The Macron meltdown puzzles those who live in a world of macroeconomic data and Excel sheets.- Ambrose
“It is out of the question that the French will ever follow our path in Italy. Le Pen will never swallow the austerity pill, and the ECB would never dare to play the spread game with France,” said Senator Claudio Borghi from Italy’s Lega party.
Even so, the National Rally has been tactically vague about its economic plan
The original Front Populaire of Leon Blum 1936 triggered systemic capital flight – mostly to London – and forced France off the Gold Standard in short order. The experiment ended two years later in full crisis, a denouement forgotten in the iconography of today’s Left.
MEDEF is just as worried by what it calls the “catastrophe scenario” of another hung parliament, this time dominated by two irreconcilable blocs on each wing, with Mr Macron’s dying centre reduced to a skeleton.
It is the most likely outcome. The constitution forbids another election for a year.
Europe 1 says Mr Macron is toying with Article 16, which would give him powers of a Roman dictator to uphold the “regular functioning” of the French state, subject to judicial review after 60 days.
Charles de Gaulle invoked Article 16 after the Algerian Putsch in 1961. Such drastic action today would risk civil resistance.
“Macron’s record is quite remarkable: he has fanned the flames of populism, and broken the responsible parties of Left and Right, without building anything to replace them,” said Jean-Louis Debré, a veteran Gaulliste and ex-head of the Constitutional Court.
It tells us that there are larger matters in the life of a nation than a decimal point of GDP here or there, and one of them is the spirit of democracy.
Mr Macron betrayed this when he refused to accept the loss of his parliamentary majority two years ago, convincing himself that he had a political right to bulldoze his way through as if nothing had changed.
He has governed ever since by decree (49.3), imposing his pension reform against the will of parliament, against all eight trade unions, and against the vast majority of the French public.
That is why they have turned on him.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard Telegraph 21 June 2024
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