-left leader Melenchon embroiled in EU fraud scandal. France 24.
An investigation into alleged misuse of European parliamentary funds by members of a number of French political parties has been extended to include far-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, a judicial source said on Tuesday.
The preliminary investigation – already targeting members of France‘s centrist MoDem party, conservative party The Republicans and the Socialist Party – was opened after a member of Marine Le Pen‘s far-right National Front asked the Paris prosecutor to look into the issue.
Le Pen is herself under formal investigation for breach of trust in a separate case on the same subject.
According to Le Parisien daily newspaper, three people who were Melenchon‘s parliamentary aides while he was a member of the European Parliament from 2009 to 2017, are to be investigated.
Being a target of a preliminary investigation or a formal investigation in France does not necessarily lead to a trial.
Melenchon, now a member of the French parliament, leader of the France Unbowed party and a vocal opponent of the government of centrist Emmanuel Macron, denied any misconduct in a weekly briefing on Tuesday afternoon.
In a Blog post titled Jupiter déraille Jean-Luc Mélenchon offers his own take on the important questions of the day.
He begins with an extended reflection on the role of the French armed forces, and bemoans the loss of national control over the Force de frappe and the provision of military equipment. Pontificating on Macron’s cuts in funding for these ends, on Trump’s Paris visit (against which, perhaps I am wrong, La France insoumise mounted no public protest) and the reception of the r Netanyahu, the Israeli far-right PM, the Man of Destiny wonders if budget cuts are in line with the strategic objectives of France. Not to mention the land’s national independence, threatened, it appears by an “improbable plan de rapprochement militaire avec l’Allemagne”. he speculates that Trump and Macron share the same goals, “Trump et Macron partagent la même vision à propos des alliances et des guerres en Europe.”
Mélenchon’s real beef is that Macron accepted French responsibility for the round-up of French Jews at the Vel’ d’Hiv’. “dire que la France, en tant que peuple, en tant que nation est responsable de ce crime c’est admettre une définition essentialiste de notre pays totalement inacceptable.” To say it was France, as a people, as a Nation, was responsible for the crime, is completely unacceptable.
No it was not France, but Vichy.
“Non, non, Vichy ce n’est pas la France !”
For those who are surprised this is the standard Gaullist argument.
Wrong or Right.
What is perhaps more objectionable is the effort to outdo Charles Péguy in lyrical eulogy and a wrathful defence of France.
We should all remember the words of the leader of La France insoumise.
“…qu’on accepte d’en parler avec le souci de l’amour que nous devons à notre pays avant tout autre.”
That one should speak of such things with the concern and with the love that we owe to our country above all others.
