Hey everybody, Peter design here coming to you from the Lake of the Ozarks in southern Missouri. And we’re going to finish up our election series today by talking about those convoluted of the big elections. That’s just happened in the last week, and that is France. The backdrop is that a few weeks ago, we had European Parliament elections, and the French hard right represented by a group that calls themselves a national rally did very, very, very, very well. And the President of France, Emmanuel McCrone, who’s a more centrist Alliance, saw this as a threat and decided he would try his hand at a snap elections to force the French people to support a more pragmatic and government ie his,
in a way it worked out in two rounds of votings. At first, the National rally did very, very, very, very well. And then they did very, very, very, very badly. And ultimately, they came in third behind a couple of other Alliance groups, one on the left one in the center, supporting McCrone a
couple of reasons for this, the reasons that everybody are talking about is that there’s this typical pattern in French voting where you’re first voting the first round, you vote your heart, and in the second vote, you vote your head. And so the idea is you might vote for what you’re passionate about the first time around, but you’re much more practical the second time around, that was definitely in play. A second one was there’s a lot of tactical voting, where you could have 5678 candidates contesting the same seat in the first round. And then in the second round, basically everyone who was third, fourth, fifth, sixth seventh, dropped out in order to concentrate the oppositional votes to make sure that the National rally would not get the seat. And that meant that the National rally went from being the far away favorite to come in in a relatively distant third. But the third and far more important reason why the national rally busted was simply time from the point that McCrone called the elections to the point that we had the first round, it was only two weeks, and then only another week before we had the second round. So they really didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. There are 577 parliament districts in France. And going into these elections, the National rally really wasn’t a true national party, and that they had representation and supporters in every single district. So when they had to come up with 577 candidates, one for each district, one who lived in each district, a lot of times, they went with just some activists. And if you guys are politically wired, you know that there are activists in your party who are wackadoo. And so there were some wild racists, and some wildly incompetent people who found themselves on the ticket for the National rally, which meant that not just that they didn’t have a chance. But the candidates on the left and the center were able to parade these people nationwide, and show what fools the national rally were at least that was their view. And take us together, especially that last piece and it worked. But we’re not out of the woods yet. Remember, there were three big factions here. Yeah, the hard right the national rally. You had the centrists around McCrone and then you had this left Alliance that is actually four different parties made up of radicals, and communists, and socialists and greens. And they had the same problem that the National rally had, they only had a couple of weeks to build this electoral why it’s to contest the elections. And while they came in first, they have nowhere near enough seats in the parliament to run a government. Nobody does. In fact, if you were to take any of these three factions and throw all the minor parties in with them, there’s still not enough. So to have a government, a majority government to have these three factions have to be able to work together. Well, no one wants to work with the National rally, so that eliminates them. And for the new leftist alliances for party Alliance, the single largest chunk is the party of a guy named John mela shawl. And he is basically
that’s the best way to describe this as have. It’s the personal charm of Majorie Tyler green in the United States. He has the intelligence of Corey Bush. He makes up math like Elizabeth Warren, and he has the personality of a cold hairy pile of vomit. He’s a hateful person, he’s a snake and no one wants to work with him. But his party in that four group part coalition that is of this lesser light is the single largest. So we already have party leaders throughout the leftist Alliance saying that, you know, Emily, Sean is a problem and he will never be Prime Minister, but he now represents the single largest chunk of seats in the parliament as part of that alliance. So we’re entering into something that is very unexpected and unfamiliar for France political instability, because the single largest party in the overall parliament the rally, no one wants to work with the ruling party that works with McCrone it’s been a little bit discredited and then the left is an absolute mess with its teacher leader, a complete moron.
There is no clear path forward here and this is a
Israel, this isn’t Italy, no one here has experienced building coalition governments. And according to the French constitution, you can’t have another election to fix this at the ballot box within a year. So you take France, which until now has been the Eurozone country with the single strongest political leadership, you basically remove it from play until such time as the French can find a way to make this work. I doubt that’s going to happen this calendar year or next calendar year.
This is a really bad time for Europe to not have leadership. And if you look around Europe and see what’s left, the French are out to lunch, dealing with their own internal stuff. The Germans had a three party coalition that was already incredibly weak, led by an even weaker Chancellor. And the next country down is France, which is led by somebody who’s on the right. Maloney.
That means, if you’re the United States and Russia at this time, all of a sudden, Europe has become a little bit of a piece of taffy to be pulled. Now, at the moment because of the Ukraine war, that means the ball is very clearly the United States its court but never forget, this is an election year in the United States to and whether it’s Biden or Trump, it’s going to be difficult for Washington to focus the kind of attention on Europe that honestly it deserves right now. So we basically took the last big pillar of European not solidarity, not leadership, not democracy, but
coordination, and we’ve knocked it down. Now it’s going to be a big problem as you’re gonna see in the next video because this is only the beginning of what needs to be done, whether in Europe
France rejected the far right, but what happens now?
By Straight Arrow News
French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent snap elections very nearly ended in a far-right sweep of the National Assembly. This would have been France’s first far-right government since World War II. To prevent that outcome, French citizens across the rest of the political spectrum mobilized and voted. While voters did succeed in rebuffing a far-right takeover of France, they also left France without any clear governing majority or coalition moving forward, and it became apparent that Macron’s broad centrist alliance may be in trouble.
Watch the above video as Straight Arrow News contributor Peter Zeihan dives into the French political crisis and asks what these results might mean for France’s — and Europe’s — future.
Be the first to know when Peter Zeihan publishes a new commentary! Download the Straight Arrow News app and enable push notifications today!
The following is an excerpt from Peter’s July 12 “Zeihan on Geopolitics” newsletter:
After the first round of European Parliament elections, the French far right (represented by the National Rally) had a great showing. President Macron wasn’t too happy with that outcome, so he called snap elections to give his party a second shot at capturing a majority.
There are a few reasons that Macron knew this might yield more favorable results. There is a known shift in voting patterns between first and second round votes, where voters start more emotional and end more practical. There are lots of voting tactics Macron’s party could use to garner some more votes, like removing multiple candidates to prop up a single one. The most important one here was the timing; the other parties didn’t have enough time to pull together strong candidates, so Macron’s party could use that to their advantage. And Macron was right … mostly.
The National Rally took third in the snap elections, Macron’s party took second, and the Left came in first. The French aren’t out of the woods quite yet though. Since none of the factions had a majority to form a government, we’re going to see some French cooperation, and you can expect how that will go.
The threat of political instability within France could prove to be a big problem for the rest of Europe too. Without France (attempting to be) at the helm, and no other countries fit to step into that role, Europe will need to figure something out ASAP.
Hey everybody, Peter design here coming to you from the Lake of the Ozarks in southern Missouri. And we’re going to finish up our election series today by talking about those convoluted of the big elections. That’s just happened in the last week, and that is France. The backdrop is that a few weeks ago, we had European Parliament elections, and the French hard right represented by a group that calls themselves a national rally did very, very, very, very well. And the President of France, Emmanuel McCrone, who’s a more centrist Alliance, saw this as a threat and decided he would try his hand at a snap elections to force the French people to support a more pragmatic and government ie his,
in a way it worked out in two rounds of votings. At first, the National rally did very, very, very, very well. And then they did very, very, very, very badly. And ultimately, they came in third behind a couple of other Alliance groups, one on the left one in the center, supporting McCrone a
couple of reasons for this, the reasons that everybody are talking about is that there’s this typical pattern in French voting where you’re first voting the first round, you vote your heart, and in the second vote, you vote your head. And so the idea is you might vote for what you’re passionate about the first time around, but you’re much more practical the second time around, that was definitely in play. A second one was there’s a lot of tactical voting, where you could have 5678 candidates contesting the same seat in the first round. And then in the second round, basically everyone who was third, fourth, fifth, sixth seventh, dropped out in order to concentrate the oppositional votes to make sure that the National rally would not get the seat. And that meant that the National rally went from being the far away favorite to come in in a relatively distant third. But the third and far more important reason why the national rally busted was simply time from the point that McCrone called the elections to the point that we had the first round, it was only two weeks, and then only another week before we had the second round. So they really didn’t have a lot of time to prepare. There are 577 parliament districts in France. And going into these elections, the National rally really wasn’t a true national party, and that they had representation and supporters in every single district. So when they had to come up with 577 candidates, one for each district, one who lived in each district, a lot of times, they went with just some activists. And if you guys are politically wired, you know that there are activists in your party who are wackadoo. And so there were some wild racists, and some wildly incompetent people who found themselves on the ticket for the National rally, which meant that not just that they didn’t have a chance. But the candidates on the left and the center were able to parade these people nationwide, and show what fools the national rally were at least that was their view. And take us together, especially that last piece and it worked. But we’re not out of the woods yet. Remember, there were three big factions here. Yeah, the hard right the national rally. You had the centrists around McCrone and then you had this left Alliance that is actually four different parties made up of radicals, and communists, and socialists and greens. And they had the same problem that the National rally had, they only had a couple of weeks to build this electoral why it’s to contest the elections. And while they came in first, they have nowhere near enough seats in the parliament to run a government. Nobody does. In fact, if you were to take any of these three factions and throw all the minor parties in with them, there’s still not enough. So to have a government, a majority government to have these three factions have to be able to work together. Well, no one wants to work with the National rally, so that eliminates them. And for the new leftist alliances for party Alliance, the single largest chunk is the party of a guy named John mela shawl. And he is basically
that’s the best way to describe this as have. It’s the personal charm of Majorie Tyler green in the United States. He has the intelligence of Corey Bush. He makes up math like Elizabeth Warren, and he has the personality of a cold hairy pile of vomit. He’s a hateful person, he’s a snake and no one wants to work with him. But his party in that four group part coalition that is of this lesser light is the single largest. So we already have party leaders throughout the leftist Alliance saying that, you know, Emily, Sean is a problem and he will never be Prime Minister, but he now represents the single largest chunk of seats in the parliament as part of that alliance. So we’re entering into something that is very unexpected and unfamiliar for France political instability, because the single largest party in the overall parliament the rally, no one wants to work with the ruling party that works with McCrone it’s been a little bit discredited and then the left is an absolute mess with its teacher leader, a complete moron.
There is no clear path forward here and this is a
Israel, this isn’t Italy, no one here has experienced building coalition governments. And according to the French constitution, you can’t have another election to fix this at the ballot box within a year. So you take France, which until now has been the Eurozone country with the single strongest political leadership, you basically remove it from play until such time as the French can find a way to make this work. I doubt that’s going to happen this calendar year or next calendar year.
This is a really bad time for Europe to not have leadership. And if you look around Europe and see what’s left, the French are out to lunch, dealing with their own internal stuff. The Germans had a three party coalition that was already incredibly weak, led by an even weaker Chancellor. And the next country down is France, which is led by somebody who’s on the right. Maloney.
That means, if you’re the United States and Russia at this time, all of a sudden, Europe has become a little bit of a piece of taffy to be pulled. Now, at the moment because of the Ukraine war, that means the ball is very clearly the United States its court but never forget, this is an election year in the United States to and whether it’s Biden or Trump, it’s going to be difficult for Washington to focus the kind of attention on Europe that honestly it deserves right now. So we basically took the last big pillar of European not solidarity, not leadership, not democracy, but
coordination, and we’ve knocked it down. Now it’s going to be a big problem as you’re gonna see in the next video because this is only the beginning of what needs to be done, whether in Europe
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