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French Presidential elections

Looks like the voters in France will have the same choice as those in the USA between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.

Fillon whose nickname is "Mr nobody" wants to bring Thatcherite economic reforms to France and opposes multiculturalism, he wants drastic cuts in state spending and was reported as saying he wants to cut half-a-million public sector jobs. He is a Eurosceptic so may also call for a referendum in France over EU membership.

His politics in many areas are close to Le Pen so that may well help him, he is hard line on Immigration and Islam, he is big on French national identity, French sovereignty and patriotism, as well as a pro-Putin foreign agenda against American imperialism, he is also Catholic like Le Pen.

Looks like Le Pen will have to concentrate on what she calls the forgotten French workingclass, anti-globalisation, protectionism and state intervention to show there are at least some policy differences between them.

He has over the years pissed off French Socialist by claiming they are as bad as the Front National, so can't count on them turning out for him.
 
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So Farage is acclimatising his supporters to an overt pivot to the fascists....


I won't link to the source as it was an exclusive interview granted to the Express.

I can't find an authoritative source for the quote, but I'm sure he said off the record that "I think she [Le Pen] wants to fuck me".

They could save travel expenses and go fuck themselves instead.
 
Would you say that voting Brexit is pretty much the same thing as voting Front National? That's quite a bold thing to imply.
No, not really and I hesitate to make a comparison as I don't know any French people, but I imagine they are as sick as us in the UK at having our futures destroyed by an unelected neoliberal elite.
And I'll repeat it at ever opportunity, the four pillars of the EU,free movement etc are only designed to enhance the political power and wealth of aforesaid unelected Neo liberal elites, not the ordinary WC.
 
Looks like the voters in France will have the same choice as those in the USA between a giant douche and a turd sandwich.

Fillon whose nickname is "Mr nobody" wants to bring Thatcherite economic reforms to France and opposes multiculturalism, he wants drastic cuts in state spending and was reported as saying he wants to cut half-a-million public sector jobs. He is a Eurosceptic so may also call for a referendum in France over EU membership.

His politics in many areas are close to Le Pen so that may well help him, he is hard line on Immigration and Islam, he is big on French national identity, French sovereignty and patriotism, as well as a pro-Putin foreign agenda against American imperialism, he is also Catholic like Le Pen.

Looks like Le Pen will have to concentrate on what she calls the forgotten French workingclass, anti-globalisation, protectionism and state intervention to show there are at least some policy differences between them.

He has over the years pissed off French Socialist by claiming they are as bad as the Front National, so can't count on them turning out for him.

I don't think being so close to FN on so many issues will help him - all it will do is legitimize their policies, and people will be left with the choice between the party that has suggested those things for some time and the party that has adopted those things as part of this election.
 
Le Pen is concentrating her rhetoric on what she will do for working people. She says she has no problem with Islam, only with fundamentalist Islam. Fillon, OTOH, makes no bones about his problems with Islam generally. And he wants to do away with half a million civil service jobs in a country where unemployment is twice the rate it is here. It looks as though Le Pen is laundering her image to make a bid for the socialist vote, the socialists having at present no realistic candidate.
 
Le Pen is concentrating her rhetoric on what she will do for working people. She says she has no problem with Islam, only with fundamentalist Islam. Fillon, OTOH, makes no bones about his problems with Islam generally. And he wants to do away with half a million civil service jobs in a country where unemployment is twice the rate it is here. It looks as though Le Pen is laundering her image to make a bid for the socialist vote, the socialists having at present no realistic candidate.
Yep. Le Pen's been talking about the cost of living/low paid workers for the last few years and has been trying to present the FN as the party of the workers.

Given the PS are either going to end up with Hollande (or Valls if Hollande doesn't stand - he's got to decide by mid-December I think) and Fillon's pledge to abolish lots of jobs, well it doesn't look good at all.
 
Fillon seems to be pushing his Christian credentials a lot, which would seem to me to run against the much-treasured laïcité mindset that France has.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leftest of the left candidates, is positioning himself as anti-Fillon, which you would think would go without saying.
 
Interesting commentary from Peter Koenig on The Saker website:
"Mr. François Fillon, the new candidate of the French extreme right, would bring more austerity and more hardship to France. He has already said so. He may be Washington’s candidate, as was Sarkozy at his time. He has been shoved in from outside, mysteriously ousting Mr. Alain Juppé, in the French Primaries of the Republican Party. He will, thus, become the prime opponent of Marine Le Pen, the current frontrunner for the Presidential elections next spring. Marine Le Pen wants to exit the EU, the Eurozone and NATO. This, of course, is a no-no for the Atlantists and Washington. They don’t want to take such a risk. France has still relatively much social capital to be stolen by the neo-fascist oligarchs, like the health system, the pension funds, the workers relatively long leaves and short workweeks – all achievements of the syndicates and paid for by the workers – could be taken away by unbridled privatization under a Fillon Presidency."
 
I watched an interview with one of Le Pen's FN underlings earlier and, whilst my French isn't perfect, he was painting Fillon as overly liberal.

Maybe they'll go so far to the right that they'll eventually fully orbit the politosphere and come out on the left.
 
Unite, unite!
“I invite the women and men of the left, the progressives, and all the people of France who don’t want the Front National or François Fillon … to join the debate. France needs the left.”
He has sought to position himself as a “social democrat” representing a left that he sees as “pragmatic, reforming and republican”. In an interview with the Nouvel Obs magazine in October 2014 he said the left had to “reinvent itself or die”.

“We have to finish with this outdated left, the one that is attached to its past and nostalgic history, haunted by the Marxist superego and the memory of the Glorious Thirty. The only valid question is how to orientate modernity to accelerate the emancipation of individuals.
 
LePen will very likely get through to the second round, then lose.

Though I saw some polling recently that said the latter would only happen if she was up against Juppe -- against anyone else, she would very probably win.

Not sure I believe that but her and the FN's numbers are scarily high.

Have you had any thoughts about why that is?
 
Le Pen is concentrating her rhetoric on what she will do for working people. She says she has no problem with Islam, only with fundamentalist Islam. Fillon, OTOH, makes no bones about his problems with Islam generally. And he wants to do away with half a million civil service jobs in a country where unemployment is twice the rate it is here. It looks as though Le Pen is laundering her image to make a bid for the socialist vote, the socialists having at present no realistic candidate.

In many ways, Le Pen has already won.
 
Interesting commentary from Peter Koenig on The Saker website:
"Mr. François Fillon, the new candidate of the French extreme right, would bring more austerity and more hardship to France. He has already said so. He may be Washington’s candidate, as was Sarkozy at his time. He has been shoved in from outside, mysteriously ousting Mr. Alain Juppé, in the French Primaries of the Republican Party. He will, thus, become the prime opponent of Marine Le Pen, the current frontrunner for the Presidential elections next spring. Marine Le Pen wants to exit the EU, the Eurozone and NATO. This, of course, is a no-no for the Atlantists and Washington. They don’t want to take such a risk. France has still relatively much social capital to be stolen by the neo-fascist oligarchs, like the health system, the pension funds, the workers relatively long leaves and short workweeks – all achievements of the syndicates and paid for by the workers – could be taken away by unbridled privatization under a Fillon Presidency."
Peter Koenig is a loon.
loon on Nice said:
All indications signal the Big Script of yet another false flag; yet again in France; a horrendous terror attack,
And so are you. Fuck off loon.
 
OK - this Macron guy? A French Nick Clegg?

Maybe a genuine wild card?

Emmanuel Macron - Wikipedia

Macron is a young socialist who tried to introduce many reforms to French employment law.
He wanted to change the hours of work, issues about taxing the self employed etc but many of what others might think of as rational and necessary, were prevented by the syndicats.
I like his more creative, sensible approach but France needs a Margaret Thatcher to control the unions (but not to close down industries of course...)
The syndicats are holding the French economy back but they could still bring the country out in general strikes and no one wants that.
 
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