As the United States devolves into kakistocracy and Kiev trembles under the threat of massive Russian retaliation for the first use of long-range American and British missiles against Russian territory, the National Assembly in France continues to go through the motions of amending the Barnier government’s harsh austerity budget, even though everyone knows that the dozens of amendments debated over the past month will be wiped away when Barnier is ultimately forced to secure passage by resorting to Article 49.3. But now Marine Le Pen has at last unsheathed her sword: if the budget decreases the purchasing power of French families, she will join with the left-wing opposition to bring down the government in a censure vote once the door is opened by the invocation of Article 49.3.
The threat is not an empty one, even if Le Pen finds herself at the moment on the back foot, under threat of being ruled ineligible by a court for misappropriation of EU funds. And now Jordan Bardella, her protégé–or should one say créature, to borrow a term from the vocabulary of the Ancien Régime–has compounded her difficulty by saying that no one with a criminal conviction should serve as a deputy under the RN banner. Did young Bardella fall into a trap set by a clever interviewer, or did he really mean to threaten to sideline his boss and thus clear his own path to standing as the party’s presidential candidate in 2027? Most likely Bardella’s statement was a blunder, but in either case it will no doubt make for an interesting conversation when he and Le Pen next meet.
Meanwhile, France seems all but rudderless as the world hurtles toward chaos. Germany is facing an interregnum until elections can be held next March. The war in Ukraine is heating up in anticipation of an endgame that will begin as soon as Trump takes office. The EU is threatening China with sanctions for allegedly supplying drones to the Russians for use against Ukraine, while North Korean troops are already heading into battle in Kursk, which Ukrainian forces hope to hold as a bargaining chip in the negotiations into which Trump could quickly force them. The Starlink system on which they depend is controlled by Trumpist sycophant Elon Musk.
This is probably the most dangerous moment in recent European history, yet both the French and German governments are distracted by internal turmoil and apparently oblivious to the catastrophe unfolding in Washington.
These are desperate times.
1 Comment
The tone of your article is absolutely right IMO though actually restrained. Marine Le Pen will really attempt to bring down the government ASAP for the very simple reason that she is desperate due to her coming sentencing by the court. If she can force a presidential election before the sentencing or, perhaps better, during the sentencing which is due this coming April, then she can hope to avoid the worst: the jail sentence requested by the prosecution is 5 years of which 2 hard jail sentence as well as an immediate ban from running in any election for 5 years . As for young autobiographic Bardella who has acquired the well deserved nickname of “quand je serai premier ministre”, it is both a blunder and a wish to change his nickname into “quand je serai président”. He is apparently unaware that his chances are close to zero.
Should the Barnier government fall, there is in my view a strong chance of chaos and the impossibility to govern France would almost surely provoque an explosive financial crisis. France being slightly bigger than Greece, this will be a European wide, perhaps world wide, financial crisis that may profoundly impact the destiny of the international banking system and of the Euro as not every country will desire to join France into the abyss. It is important to keep in mind that French debt has been a feature of portfolios throughout the World.
All hope is not lost yet:
– the coming motion of defiance could fail because not all parliamentary members of the socialist party vote for defiance. Unfortunately, the leader Olivier Faure seems more preoccupied with preserving the municipal socialist councilors in the coming local elections than by anything else.
– The motion of defiance could succeed but Macron would try to save himself by naming again Barnier prime minister and hope to hobble until this coming July when he could dissolve Parliament again and Marine Le Pen could be serving an political illegibility sentence that would have been immediately applied as the prosecution has requested (incidentally, it has happened before). He would of curse hope for the resulting elections to be less calamitous.
– Or there could be a Presidential election won by a more palatable candidate than either LFI’s Mélenchon or the Rassemblement National’s whoever. Hollande, Cazeneuve, Bayrou in a moderate center left and right, maybe even Darmanin as a shield against the far-right come to mind. It is quite possible that the electorate, having experienced a young president who failed in almost every aspect save the COVID crisis and the Olympics, would seek to be led by an elder reassuring safe pair of hands statesman. Mélenchon’s positioning as the candidate of Muslims and black minorities guaranties a good first round score and an almost certain second round defeat against anyone save Bardella whose ignorance knows no bounds, but that is not a problem for Mélenchon and LFI: one lives very well indeed with a 20% vote share given that politics are publicly funded in France. Something else to remember: even six months ago when the Rassemblement National attracted one third of the electorate, serious polling had two thirds of the electorate state that they did not want to see them in office. And that is exactly what happened in the second round of legislative elections. That and her coming sentencing are the bounds against which Marine Le Pen will bump.