France Votes

I am not going to pretend that I know what it all means, because I do not know what it all means. For the moment, the Western world, comprising the United States, France and Great Britain is consuming itself with politics. And especially with radical political transformations.

The day before yesterday, it was France’s turn at the ballot box. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, by all indications an intelligent man, was swamped by the right wing party led by Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella. 

Macron’s party came in third, behind the leftist socialist party of Jean Luc Melanchon. As we have noted Melanchon did his party ill by supporting Hamas and Palestinian terrorism. 

Now, while everyone is predicting the advent of a right wing parliamentary majority, led by Prime Minister Bardella, an alliance between Macron’s center-left party and Melanchon’s radical party might surprise a few of the prognosticators.

Apparently, the people of France are punishing their leaders for having opened their countries to migrants. And to migrants who have not assimilated and who have brought crime and other social pathologies.

So, it's a return to nationalism and a rejection of what is called globalism. That is, a rejection of anything that resembles open borders. Does that have an air of familiarity? 

In France, the issue of Muslim migrants weighed on the election. The Daily Mail wrote this:

According to statistics office INSEE, immigrants constituted 5% of the population in 1946. This figure increased 3.5 percentage points to 8.5% in 2010.

But net migration has soared since then and jumped even higher after Macron came to power in 2017. Now more than 10% of the French population is made up of immigrants. 

And the migrants have brought crime with them. Among the high profile murders was that of Samuel Paty:

The murder and beheading of history teacher Samuel Paty in 2020 by a Chechen Muslim refugee sparked national outrage, but many more attacks have happened since then. 

Late last year, another French schoolteacher was stabbed to death and several others injured by an Islamist knifeman in Arras, and a German tourist was killed by a 26-year-old man who had previously been sentenced to a four-year prison sentence for planning to join the Islamic State in Syria. 

President Macron is aware of the problem. He gave a speech about it. He has proposed new policies to shut down immigration. And yet, French citizens have not been giving him credit for his words. 

They have considered that he has done too little too late. And surely, right wing leaders like Le Pen and Bardella have been stronger on the issue.

Recently, when Marine Le Pen was scheduled to meet with a Muslim cleric, she was invited to put on a headscarf. She refused, thereby making clear her insistence on assimilation.

Bardella has proposed cutting back on social welfare benefits offered to non-citizens. And he proposed ending birthright citizenship, a point that is part of the American political debate:

Bardella himself has declared he will wage a 'cultural battle' against Islam if his party emerges victorious from parliamentary elections.

If he is made Prime Minister in the case of an RN absolute majority, the party will seek to pass legislation to 'combat Islamist ideologies' in France that would grant the government enhanced powers to shutter mosques and deport imams suspected of being associated with extremist ideologies.

Besides the commitment to reduce the influence of Islam in France, another RN proposal being pushed by Bardella would see the abolition of free health care for foreigners and the 'droit du sol' law which affords anyone born on French soil the right to citizenship. 

Other problems involve a burgeoning national debt and very high taxes. Call it fiscal irresponsibility. The following from Daniel Lacalle on Zero Hedge:

France never had austerity. It has the world’s largest government relative to the size of the economy. Government spending to GDP exceeds 58%, the highest in the world. Unions are exceedingly powerful. Their ability to organize paralyzing strikes gives them a level of economic power that far exceeds their actual representation. France’s state is so large that the public sector employs 5.3 million people (21.1% of the active population), a ratio of civil servants to inhabitants of 70.9/1,000, according to Eurostat. France has one of the highest taxation systems in the OECD. 

In France, income tax and employer social security contributions combine to account for 82% of the total tax wedge, according to the OECD. Corporate tax rates in France are also extremely high, at 26.5%, with companies with profits of more than €500,000 paying a rate of 27.5%. 

The labor market regulations in France are so restrictive that the number of companies with forty-nine employees is 2.4 times higher than those with fifty, primarily due to the significant burdens businesses face once they reach the fifty-employee threshold. According to Bloomberg, a 50-employee company must create “three worker councils, introduce profit sharing, and submit restructuring plans to the councils if the company decides to fire workers for economic reasons”.

All things considered, the solution must be something like an injection of Javier Milei. The Argentine president has  been taking a buzz saw to the bloated government in his country. 

Considering that most people in Argentina wish they are French, it might be the case they they have gotten it backwards. If the Milei reforms continue to work, perhaps the French should learn from them.

And then there is this. Young Emmanuel Macron is simply not very likable. One is not sure what to make of this notion, but it seems to be accurate.

But the author of this article would be remiss were he not to point out that, at the end of the day, most French people simply do not like their president. 

Macron, a talisman of Europeanism, is well-liked across the EU, with an Ipsos poll in March 2024 ranking him as the second most popular European leader behind Volodymyr Zelensky - who, it must be said, has a rather unfair advantage.

But the French electorate does not harbour such affection for Emmanuel.  

A week before Sunday's first round elections, Macron's approval rating was mired at just 26% - a historic low equal only to the weeks following the introduction of his detested pension reforms. 

Macron's party is fully aware of the nation's perception of the president. 

His face has been removed from election posters and flyers being touted by MPs from his party, who have implored him to allow his prime minister Gabriel Attal to take the lead in running the legislative campaign. 

And then there is the French love of democracy. When the results of the first round of voting came in, and when it seemed that the Le Pen party had won a plurality, masses of French people rioted. 

The Daily Mail reported:

Rioting engulfed the streets of Paris last night as thousands of enraged left-leaning voters set light to rubbish, smashed up shop windows and launched fireworks after Marine Le Pen's RN steamed to victory with 33% of the first round vote. 

It is difficult at this distance to know who was rioting. Keep in mind the right wing Le Pen Party has had a long and disgraceful association with anti-Semitism, even with Naziism. As it happens Marine Le Pen has worked to rid her party of such associations, even expelling her Nazi-loving father, the party founder.

And, we must also note that the leftist party of Melanchon has stepped forth to affirm its commitment to the Palestinian cause and its rejection of the state of Israel. So, the rioters might have been opposing right wing anti-Semitism. Or they may have been asserting left wing anti-Semitism.

In any case, French politics will be in flux for another ten days, when a second round of voting will finalize the results and name the new prime minister. At the least, the first round of voting has shown us that President Macron is the biggest loser.