Refractory Gauls, or the French politics thread

[mongers]

Missed it. Alphonse Daudet's Les Lettres de mon moulin?
Could have been worse.

I don't live close to the Arc de Triomphe anymore and I had family visiting so I was busy as the local scout.

PS: local scout advice
During the high season, avoid Orlybus when going to Paris from Orly airport.

Yeah, I thought you'd have liked being part of it.

[Sheilbh]

Couple of odd/striking remarks from the French right recently.

First I saw that Sarko has said that Le Pen's RN have "proved" their republican values - i.e. they're no longer beyond the pale/far-right. Following that there'd be no need for a republican front to defeat them in the second round because they are republican now.

Secondly Gerald Darmanin, Macron's Interior Minister who likes to pose as more hard-line than Le Pen (who he has accused of being "soft on Islam"), has now said Le Pen is "pretty likely" to win the 2027 election.

My understanding is that they are allies and Darmanin is one of the possible candidates for Macron's centre bloc - so this may be just some pretty outrageous positioning from them. I think almost as a threat - if Le Pen is now a sufficiently republican candidate the right don't have to hold their nose and vote for a candidate they don't like, so you'd better nominate an authoritarian right-winger who doesn't like Muslims rather than some centrist, liberal or, God forbid, any of the surviving centre left Macron supporters and, by the way, have you met M. Darmanin.

The other side is similar but I wonder if they're laying the groundwork for the right of Macron's movement to rally to Le Pen in the event that the first round ends with a Melenchon-Le Pen run-off? I think there's been some polling recently that indicates that may be a possibility.

But the other side of this is that from what I understand Darmanin is pretty unpopular. That actually he is probably the candidate from Macron's bloc that is most likely to cause a Melenchon-Le Pen run-off because a lot of Macron's liberal, centrist and remaining centre left supporters hate him, kind of understandably given the way he's positioned himself. It feels like they're playing with fire with this sort of positioning to undermine more popular alternatives like Edouard Philippe and maybe inadvertently setting up a heads she wins, tails you lose situation....which is concerning.

Again just not convinced it was a great idea to blow up the established party system around a non-ideologically defined, personality based political project

[Duque de Bragança]

Darmanin has no chance in hell to be elected since he is really unpopular.