The Duran Podcast - Macron loses big. Snap elections in France

Episode Date: June 10, 2024

Macron loses big. Snap elections in France

All right, Alexander, let's talk about the European Union Parliament elections and the big story coming out of those elections, which is French President Emmanuel Macron, dissolving the parliament and calling SNAP parliament elections for the end of June and the first week of July. elections right before the Paris Olympics. Interesting timing. Just a couple of weeks, to be quite honest, and you're going to have Parliament elections. And if you look at the results of the EU Parliament elections, it looks like National Rally and Marie Le Pen are going to be well situated to come out ahead in the French Parliament elections. 32% from the EU Parliament elections went to National Rally. Macron got hammered, 15%. And I always say that the EU Parliament elections, if anything, they are a referendum in that country. More than anything, they are a referendum in the given

country that the elections are taking place in. Anyway, your thoughts on Macron's announcement. Well, indeed, I think this is a very dramatic announcement and a dramatic gamble. but of course it also serves to explain an awful lot about the really eccentric behaviour that we've been seen from Macron over the last couple of months because clearly he's been sensing for some time that his position domestically is collapsing and the EU Parliament elections have exposed this so he's gone for a tremendous gamble and he is hoping to repeat what Sanchez, the Spanish socialist Prime Minister, was able to pull off some time, a couple of months back. Now, Sanchez also called early elections, snap elections, which were unexpected.

He appeared to be behind in the polls. He then ran on a program of defending the republic and democracy against the extreme right. and Sanchez was able to pull it off. And I think this is Macron. He says to himself, I'm going to do the same. As things stand, my political position in France is collapsing. So I'm going to call snap elections. I'm going to try and repeat the Sanchez formula in France.

And that will then mean if I succeed in this, that I would have seen off the challenge of Marine Le Pen, I'll have pushed her into the margins again. I'll once again be Jupiter in overall command of the political system. I'll perhaps even regain my majority of the French Parliament. I believe he actually does think in this way. And once I've managed to do that, I can control the political and electoral process

up to the presidential elections in 2007. anoint my own successor and keep Le Pen and what she represents out. I think this is Macron's calculation. I think he's looking at Sanchez. He says, I can do that. And at the same time, he's been talking for weeks, months. He's been setting himself out as the great, strong French president, the leader of Europe, the war president, the man who's keeping the Russians at bay, the man who's supporting Ukraine, the man who's got the courage and the principle and the strength of all of this. Now, the problem is that Macron is not Sanchez and France is not Spain. The politics of these two countries, I think, are completely different from each other. Firstly, one has to face the fact that overshadowing everything in Spain is the memory of the Franco era, which only ended as recently as the late 1970s, early 1980s.

So, I mean, fully as in the early 1980s. So it's a long, it's a big difference. I mean, France has a completely different backstory to Spain. In Spain, you can always say, well, you know, these people, Vox and people like that, they're trying to take us back to Francoist. Spain. We who were the victims of this can't allow that to happen. There's no similar argument to be made in France. Vichy and all that is now very, very distance history for most people. Secondly, Le Pen has been a fixture of French politics for quite a long time. Most people

in France know her quite well. She still divides people in how they feel about her, but overall her political position has been strengthening. She's been seen as a, she's become a much more mainstream figure in French politics. And there's still one very much on the right. And the third factor is, of course, there is a deep malaise in France. We've been talking about this for a very, very long time. And the French don't like Emmanuel Macron. And they haven't liked him pretty much from the moment he was elected. And as time passes, their dislike of Macron has been growing. And on top of that, the economy in France has been suffering all the same problems that economies everywhere in the West have been suffering since the pandemic and the start

of the sanctions war. And I think that Macron has also completely miscalculated on his belligerence towards the Russians. Because every opinion poll and every survey I've seen suggests to me that this is deeply and overwhelmingly unpopular with the French. So he's making a gamble. He's taking a gamble that he can repeat what Sanchez did. But I don't think he understands, this is my own sense, that the political ground in France has shifted. and has shifted decisively against him and all the things that he and the metropolitan elite he represents a stand for. Now, I'm going to make a further guess if I am right about this and if the parliamentary elections result in a blowout victory from Marine Le Pen's party,

which I think is quite possible, I think that Macron might very well resign and we might in that case have early presidential elections in France. He is not the kind of person who I think would be comfortable in a period of political cohabitation with Le Pen's party. I think he might decide this isn't something I'm happy to do, in which case he could step down. There's been rumours that he's been thinking of doing this for a while.

He could step down. We might have early presidential elections in France, in which case, given the state of the political system and the state of French opinion, it's not impossible that in three months' time, at the time of the Paris Olympics, we could have President Le Pen. Now, that's my speculation based on Macron's personality.

I mean, you know, we mustn't make too much of that at the moment. And there'll be lots of people begging him to stay rather than to allow that to happen. But it's not impossible. That is my own view. I think when you take a step back and look at the decision that Macron made to call SNAP elections, A lot of people are shocked, the mainstream media. Everyone's shocked that he's calling for snap elections because he could have just brushed it off. He could have said, you know, whatever.

I've got a whole bunch of events coming up, the Euro, the Olympic Games. People will forget about it after three months and I can just go on governing. But he called snap elections and he said, I hear you people of France. I'm taking into consideration your votes and I'm going to call snap elections. And everyone was shocked. But when you take a step back, I think it actually makes sense in a way for Macron, at least in Macron's thinking, in that, you know, he understands that national rally, most likely national rally is going to win these parliament elections, at least if you go off the results of the vote yesterday. And for Macron, for him, this is his way of saying, you know what? I've got three years left.

Even if I resign in three months or three years, this is it for me as president of France. I mean, I can't run again. And we know that France, that Macron has been very unhappy running the day to day of France anyway. He doesn't like it. He doesn't enjoy it. He checked out of running France a long time ago. Macron is the emperor. He's the Napoleon.

And he sees himself as something much bigger than just taking care of France. And so for him, he can focus on foreign policy, on his globalist aspirations. He doesn't have to be bogged down with the minutia of running France and the protests and all of these things. And if it goes badly for national rally, they get all the blame. Yeah. If it goes well, if you're Macron, yes, if it goes well, Marine Le Pen becomes the president. And okay, if you're Macron, maybe you'll have a hard time stomaching that. But at the end of the day, you're leaving anyway.

And you'll probably be appointed into some big globalist organization. Who knows how high Macron can rise? Maybe he can outdo Tony Blair and create an even bigger consulting firm or something. You know what I mean? I mean, this move by Macron. kind of makes sense in a way, whether it's in three months that he goes or in three years that he goes. His time as president is up and, you know, let Marie Le Pen give it a try. Let her deal with all of the day-to-day stuff of France. We'll see how she does. I can now focus on my next position.

I think this entirely right. It's the, after me, le d'eluge. In other words, it's the attitude being, you know, that, you know, I shift, I step aside. I let the other. side take over. The situation is awful. Turning it round is going to be incredibly difficult. So let them carry the back, get the blame. And of course, if I can remain president of France, I don't particularly want to be in a cohabitation. I do think Macron would like that, actually. I think that for Macron to be in any kind of cohabitation arrangement, even if, as you correctly say, he's never been particularly interested in dealing with the details and mechanics of policy. But, you know, he might decide, you know, I can do that,

I can drift away, deal with a great global agenda, do all of those kind of things. Which he likes to do. Which he likes to do. Of course, that is a recipe for constant conflict with his own government. And it would, with the government that would be likely to emerge from these elections. So, you know, there would be that kind of tension. But that would enable Macron, perhaps, in his own mind, to pose as the heroic defender of the global establishment against the nationalist far-right hordes. I mean, it's the sort of thing that he might like to play. Or alternatively, he could just say, well, enough's enough. I've done what I can. I've tried to help France. I've tried to help Europe.

Everything is falling apart around me. Let's quit while I'm ahead. And this is his way of doing it. And the people that he will blame for everything going wrong are, of course, the people the France, he'll say that they didn't follow my genius leadership. They didn't rise to the plate. They're there to blame for everything that goes wrong. And maybe in 2027, when everything's gone fallen apart and gone to pieces,

Well, who knows? At that point, maybe they will turn back to me in the way that they did to Shalda Gull. And I will either, well, I believe he can't become president again. But I can bring back someone else, someone who I want to become president. And I can become maybe, if not the backseat driver, at least the kingmaker or the kingmaker in, you know, a restored and re-globalized France. It's not impossible. You know, you could see the kind of,

the thing about Macron, he has a very complicated mind. And it's not impossible. It's very likely that he is thinking it this way. But it's a good out for him, isn't it? It is a good out. That's the point. That,

because that is the key point. Whether it's three months, whether he leaves in three months or three years, he comes out saying, I listen to the people. I listen to what they're, said and I held a vote. And, you know, this is this, this is me doing the will of the people. And, and, and, and he can move on to his next globalist project, whatever that is.

Exactly. And all the reports say the same thing that he's, for a long time now, since he lost his parliamentary majority, that he's been bored and frustrated and doesn't really like, you know, governing France anymore. to the extent, of course, that he ever has done. That's always been a question mark, but that he's bored and frustrated and that basically he wants to quit. That's one reason why I think, I think that there's a strong chance that if he does very,

if his party does very badly in the parliamentary elections, he will quit, or at least you seriously consider doing it. I will say again, I think that he perhaps, underestimates how deeply disliked he is in France, but I think he probably also understands that clinging on with the present Parliament and with himself as this kind of ineffective and unpopular president engaging in these very wild foreign policies, which are deeply unpopular, with most French people, that that is creating a situation

where things are sliding out of his control and out of the control of the Paris liberal establishment, out of which ultimately he comes and which placed him where he now is. If he delays things until 2027, another three years, there's a high chance, a strong probability that the change of power, the transition will be much greater than it is now. Because it's very, very difficult to see how Macron can reverse and turn around the situation if he simply sits back and does nothing. Yeah, I mean, that's why for Le Pen and for National Rally, if they do get a majority, they've got a lot of work to do because France is, is, you know,

just an absolute mess. And, and, and, you know, in Greece, we, we, we, we, we have a thinking when it comes to politics that it's, it's always, you're always in the best position when you're the opposition party, as long as you remain the opposition party and never take power, because you can always criticize, can continue to criticize the, the party that's in power without having to actually govern, because when you have to go in and govern and things are a mess, you know, the blame falls on you. And so if national rally, if Marine Le Pen does not deliver, if she does get a majority and they do not deliver in governing France, they're going to get a lot of the blame.

Absolutely. Maybe Macaron is calculating that. But, you know, comment on what I just said. But I also have a second question for you, a much more simple question. Does Macron really care if the French people hate him? Deep down his side, does he really care? He's on his way out. to do another re-election.

No. Does he care? The Tony Blair care that the British population didn't like him? He's still making billions and billions. Sunak's going to be in the U.S. soon, they say. He'll be living large. Maybe Macron's seeing all of this and he's saying, you know, I've got to start doing something. You know.

Yeah. I'm going to put it further than this. I think that in the case of Blair and all of the other, Sunak, well, they didn't much care, but they didn't despise and even dislike their own people to the extent that Macron despises the French. I think this is a thing to say about Macron. Despite the fact that in some respects, I mean, he does see himself as, you know, the emperor of a grandiose France. I mean, he does have that sense of grandeur. And he's not without feelings about France. they don't extend to the French.

This has always been my own feeling. I think he basically doesn't like the French very much. And I think this has been one of the main problems. I mean, it's a while since I've been in France. The last time I was there was in 2019. And I was, when I was in France, I was watching. I was in a bar. And Macron was giving an address over the French television.

I can't remember what it was about. But it was very interesting to see the sort of chemistry in the room. This was a sort of middle-class area, far from being a sort of gritty working class places where they've never really liked Macron from them outside. But one sense that Macron and the people there, as I said, middle-class people, the distance between them and him

was enormous, far greater than I've ever seen between any political leader and the people he's supposed to be leading anywhere else, greater than Blair's was in Britain, for example. I mean, Blair had a very skillful, manipulative side, which knew how to sort of win over some people. Macron really doesn't. And it was very obvious to me. that he didn't especially care about the French,

but I felt that he didn't really like them much. He always sensed that they weren't really signed up to his grand Euro projects. He's comfortable with the metropolitan elite in Paris, which is the one that he knows and which he came from, the products of the elite schools and all of those institutions. the people who work in the financial and diplomatic world. That's the France he understands. France outside Paris, outside that bubble inside Paris,

you know, France profound, he doesn't really get at all. And I think that, yes, if it all goes to pieces after he's gone, he'll say to himself, well, it was therefore they didn't understand me. They didn't grasp my own genius. And ultimately, they brought it on themselves. So, you know, literally, again, I come back to that famous quote supposedly attributed to Louis XIV. A pre-mois le l' deluge. That's very much, I think, Macron's sense.

Now, Marine Le Pen, I ought to say, is completely different. I mean, so many French dislike her, many French hugely admire her, others are, you know, don't really know what to make of her. That means, she's a polarising figure. But every French person has some kind of opinion about her. And of course, she is absolutely part of the political fabric of France. And that's a completely different, very, very different political person. us. Yeah, how does this result affect Macron's escalation with Russia? How does it affect Project Ukraine? Because there's one thing that I noticed in the collective West media when they're talking

about this story with SNAP elections. They say it's a result of immigration and a result of the rise of the nationalist parties, the far right. They don't mention Project Ukraine. They don't want to mentioned that that this result is due in part, a large part of it is due to Project Ukraine. And when you talk about Project Ukraine, it encompasses inflation, energy prices, the economy. All these things are part of the Project Ukraine debacle. So how does this affect Macron and and his plans for Ukraine? I was assuming he stays in power. Assuming he stays in power. Yes. I would put. I would put.

it like this, I think this result is 50% caused by Project Ukraine, 30% by the lingering effects and anger of the pandemic. I mean, I think that those are the two big issues that have shaped attitudes in France and indeed in much of Europe. But there is massive anger about both, but of course they don't want to talk about Project Ukraine and its role, because of course, This is, I mean, this is another classic case of the Olensky-Kirce striking. A whole group of countries, France is one of them, all of them, all the Western countries, committed themselves back in 2022 to this disastrous economic war with Russia. All of them committed themselves to supporting militarily Ukraine. And it's all gone wrong. It's gone disastrously wrong. The effect of the economic war has, you know, hit the European economies massively. It's hit the US economy significantly in terms of the Russian economy, the Russian finance minister, Anton Siluanov. So it's said it. He says what it did in Russia was that it put growth on high.

trajectory. People may not be seeing that, but they are aware in France that everything is becoming more expensive, that things are becoming more difficult, government debt is rising. Now, that does affect people because it might be an abstract figure, but if debt is rising and interest costs are rising, it means that your local prefecture in France or commune might not have the, you know, people out there sweeping the streets, keeping things clean, looking after all the various social things that people care about. And, you know, I mean, they might not be very interested in, you know, the global debt figures, you know, the national debt figures. So it's important to say that people are not unaware of these things, but it would be completely wrong to say

that this doesn't also affect people in their everyday lives. It absolutely does. So people are able to see all of this. They sense the difference in their lives. And to a massive level, this is caused by Project Ukraine. So when people say it's immigration and inflation, it needs to be understood that certainly the inflation part of it, The economic part of it is to a very great extent a product of project Ukraine.

But of course, Macron has made things even worse because over the last couple of months, he's been talking as if he wants to leave France into a war with Russia. And again, outside the tiny ring of people that he knows and understands in Paris, some of them probably, you know, would not be sorry to drive France into something like that. Outside Paris, outside that small group of people, you know, I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, all the liberals and people like neoliberal are only to be found in Paris, but across the rest of France, this is a deeply unpopular policy. I suspect, especially on popular, in the small towns and villages, where the French army gets its recruits. And that's also playing a role in this. I mean, people do not want to be involved in a war with Russia, a country with which, by the way, a lot of French have, tend to have and historically have had fairly positive feelings.

again, this is completely discordant with the public mood. And I think, you know, Macron has sensed this to some extent, which is why he's been going around talking a lot about how this is, you know, it could be the end of Europe, if the end of Europe we know and love, if we don't, you know, fight the Russians over there because, you know, Europe will collapse. But then he's trying to win over the French to this, ignoring the fact, that for many, many people in France now, Europe, the current Europe is not something they want to defend and die for. So, I mean, this is, this is, again, all illustrative of his problems.

But no, absolutely. This is absolutely a manifestation of the Olensky curse. In fact, we're going to see that all over Europe. It's playing out now all over Europe. Yeah, they don't want to, uh, to die, especially on behalf of Olensky, people in France. No. For a country that's not even in the European Union. Why are we doing this? Why do we want to go to war with Russia for a country that's not even border, that doesn't border us, isn't part of the European Union? Why?

Well, indeed. And that's losing the war right now. And he's losing the war as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. And I understand the French media has been rather more objective about the course of the war than the media in some other places to speak, though I don't follow it as closely as I once did. Also, I'm going to say something.

I mean, I don't know this for a frat, but I'm going to make a fairly shrewd guess that in France especially, Zelensky himself is not going to be somebody that people take to very warmly. and we've discussed many times the kind of appearance that he puts on. In a country like France, where people are conservative about this kind of thing, a political leader who turns up looking like Zeletsky does and talking like Zelensky does, I think it's not going to go down well with most French, who certainly do expect leaders to look immaculate and properly turned out

and who are very, very conscious of, you know, appearance and things of that sort. At least that was the france that I once knew. All right, we will end the video there, the durand.locals.com. We are on Rumble, Odyssey, Bitchy, Telegram, Rock Fanon, Twitter, X, and go to the Duran shop. Football 24, that's the code, to pick up some football merchandise on the Duran shop. Take care.