Emmanuel Macron’s deal with the far left may end up being far worse for France than if the National Rally had won the parliamentary elections.
Emmanuel Macron is self-confident and ambitious. His focus is not limited to leading France; he also aims to establish himself as the leader of Europe and a major global player. Ideologically, he is very adaptable – like a snake, he does not hesitate to change his skin. He has cunningly succeeded in gaining the label of “liberal,” even though his actions and beliefs do not match that moniker.
A European liberal believes in limited state involvement, a market economy, decentralization, balanced public finances and a high degree of individual responsibility. Mr. Macron’s policies, with his support for European centralization, central economic planning by the state, common European debt, and similar philosophies, are rather closer to socialism.
His adaptable tactics have allowed him to succeed personally and politically. However, a lack of performance and truthfulness has led to a loss of trust and has backfired on him.
Like many other European leaders, most of whom are weak and underperforming, he has championed a hypocritical “defense of democracy.” According to this idea, right-wing parties, created in response to the center’s shift toward socialism, are labeled anti-democratic and must be excluded. Voters, however, do not believe that this stance by itself ought to legitimize political rule.
In the European Parliament elections, President Macron’s party suffered a crushing defeat. Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, considered right-wing, emerged as the strongest party with nearly a third of the vote. President Macron, whose term ends in 2027, decided to test his luck. He dissolved the national parliament, where his party was the strongest, and called for new elections. This was a democratic response to the signal French voters had given.
French parliamentary elections have two rounds. A candidate needs a majority in their constituency. As there are many parties, only a few candidates succeed in the first round. The second round allows only the front-runners of the first round to compete.
In the first round, unsurprisingly, the National Rally garnered about a third of the vote. This is where President Macron’s pact with the devil began. He agreed with the left-wing New Popular Front alliance, whose strongest faction is on the extreme left, that they and his party would support each other. In constituencies where the left’s candidate was stronger than the one from President Macron’s party, the leftist would get the support, and vice versa.
Together with its parliamentary allies, the National Rally’s share of the vote in the second round increased to clearly more than a third. But the leftist plot worked. The socialist – and partially extreme – party won the most seats, even though it was only the second-largest vote-getter. President Macron’s party, despite being very weak, came in second place, and the actual winner – the National Rally – came in third. The biased media and political commentators across Europe lauded this result as a victory for democracy and even framed it as a defeat for the National Rally.
The National Rally is frequently labeled anti-European, which is somewhat misleading. Their platform is not anti-European but rather anti-centralist. And although there are some unpleasant characters in the party, it is no more radical than large parts of the New Popular Front, which now claims the right to form the government.
What was lauded as a success for democracy in Europe might actually be a dark day. Good luck, Mr. Macron.
Read the article on the website of GIS Reports
Macron’s pact with the devil
NEW YORK – US President Joe Biden’s decision to step aside as the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate this fall has transformed American politics. It caps a historic July in the United States, one defined by far-reaching Supreme Court decisions and the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on the eve of the Republican Convention.
Biden’s decision, urged by many Democratic Party officials and donors and favored by many voters, was the right choice. In the wake of a debate widely viewed as a debacle for Biden, his age had made it all but impossible for him to make the case to the American people that he deserved another four years – and was making it impossible for him to make the case that Trump did not.
It is too soon to write about Biden’s legacy, if for no other reason than his presidency still has some six months left. But by stepping aside he has gone a long way toward eliminating the potential critique that by staying in the race he paved the way for a successor who shared little of his commitment to American democracy and the country’s role in the world. Indeed, had Trump defeated Biden in November, as polls were forecasting, this would have largely overshadowed Biden’s accomplishments as president.