Emmanuel Macron did write his dissertation on Niccolò Machiavelli - and Brexit
Mr Macron will not settle down to a workable cohabitation with a government of his enemies. He refused to share power after losing his parliamentary majority in 2022, instead abusing a loophole in the French constitution (Article 49.3) to ram through his agenda by decree, at the limits of authentic democracy.
Article 16 lets the president invoke emergency powers on his own authority, and exercise those powers at his own discretion, a combination that distinguishes France from every major country in the democratic world.
Charles de Gaullle invoked Article 16 in 1961 following the Algiers putsch by retired army officers.
In theory, Article 16 requires a dual trigger. There must be both a “grave and immediate” threat and a breakdown in the regular functioning of the state.
Calling a snap election out of wounded pride and then making matters worse, hardly meets the threshold.
It has become fashionable in the French and British press to compare Mr Macron’s gamble with David Cameron’s Brexit referendum in 2016
Brexit was to decide whether Britain’s should be a self-governing nation state under its own law-making parliament and courts; or whether it should be a subordinate state, under an upper level of government in Brussels that cannot be removed even when it persists in error, with laws made in Strasbourg that are enforced by a supreme court in Luxembourg beyond appeal.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 28 June 2024
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/06/28/emmanuel-macron-and-the-weimar-temptation/
Emmanuel Macron’s ‘Jupiterian’ Presidency Crashes to Earth
The important question to ask is which Macronisme, exactly, voters are set to bury.
There are two.
One strand of Macronisme concerns what Mr. Macron has done. long-overdue reforms This side of Macronisme has worked.
The problem is the other facet of Macronisme, the Macron political method. The defining feature here is an imperiousness that would make Napoleon or Charles de Gaulle blush.
The word “Jupiterian” emerged early on to describe the aloof mystique Mr. Macron cultivated. Observers have remarked throughout his tenure on how little advice he seems to take, and Mr. Macron’s public appearances often create the feeling of a divinity dictating rather than a politician persuading.
Embedded in this are two bad ideas about France’s political elite and its electorate: A technocratic governing class—of which Mr. Macron, product of the top schools and exactly the correct private-sector-and-government career track, is the ne plus ultra—knows what will fix France.
And the ornery little folk will fall in line and do what they’re told if they’re told it with enough confidence by their intellectual betters.
France’s technocratic political class also would have been wise not to overlook immigration for as long as it has. Mr. Macron and his ilk seem to have missed, or ignored, the social tensions that keep building as France struggles to assimilate migrants.
Joseph C. Sternberg Wall Street Journal 27 June 2024
Algiers putsch of 1961
The following day, President De Gaulle made a famous speech on television, dressed in his World War II uniform (he was 70 years old and long since a civilian head of state) ordering the French people and military to help him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algiers_putsch_of_1961
With the help of Copilot:
Yes, historical records confirm that General Charles de Gaulle did visit General Jacques Massu in 1968.
On May 29, 1968, during the height of the political and social turmoil in France known as the May 1968 events, President de Gaulle disappeared from Paris and secretly flew to Baden-Baden, Germany.
There, he met with General Massu, who was the commander of the French forces in Germany at the time.
This visit was part of a critical moment in French history, as de Gaulle sought counsel during a period of national crisis.
The details of their discussion remain a subject of historical interest and speculation.
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