French Politics

I trust Macron to ruin that chance somehow. Seriously though, it’s neat.

Are weapons really what Armenia needs, right now? They have 100,000 refugees to feed and lodge, maybe we could help with that…

Edited by Lyendith on Oct 3rd 2023 at 1:57:45 PM

I need to say it. Sorry, it's not going to be polite, but I'm officially, definitely done with Mélenchon and most of LFI. They can't get the fuck out of politics soon enough.

They had one job yesterday. They just had to say that murdering civilians en masse is wrong. They might have spiced it up with a call for peace too, like the PS or EELV did. But no, they had to try and make a bothsideist political statement.

Ruffin is the only one that was canny enough to realize that now was not the moment to discuss Israeli politics. Ruffin is always the only one canny enough not to be drawn into utterly stupid debates.

It's dispiriting to know that this is the leading left-wing party in France. Apparently they can't even make it look like most of the left-wing voters they represent have basic decency and would rightfully be horrified to learn about hundreds of dead civilians. No, they need to remind everyone, every time, that their political credibility relies on communautarism.

Because if they had just shut up, we could have focused instead on the far-right outright calling for the Gaza strip to be razed and conquered - but no. Bunch of fucking morons. And I'm sure they're proud of it too, and think it was the smartest mediatic decision to make.

They seem to be turning into the left-wing equivalent of the FN when father Le Pen was in charge. They don't want to govern - they want to cultivate a rabid fanbase that is fanatically loyal to them, even if it means cutting ties or antagonizing moderates.

Like...imagine how it would have felt if somebody on Earth, on November 13th, 2015, had said "it's horrible all those dead people in Paris, but let's not forget about all the deaths in Syria". Or did something similar on September 12th, 2001.

Edited by Bexlerfu on Oct 8th 2023 at 9:02:44 PM

I commend the French Left for having the courage to speak the truth even when everyone else backs apartheid. The crimes of Hamas are directly empowered by the policies of the Israel state. So long as governments ignore that will violence be inevitable.

I wish more political figures were on the right side of history as Mélenchon is.

Agreed with , Israel brought all this on themselves with their racist, xenophobic politics.

And a faraway war in Syria is hardly comparable to the situation in Israel.

Edited by Redmess on Oct 8th 2023 at 10:05:42 AM

The EELV leader Marine Tondelier said, more or less: "Those attacks are horrifying, but now let's ensure similarly horrifying attacks do not happen in Gaza".

The criticism of Israeli policies is quite obvious in the statement, but it is focused on the fact that there is no single cause that warrands gunning down civilians. Which is basically what anyone with basic decency should focus on today. We're going to have months to discuss the root of the problem and highlight Israeli imperialism.

I mean, I'm French, and I'm a 100% supporter of free Algeria. But my great-grandfather and great-grandmother were killed by freedom fighters while living in Algeria in the Fifties, and they were civilians (and lower-class ones at that - my great-grandfather was the man handling a terminus train station on the edge of the Sahara desert).

Their deaths were not a required step towards independency. It should be quite easy to make the distinction between the two. Just like it should be easy to make a statement that clearly says that gunning civilians down is wrong, with no "buts". As if the world is fucking black and white and condemning Hamas here means you support Nethanyahu.

Darmanin’s immigration bill was rejected − a rejection motion was narrowly adopted, to be exact.

Thank GOD. Luckily, it seems the RN and LR didn’t find the bill quite racist enough (or they didn’t want to give Darmanin a Christmas gift, I dunno). Now to hope they’re not gonna find another loophole to have it come back.

Edited by Lyendith on Dec 11th 2023 at 8:32:02 PM

What was the content of the bill?

Ironically despite the actuality it is quite hard to find the bill's content, as all searches focus on the fact that it got dismissed before the debate.

What I found was, roughly:

• A "right-wing" part to make it easier to send condemned people back to their countries of origin, with an extension of the OQTF (Mandatory departure from French territory) even for people with personal or family links with France. A mandatory knowledge of French language and an adhesion to French values to get a residence permit.
• A "left-wing" part to make it easier for foreign people with a job in certain areas (healthcare...) to get residence permits, and to make access to those jobs simpler for asylum seekers.

Now, while seeing Darmanin eating shit is always a blessing, in the end the consequence is likely going to be that the "left-wing" part of it will be dropped so that the right-wing MP vote it, because the LR votes are needed for the government to get a majority. The issue will be that there are some MP with left-wing sensibilities in the majority (or so I heard, they seem to have been as common a sighting as pink unicorns for the last two years) that might be unhappy and refuse to vote it.

But it would require some Macronist MP with backbone and convictions for it to happen, so it's easy to see a big caveat.

For the record, instead of being reworked, a Commission Mixte Paritaire has been called, 7 Deputies from the National Assembly and 7 Senators, to discuss a new text. This CMP will "replace" Parliament debates. Problem is, the Senate is overwhelmingly right-wing behind its fat oyster-in-chief Larcher. So we will get...

• From the NA
  • 3 Renaissance (government)
  • 1 MODEM (government)
  • 1 LR (right-wing)
  • 1 RN (far-right)
  • 1 LFI (left)
• From the Senate
  • 3 LR
  • 2 PS (left)
  • 1 Renaissance
  • 1 Centrist (I assume that it's MODEM or something affiliated, and likely a support of the government)

Now, you need a majority within this commission to vote a text. And you can easily see that if the government panders to LR they'll easily get it. And grant another easy political W to Le Pen who will vote against it (because it won't be far-right enough - she basically wants a bill that goes against EU rules) and yet rightfully claim that she managed to make LR and the government do what she wanted.

As usual, she'll be the winner without doing anything, because our genius, complex-thought strategist president seems determined to hand her one easy victory after another.

Wait, you count the PS as left wing ?

It's not left, it's what's left.

You're right, they're lacking the authoritarian leader crushing all dissenters to truly count as really left-wing™ today.

I know it was supposed to be a joke, but the fact that in the current situation many on the left are still fixated on giving purity certificates while we have Macronists cozying up with the right and far-right in charge is dispiriting.)

Edited by Bexlerfu on Dec 13th 2023 at 1:29:23 PM

The PS is certainly more left-leaning now than it was two years ago, though that’s not saying much. At least, the leftwing parties all vote together on important issues (mostly).

Interestingly enough, Darmanin offered his resignation to Macron (even though the chief of the government is supposed to be Elizabeth Borne…?) but it was refused, so he’s basically forced to keep supporting a rejected bill.

Edited by Lyendith on Dec 13th 2023 at 2:28:55 PM

The PS showed how "left" it really was under Hollande/Valls. Frankly, its remaining left-wing members should take the beast behind the shed, end its limping existence, and join LFI: Having too many "left-wing" candidates is how we keep getting "Right vs far-right" second turns.

The thing with Hollande/Valls is that that PS no longer exists. The Hollande wing are now Macron's party (by whatever name it chooses to call itself each election).

You're right that the leftists probably should join LFI and a lot of them have already done so, but others remain very leery of Melenchon personally, if I'm not mistaken, and would rather remain in coalition with LFI than go inside.

Oh, there’s still a sizeable Hollande faction in the PS and it’s still influential, especially on the local level with the likes of Carole Delga (though most of those deputies are unregistered or in the LIOT group in parliament).

The thing is that while the big old parties have collapsed on the national level, it’s a whole other story locally, since historically local executives are a lot harder to uproot − like, in my city EELV has held on to the mayor seat since the year I was born, and before that it was a communist stronghold for decades. Both LFI and the RN, and even the Macronists, have a hard time getting enough officials elected in city and regional councils, meaning the senate is still firmly held by the old parties.

A well-run party where it is encouraged to voice your own opinion.

You can say whatever you want about how the PS works, but people are actually allowed to disagree with each other when they're members. They don't get punished or demoted when they dare to voice an opinion that is not that of the Lider Maximo.

LFI, LREM and the RN are not parties, they're ego trips disguised as political movements, only designed by their leaders to promote their own careers. They'll disintegrate when their bosses leave, which in all three cases can't happen soon enough if you ask me.

True, but LFI has clearly showed that if there was a solution to that problem, it was not within their ranks. For what it's worth I think the best left-wing candidate at the moment is Ruffin, and he's always been wise enough not to join LFI.

Seriously, between Garrido, Quatrennens, and the renewal of their instances, every time you look at how this party is run you find something awful.

Edited by Bexlerfu on Dec 14th 2023 at 12:54:47 PM

, I wonder if the problems are related. All three parties are essentially one-man shows. To be more charitable than Bexlerfu, each party is one person's vision of what France should be. That's what the voters are turning out for nationally, in a world where PS and LR have comprehensively proven that they do not represent the French people (particularly PS, due to Hollande's "ha ha, did you actually believe my campaign promises?"). But locally? It sounds like their names aren't as much on the ballot as those elected on local concerns, combined with the fact that local politicians as individuals often haven't lost the voters' faith the same way PS and LR have.

The problem with voting PS remains that they haven't shown themselves to be a credible representative for the left. If you vote for PS, you can't be sure that you're voting for someone who's actually different from RE or LR, even with most of the Hollandists moved into RE. And then voters see LFI and RN and go, "maybe these guys will actually give me what I voted for and not what Brussels wants."

The real test for the left will be if NUPES get a majority and have to form a government, particularly if their squabbling costs them the Presidency and leaves them with a cohabitation. LFI PM and Macron for President might be an interesting mix.

Edited by Ramidel on Dec 14th 2023 at 10:55:33 AM

To me, the PS is "LR, but without the racism". Which is a massive improvement, but still, don't forget Macron comes from their ranks.

EELV is a freaking joke that takes itself seriously. Same thing for the communists ("I'm gonna run the presidential on my own ! There's no way this could end badly !").

LFI is as left-wing as you could get, but they're led by clowns and aren't keen on letting dissenters express themselves.

Yep, the french left is FUBAR. Better brace yourselves for fascism, girls and boys, because that's the only thing prospering right now !

You'd need to have purposefully ignored everything that happened in the last 6 years to say that it is hard to distinguish PS from LR. Current LR would make '07 Sarkozy look like a moderate.

I really don't think any party can be judged by the metric "Asshole X was a member". Because all parties have had people who changed their mind over time. Like, aside from having a young Macron, the PS (its ancestor) also had Pierre Laval, which for all the contempt I have for Macron is much worse.

A number of right-wing politicians started at the far right (Madelin, Devedjian...). Jospin was a trotskyst, like other future PS members. Macron has always been an opportunist, he got close to the PS not because he had any convictions but because when you're having a career in the higher echelons of the administrations, being linked to a party opens many doors.

I have just heard a podcast mentioning that studies tend to indicate that France today is way more tolerant than it was twenty or forty years ago. The reason it looks like it's turning right-wing is because the younger, more left-wing generations do not vote.

The left-wing will get better if it finds a personality that can get the youth to vote, simple as that. The right doesn't have to worry because it relies on old people who always vote. Much less variability.

That's why I loathe Mélenchon. He was in a position to give a new breath to the left, and instead he decided to settle old grudges and abuse his power as much as he could. When I see right-wingers behaving like clowns, I shrug, because they don't represent me, but this man was supposed to be representing the left. But he's still fixated on his burning hatred for the government left he clashed with in the past, and on his ego trip, to do anything constructive.

What do I hear? Savoy has declared independence? This is news.

?

I'm hearing on the news that the Savoy government has demanded reparations from the French government in its independence delcaration, which has been put forward at the United Nations General Assembly on 27 October. Apparently they are looking for a UN vote to recognize it as a new microstate.

This is where I heard it (all the way at the end). It is a reputable source, at least, but for the life of me, I can't find anything else on this.

Edited by Redmess on Jan 2nd 2024 at 12:27:43 PM

I think you or your source has made a mistake. There is some group who calls themselves the government of savoy. They are not an actual government, but a group of people who sometimes makes independence declarations [1]. They may actually be serious about their desire [2], but they are not an actual government.

New prime minister, Gabriel Attal (unsurprisingly considering the media had hyped him up since mid-2023). He should be careful with the curse of PMs at the presidentials if he's to run for 2027.

Edited by Iridener on Jan 9th 2024 at 11:12:16 AM

"The siege of Paris," hundreds of thousands of farmers moved their tractors, and blocked major key routes and highways into Paris on Monday.

The farmers are protesting against falling incomes, environmental regulations, rising red tape, and competition from imports.

The goal of the farmer unions is to stop food from reaching supermarkets in Paris, but secondary roads were still functional.

15,000 members of the police force have been mobilized, but there was no sign of violence.

Similar protests happened in other French cities, as well as in Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68135180