We’re in La Plus Stupide Ligne de Temps
Every Manny for Himself
(Apologies for the delay, Macron ran out my work day, went into my Saturday, but damn it, this is still France)
After a mean girl spat, in which the leader of the ever-more-trending-hard-right Le Republicans, Retailleau, said he can’t be in a government with that bitch Bruno Le Maire, Lecornu gave up on proposing a budget at all. He went for a good four day sulk. By the end of the week, he was summoned to an audience with Macron to work it out.
Friends, he did not work it out.
Macron and His Warrior Monk
These are the eyes of a loyal fighting monk, I guess.
Macron is not on speaking terms with either reality or France. He gave himself Friday to fix France’s government. It was mostly silence all day, because there was no rational way of resolving this political crisis without making compromises and talking to all the parties. Then, in the evening, instead of deciding anything at all, Macron doubled down on the fantasy he’s acting outright now. He re-appointed Sébastien Lecornu to the job that Lecornu had been forced to quit on Monday. All it needed was a chimney on the Elysee palace and a puff of shit-brown smoke, for this re-run of the most tragically useless ministerial episode in modern French history.
There was some talk that Macron might try to pull a PM from the center Left, after exhausting his centrist talent pool, but it was not to be. There was some thinking that he could even pull from the more moderate Right, and just admit the direction he’s been drifting since his days as a fresh-faced socialist. (Albeit with maybe just a few royal aspirations that he would mention from time to time in the early days of his presidency.)
Look at those happy boys, so very not in France.
Unsurprisingly the crisis spilled into his Saturday. But don’t worry about Macron, he will be on a plane Monday morning to Egypt. There he will be doing something or other on the Gaza Ceasefire deal, which France is not involved in. Probably some waving, maybe some getting his picture taken, perhaps even some talking to people, as long as they’re not French.
Lecornu doesn’t get to jet off to Egypt. Lecornu remains loyal to a fault. After chatting with his president behind closed doors he has declared publicly that he is Macron’s warrior monk, and doesn’t seem at all embarrassed by saying it. He’s going back to Parliament for a do-over. He won’t be changing much anything because the French are wrong, and Macron is always right.
“But, Wait, What if We Did nothing?!”
Next week he’s bringing mostly the same budget to the same Parliament that signaled they would slapped him down less than a week ago, forcing him to quit. If the definition of insanity really is doing the same thing over again and hoping for a different result, Lecornu, Macron, and France in general, is completely insane.
After he drops his budget turd on parliament, his next task will be trying to form a government. No one who wants any kind of political future will want to be in it. But Macron’s people are either all in or keeping quiet. Even the ones that hope to succeed him are standing there, trying to look normal. All the president’s men have lost their marbles.
What About Everyone Else?
Both the French Right and Left are largely out of the picture for the moment, despite having the second largest (The Right Lead by the convicted and ineligible Le Pen) and largest block (The Left lead by who even knows?)
Marine Le Pen at home with family, where she’s staying whether she likes it or not.
Right now the right is still nominally lead by Marine Le Pen, despite the fact that she’s currently a convicted felon who can’t hold office for years to come. Le Pen is in politics for the good of Le Pen, and she would tear her whole party down if it was standing in the wrong place. She’s unlikely to use her resources to promote someone else to be the vanguard of the Right and take her place as the RN’s presidential candidate. There’s always her meat puppet, Jordan Bardella, but he is too afraid of girls to realistically run for the presidency.
The French Left has a fair bit of political talent, but Mélenchon, who is now well into his 70s, still has energy for one thing: getting in the way of anyone trying to unify the patchwork of leftist parties and accomplish something. He’s still the one ordained French leftist for the media, both in the US and France. It is absolutely a crime against humanity that he still has power over the French mainly by being in journalist’s rolodex, and always returning calls. He recently scored an interview with the New York Times. At no point did the journalist ask what his role is in his former party, which was convenient because he doesn’t have one.
Thierry Breton, former European Commissioner made a point of saying there’s something deeply wrong with the the French. He was articulating something we’re all becoming aware of, but no one knows how to fix. (Breton is a proponent of austerity, which we should all remember Literally Never Works.) But he is right that the politics of this country, like so many right now, is fundamentally broken.
There are a lot of reasons, but it’s important to remember that the 5th republic was engineered to work for exactly one man: Charles de Gaulle. De Gaulle used the tools built into the 5th Republic to rebuild France in the post war period, that’s the task it was designed for. He died in 1970.
He never saw the Berlin Wall fall, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Iranian Revolution, the internet, The fall of Nixon, the rise of the Dungeons and Dragons media empire, or Labubus. Much like the American system, France’s hardest problem is being trapped in the amber of past ages. Unlike the American system, France is not set up to ignore its problems forever while it falls apart.
What comes next? Probably stasis and political entropy. But things that aren’t sustainable don’t sustain, a lesson that France, like America, has decided to learn the hard way.
I am surprised that the French opposition parties apparently have zero politicos waiting in the wings. Then again, Obama came out of political nowhere to win in 2008. However, parliamentary democracies usually have shadow governments so some of the talent should have been identified by now given how long Macron has been so unpopular.
Normally yeah, but things are such a mess. The right wing basically came entirely under the control of Le Pen, and she was not letting anyone she didn’t control get anywhere. They’re all connected to the family. It’s almost mob-like. But now, she’s got legal trouble and RN is in turmoil. She hasn’t let anyone off the leash, even though she’s been convicted and judged ineligible.
The left has a similar problem, if not to the same degree, which is that Melanchon will not retire. He still wants to be president, and he just never lets go. But he also has no power, except for the fact that the media, French and otherwise, only talk to him. He takes any call afaict, and always claims to speak for the the left. The French left is incredibly factious and diverse, and Melanchon takes advantage of that. There’s a bunch of interesting talent coming up on the French left, but the old guard is forever trying to cut their feet off.
And they’re leftists, so sometimes they forget to stop having meetings and run campaigns.
There is younger political talent in France, but there’s a culture of digging in and holding on until you die.
Doesn’t sound familiar at all (eye roll).
It’s kind of the vibe of this age, ain’t it *lolsob*
Absolutely appreciate your ‘take’ on France’s mess. Will France fall again (4th Republic)?
Honestly France has been in need of a 6th republic for years. I’m not going to say the de Gaulle republic wasn’t useful, it very much was for rebuilding France at that moment. Maybe not perfectly, but post WWII needed fast more than it needed perfect. But it really isn’t equipped to deal with the 21st century, and it’s showing in how vulnerable it is to ossification and political scams. (Doesn’t that sound familiar, sigh.)
And France, even more than the US, has an invasion of foreigners who want to live with some semblance of societal support.
Just look at all the US, UK, Scandinavian immigrants who are flooding the south/Provence and other regions and raising the the cost of living for everyone. Quelle horreur!
(Bet we were looking to the “down south” for those invaders!)
Like snowbirds in the US, then.
It’s not so bad in a lot of cities, but it depends on local gov priorities. Lille, which is a shithole, is totally unaffordable. Bordeaux, which is absolutely lovely, is the cheapest place I’ve ever lived.
(…Bordeaux builds housing to a price target. Policy man… it can work if you try it.)
Here is another take on the situation. There is an alternative on the center left, it is Raphaël Glucksmann and Marie Tondelier. They need to get rid of Jean-Luc Mélenchon first, who has announced his retirements many times but feels, like many narcissists, that the country needs him, has a clique of sycophants, a very big mouth, a good command of the media, and is in love with Putin. As a matter of fact, just like J-M Le Pen made it impossible for a large swath of people to vote for his party, which has had much better luck since it was taken over by his daughter and grand-nephew-in-law, J-L Mélenchon makes it impossible for a centre left block to ascend.
This talk of 6th republic is just nonsense: it isn’t because you come back to the purely parlementary system of yore that stability will follow. The 5th republic was created to thwart a Le Pen figure of the time (well JM Le Pen was already a parlementarian, but he wasn’t the lead figure), whose political line was the inertia of the parlementary system (Poujade was his name). It was thought as a compromise between strong man rule and parlementary rule. Still relevant.
I mean that’s been pretty close to my take since writing about the first crisis last year. :) And I’m unapologetically a Tondelier fan.
But I do think there’s a few good arguments for a 6th Republic, there’s a lot about the 5th that is showing institutions being brittle. The things is, new constitutions have been quite common around the world, especially in times of great societal change. I suspect eventually all national systems will need to be updated to recognize the impact of the internet, in the same way that political systems all had to change to confront to the effects of the printing press.
I’m just hoping we can do that before we get to the 30 years war part of that historical parallel. *nervous laugh*
The world is in a transitional phase – technology has made borders obsolete or at least, very different. Immigrants don’t flow as easily across borders as electrons, so there is inevitably, cultural friction. Trump’s entire schtick is about borders and building walls. He ain’t got nothing else and it has made him wildly popular. Due to climate change, availability of arable land, water resources and other factors – people are moving and this movement is causing political systems to break down. Homogenous, non-mobile societies may not be having the same problems adapting to new paradigms.
Not sure there’s any homogenous, non-mobile societies left, but if there are, the world is coming for them too. (Even Bhutan is finding reasons to open up a little)
Well, I don’t have anything intelligent to add to this so I’ll just say, “Thank you” for an entertaining read.
Thank you for the informative post.
Gives me an update on who the players are. It really would help if Le Pen took a long vacation, perhaps a book tour.
Some countries are going through some type of political change, i.e. U.S.A., France, Canada–yes the Premier of Alberta is talking seperation, a politician has tabled anti trans legislation.
Alberta sure is something. The Alabama of Canada!
https ://e360.yale.edu /features /europe-water-micropollutants (not sure if I broke link effectively by spacing)
this article presents a discouraging outlook for further de-contaminating Europe’s public water supplies, due to corporate lobbying.
for those on the warpath concerning trans issues, I would think that public drinking water that can cause marine organisms to change genders would be of great concern.
The mechanisms of sex are not at all analogous. For some marine species, changing sex is literally a part of the life course. The kind of people who are scared of trans people might worry about that, but it’s biologically illiterate.