Vocal Voices

Act like the French and all the centrists vote for the "acceptable" candidate, whilst reviling the unacceptable candidate.

But wait, Macron is just more of the same. They hated Sarko, they burned Hollande in effigy, then they voted for more of the same?

In science they say that stupidity is doing the same thing over and over a gain and expecting a different result.

Apparently in politics and government it's not stupid. Ah well. Another 5 years of unrest, uncontrolled immigration, slums at all the channel ports and yet more terrorism growing in the country.

I'll see what the locals have to say on it.

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And just to add to that, the first act of Macron is to step back on his rhetoric and say he has no interest in taking a hard line to punish the UK on Brexit....

Nice....

Suff wrote:But wait, Macron is just more of the same. They hated Sarko, they burned Hollande in effigy, then they voted for more of the same?

Yes. But the power of accusatory politics is strong. Stick an unpleasant label on your opponent and repeat the accusation ad infinitum. It worked for Macron. Enough people were convinced that voting for Le Pen was a Very Bad Thing, so they didn't.

What they appear to have missed is that they are voting for a millionaire ex-banker, educated at an elite school, who is one of Hollande's big chums and who will deliver as you say, more of the same.

Imo Macron's honeymoon will be a short one. He has pledged to cut 120,000 public sector jobs and "reform" labour laws, ie remove worker's rights and worsen working conditions. There is going to be a lot of pain for the ordinary French people and they won't like it.

It may sound ridiculous, but the elction wasn't a massive endorsement of Macron so much as a rejection of Le Pen.

Remember the first round results?
Macron 24.01%
Le Pen 21.3%
Fillon 20.01%
Melenchon 19.58%

Macron is anything but wildly popular and very shortly he is going to be even less popular.

France is a very, very divided country - like us.

France had a big problem at this election. The majority of people had nobody to vote for. So they voted against. I'm sure they'll live to regret that.

The French are extremely conservative people, in their lives, habits and social structure. At some point the lid is going to blow off the pressure cooker and that is not going to be a good thing, revolution never is. It seems that people never seem to learn that anticipated and structured change is way better than clamping the lid down until the system blows up...

I have listened to a few debates both last night and this morning and the same thing keeps cropping up: two thirds of Macron's votes came from people who said that they would have preferred someone else.

Macron has won, 66.4% to 33.6%, so will become President. It is a sizeable mandate, but next up are the legislative elections on the 11th and 18th of June and that is when the fun will start.

Pundits do not expect En March!, Macron's party, to make big gains so he is going to have to do deals, and they will not be easy. The Socialists and many Republicans do not like him and he was only endorsed by them in the run-off on an 'Anybody But Le Pen' ticket. A lot of the smaller parties did not endorse either of them.

French politics will be an interesting watch for the next five years ... if he lasts that long.