France General Discussion II: Living under Marxism

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Well it's obviously complicated, but it kind of makes sense when you back to the origins. In Algeria his family was part of the "French-assimilated" community (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pied-Noir). These people supported French ruling of Algeria and were kicked out during the Algerian war of independence. So in general they hate the native Muslim majority. They also sometimes saw themselves as "more French than the French".

On immigration, he sees good and bad immigrants (obviously he's among the good ones).

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Also, I thought FN supporters were generally too anti-semitic to have a Jewish hero.

Contrary to her father, the FN of Marine Le Pen is very careful not to offend Jews, and really focuses on Muslims/Arabs. The enemy of my enemy is my friend kind of thing.

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It's been exactly 2 years and half that Hollande was elected. To celebrate this 'midterm', he will give tonight a special interview to 4 French citizens selected by TF1 plus 3 journalists. I am not going to watch it, but we will see if he says anything interesting.

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How the f**k is Le Pen winning? Has France gone insane or something?

The main reason is that the last two presidents have been failures. But remember that there are two rounds in the presidential election, I still think that any UMP candidate other than Sarkozy would easily win the second round. On the other hand, Sarkozy - Le Pen in the second round would have bad consequences...

And also when things don't work very well, French people like to burn the place. I am surprised by the number of perfectly sane people I know who consider that the French and European political and economic systems have been complete failures, and thus that the best thing to do is to bring down everything and start anew.

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Who would win in a Le Pen vs. non-Hollande Socialist match-up?

According to the polls, potential socialist candidates are not faring better than Hollande. Still according to the polls, Hollande would lose to Le Pen in a match-up, but that's not a realistic scenario since he would simply not reach the second round.

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Montebourg said he is taking a break from politics and he started some studies at the INSEAD. He wants to come back but for now he is not active in politics.

How did Juppé get so popular?

Juppé is definitely smarter than anyone else as the UMP. He's not even really campaigning, he simply keeps repeating that he could be candidate, and he's just waiting for the others to do the stupid thing that will ruin their career. It worked quite well until now, he is the last man standing with Sarkozy.

He is also playing a different card from the others. You don't realize the circus that French politics have been in the last years. French people are vaccinated against young guys who want to change everything (somehow Sarkozy managed to present himself like that). Juppé is a bit like Chirac, he is been in politics forever. 10 years ago it was a liability now it can be an asset. Sarkozy came in between and promised to change everything, the result was a circus, followed by Hollande's circus. People don't want promises anymore, they just want a president who will shut up.
So Juppé is playing this card, he is presenting himself like the old wise guy above all the sh**. If he becomes president, we will not hear about his private life in tabloids, he will not react to every minor news, he will not play people off against each other for electoral gains and he won't be every night in the news. That's enough to make him popular. 

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The UMP leadership election is underway today. Sarkozy should easily win in the first round.


Opinion poll on the Le Pen family (3 generations of politicians!):




Why is the FN rising in your opinion?



43% economic situation
36% other parties' difficulties
11% Marine Le Pen personality
9% FN's program

from http://www.odoxa.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/Odoxa-pour-It%C3%A9l%C3%A9-CQFD-La-situation-du-FN.pdf

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So Sarko is officially back, he is now the UMP president. Now the fight within the UMP is going to focus on the 2016 primary: basically a primary election restricted to UMP members would benefit Sarko, open primary would benefit everyone else. He promised to organize open primaries, but now he will do everthing to deny his promise.

Our local mafia press is going gooey over the prospect of a Sarko-Le Pen election, since it apparently would mean that either way Putin would get a friend in the Élysée. Now there's no reason to believe anything they ever print, but is it true that Sarko has gone public on the need to end all sanctions and transfer the Mistrals to Russia? I have no doubt he would do anything for money, but has he gone Putinista?

It's true but Sarko is extremely bitter and would say anything to embarrass Hollande. Since Hollande decided not to transfer the Mistrals, Sarkozy said it was a shame. Had Hollande decided to transfer them, he would have said the same. It's more an anti-Hollande than Pro-Putin position.

@Tender Branson: There was a bunch of European far-right leaders. Geert Wilders (PVV), Strache (FPO), the leaders of the Lega Nord and Vlaams Belang. These ones are already known to work together.
There were new faces though: people from OK Strana (Czech republic) and IMRO (Bulgaria). Andrei Issaev, vice-president of the Russian Duma also gave a speech.

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Hollande gaining 5 points of popularity:



The political debate is set to focus on security (there is a lot of debate on whether we need a French equivalent of the 'Patriot Act'-whatever that means-) instead of economy for a while.

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Another pollster (IFOP-Fiducial) has much better results for Hollande and Valls:

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MPs started discussing the Macron law.
http://www.english.rfi.fr/visiting-france/20150126-macrons-economic-reform-bill-gains-Frances-post-charlie-climate
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21635835-economy-minister-must-convince-brussels-his-reforms-are-liberal-and-paris-they-are-not-macrons

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As the article states, a few weeks ago it seemed like the National Assembly would not vote the law. But now it appears that several UMP MPs will vote for it and compensate the PS defectors.

Quite a violent debate, seems like some socialists MPs are receiving tons of insults from notaries. And they already gave in to pharmacists.

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Quite a violent debate, seems like some socialists MPs are receiving tons of insults from notaries. And they already gave in to pharmacists.

Just to confirm the violence of the debate, Emmanuel Macron announced today that he will fill a complaint after receiving death threats from lawyers - the irony. In the same time, he confessed some mistakes and will give in to some of their demands.

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That's not how it works. The decision of bypassing the National Assembly triggers a vote of confidence that will take place tomorrow. The government does not have to resign but the Assembly can decide to dismiss it. I approve Valls decision because it leaves the PS rebels with a simple choice: either they support the government or they don't.

Context : the "loi Macron" is an economically neoliberal catch-all bill that makes numerous gifts to businesses and takes away numerous rights to workers (and also to licensed professions like lawyers, pharmacists or notaries, to be fair).

Are you sure you're able to cite which rights it's taking away from workers?

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The Parliament rejected the motion of non-confidence (234 votes while it needed 289 votes -50% of MPs), thus the Macron law is adopted by the National Assembly.

I personally regret that some propositions of the law were abandoned (for example it was initially supposed to allow supermarkets to sell basic medicines) but it's better than nothing.

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Honestly, I don't get why people (both on the pro and anti sides) make a big deal of the Macron law. It seems like very small and inconsequential stuff to me. The biggest travesty is that the government wasted months on this empty shell instead of trying to do any serious reform.

http://www.euractiv.com/sections/euro-finance/brussels-demands-more-ambitious-reforms-france-312472

And Brussels wants more. Tough job ahead for the government!

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Important development today in view of the presidential election of 2017: the UMP decided that their primary election will be open to everyone who pays 2 euros and signs a "chart of values". They should vote on it next week to make it official. Rather bad for Sarkozy and good news for everyone else on the center-right, since as of now he is very popular among the UMP party members but much less among the general center-right population.

I have a slight hope now that France may get a decent president in 2017.

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same for me

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I suppose the big winner of that is Juppé or has his star fallen in the last months?

As for now, he is still the main opponent of Sarkozy on the right.

This kind of poll has a lot of limits, but there was a poll today saying that 13% of French people would like to vote in these primaries and they would vote:
32% Juppé
31% Sarkozy
6% Fillon
5% Le Maire
3% Kosciusko-Morizet
1% Bertrand
No poll the 2nd round that would follow.

Among the UMP sympathizers, they would vote 70% for Sarkozy, 18% for Juppé.
UDI sympathizers (small centrist party that allied with the UMP during the last election) would vote at 79% for Juppé and 2% for Sarkozy.

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Marine Le Pen and her main lieutenants declared their opposition to JMLP running during the regional elections in December (he was expected to be the FN frontrunner in the PACA region). As the article says, we will now this month who they choose as candidates. They would also like to expel him from the party, but it's unclear whether it's possible under the party's status.

Meanwhile, the UMP officially voted for the dates (20 and 27 december 2016) and the form of their primary election (discussed above). Moreover, it has been confirmed that from May 30th we should not talk about the UMP anymore, but about "Les Républicains".

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Moreover, it has been confirmed that from May 30th we should not talk about the UMP anymore, but about "Les Républicains".

lol is this to piss off the leftwingers?

Main reason is that Sarkozy needs a fresh image. He is betting that people will trust him when he says that he is a different man. So it's a new party of a "new man".

Of course they are trying to monopolize the role of "defenders of the Republic", which pisses off every one else.

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It's a funny thing that quite a large number of French people judge Hollande positively on the wars in Mali or Centrafrica, on its reaction to the terrorist attacks or during the decisive talks of this week, but still despise anyway because he looks bad on pictures.

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Sarkozy is under attack within his own party. They are once again divided on the strategy to adopt when faced with a choice between PS and FN.
Moreover, on Sunday evening he was not following the elections' results, but was at the stadium watching the football match PSG-Lyon. Even the UMP-friendly press (Le Figaro) is attacking him.

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The emergency state in France has been extended for 2 months, until July 26. It gives exceptional powers to the police and the security services. The main purpose of these extension is to cover the Euro cup and the Tour de France,  both sport events that will attract large crowds and are considered as likely ISIS targets.

[swl]

I think the protests will slowly die out with the holidays approching. High schoolers and students are not taking part anymore as they are busy with exams and then holidays. They are the only ones able to go around and block cities every day. Some unions are trying to block oil refineries, but when the situation is getting near critical in some region the government sends the police to break the blokade, as they did in the past days. The government could decide to open all the refineries in the same time but they wont as it may backfire, it's a better strategy to go slowly.

Finally in 2 weeks the Euro is starting and it's not sure what protesters will do, on the one side if they decide to mess with it it could be really annoying for the government, onhe other side public and media attention will be busy with something else so it will be easier for the police to hit back at the protesters.

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Tomorrow a new massive demonstration is set to take place in Paris against the labor law. The protests and strikes lost momentum in the last 10 days as refineries reopened and the public attention diverted somewhere else (floods, and then the Euro). There were still some strikes that caused limited disturbances in the transports, but nothing huge.

I think this will be the last big demonstration since the holidays are starting very soon. I assume the law will be adopted for good in the summer without further trouble. Still, expect the usual riots in Paris tomorrow.

The police are really earning their money these days with terrorism + Euro cup + labor law protests.

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There are no polls for the parliamentary election since pollsters still focus on the presidential election only. The situation in the last polls is not very different compared to the last months.

More or less it shows:

If Juppé is LR candidate, Bayrou (centrist) does not run

Juppé 35%
Le Pen 27%
Hollande 14%
Melenchon 10-12%

2nd round : Juppé 70 Le Pen 30

If Sarkozy is LR candidate, Bayrou (centrist) runs

Le Pen 27%
Sarkozy 21%
Hollande 14%
Bayrou: 10-12%
Melenchon: 10-12%


2nd round: Sarkozy between 55 and 60 Le Pen between 40 and 45