The Duran Podcast - Macron's plan to stay in power

Episode Date: December 13, 2024

Macron's plan to stay in power The Duran: Episode 2088

All right, Alexander, let's do an update on what is happening in France. It looks like Macron is putting together a new government, a new prime minister and cabinet, and he is trying to work with the left, some parties on the left, in order to prevent what happened to Barnier from happening again. most notably is he is excluding Le Pen and National Rally from any talks about the new government that he's putting together. What do you think is happening in France? What is Macron up to? If you have been following our programs on the Duran, the first day when this election, the parliamentary elections happened, we always said that Macron's ultimate plan is to split the left. I mean,

the national rally, Marine Le Pen's group, is a solid, disciplined group. It's the right. It's not the far right. It is simply the right in France. It won the most votes in the election. By any logic, it ought to be the government now. But of course, as we all remember, there was this extraordinary manipulation during the election whereby left-week candidates stood down in seats where the centrist candid.

loyal to Macron was ahead, and Macron's candidates stood down where the left was ahead, all to exclude the national rally. So it was pushed. The national rally saw his vote. Its parliamentary totals pushed down. The left and the Macronists were pushed up. And we said that having achieved that, having blocked Le Pen from holding a majority in the French parliament, and forming government. Macron's game would be to try to split the left, to isolate

Melanchang who is the left's nominal leader, and to win the left centrist, the socialists, and people like that, and to try and form a government with them. And he's close to achieving it. I mean, we went through some rather complicated parliamentary politics. The left centrists put up, if you remember, Lucy Castis, has their proposed prime minister. Macron refused that. That caused, you know, the left, even the centrist's left, to be angry with Macron, least to pretend that they were angry with Macron. Macron then came up with Barnier.

Barnier formed the government. The government wasn't supported by the left. It wasn't supported by the right. It was voted down in the French National Assembly. Now all that theatre has been done. The centrists have shown or think they have shown to the French people that they're not going to be pushed around by Macron. So having done that, they're now preparing to go into coalition with him.

Of course, they're not calling it a coalition, but that is what it really is. So they're meeting with him, the socialist leader, Favre is, Olivier Favre has been to the elise. They're talking about agreeing who the next prime minister will be. They're saying that in return for Macron's new prime minister, being more friendly to some of the things that the socialists want to see. They won't vote against him in confidence votes. So that, in effect, puts the initiative back in Macron's hands.

It means that even if the socialists normally remain outside the government, in effect, they're part of it. So this is what's going to happen. We're going to have a centrist government, which is what Macron has wanted all along. It is what the socialists have wanted all along. They've never really been happy about the fact that they are part of a bloc that is led by Melanchon, whom they loath. So the result is that they've now gone through the motions of each being opposed to the other, now that they can get back to business, the center in effect, the European center, the EU center, the parties that are loyal to it, can come together and continue to govern France in exactly the same way that they've been doing for decades, and ever since,

arguably, the end of the presidency of Jacques Chirac. All right. A couple of thoughts. comments, Melanchot must be very upset, very pissed off about this development, I would imagine. Oh, yeah, he's talking, he's denouncing Fab. He's saying that he's a traitor and that he's engaging in betrayal and that this is, you know, that this is a huge wrong move and all of that. But, you know, either Melanchon is a complete fool, which is possible. More likely he knew this was going to happen all along. Melanchon has always struck me as being one of these people who doesn't really want to be in

power. He thrived by being in opposition. So he sets himself up for being betrayed. I mean, that is his comfort zone, if you like, and he's happy with it, I think. So anyway, he's going around denouncing Fabre. Favre nonetheless says, you know, that he's made all the usual things. There's a time to say no, and there's a time to say yes. And now is the time to say yes, that kind of thing. So Macron is successful in breaking off some of Melanchoff's coalition, and he'll get a government in place. And it looks like we're going to avoid the process that happened to Barnier from happening

over and over again, at least until the elections in 2007. And we won't have to, Macron, have to call an election in 10 months time, which people were thinking might actually... Or is that still possible? Well, that's what he's what he's telling the socialists. See, the thing you understand is that, of course, the election that took place in the summer was a very, very strange election because it resulted in an outcome that was completely different from the one that the French people actually wanted.

I mean, you know, it was not how they wanted it. So the socialists, who are a shrinking party, have been inflated beyond their natural size because of the arrangements that were done in the election in the summer. So they want to avoid an election, another election, which might cut them down to their true side. So Macron, one of the things he's telling them is, you know, don't come along and do this deal with me. We will need to have an election in the summer and we can do without an election. Well, of course, the reality is that with Macron, he can make all of these promises. He can say that he will do these things. But of course,

if it suits in the summer to call it an election, because perhaps his prime minister is proving moderately popular or successful, that he will. I mean, any of the summer, agreements that he's reached with the socialists that the socialists might be relying upon are worth the paper they're written. Right. And my final comment or question is Macron went out of his way to say that what's happening right now with the socialists bears no resemblance to the way Germany has been run with Olaf Schultz and the Greens. It's nothing in common with Ola Schultz's coalition with Annalina and Robert Hoppeck. But it sounds to me like,

This is exactly what Macron is doing. He's just not formalizing the part that the socialists are in a coalition. They're going to have power, but they're not going to be a traffic-like coalition like what Ola Schultz formed. Like a shadow. It's going to be like a shadow. Traffic like coalition. When a politician, especially if it's a politician like Macron, comes along and tells you, what I am doing is absolutely nothing like.

what you think. You'll be absolutely sure that it is exactly like what you think. Of course, it's exactly the same assortment of people being brought together to achieve exactly the same thing. It's, again, a government of the left center. Bear in mind, you know, Macron himself used to be a member of the Socialist Party. Not that long ago, by the way. I mean, you know, People forget this, but Fabre and Macron were both socialists, one at the same time. He was, I think I'm right in saying that Macron was a socialist finance minister in a government of the left at one point. So these people have both common party political roots and ultimately identical, ideological, affinities. So it's not surprising that they're coming together in the way that they are.

I just get to make one quick observation. Again, the people of France let themselves be tricked in the election. What we're seeing happen is completely predictable. The left came together. They won't work with Le Pen. They insist that Le Pen is completely unacceptable, that the right is completely unacceptable. They say at the same time that they won't work with Macron. They form this grouping. The purpose supposedly is to form a government of the left. And what do we get? We get more government by Macron. I mean, this is something that has happened in France time and time again. With every election, we see. that more people in France come to understand that, which is why the national rally and Le Pen's support

has steadily increased throughout the time of Macron's presidency. But it still is astonishing that so many people in France fall for this thing. And what wonders how much longer it will take before the penny finally drops that if you go along with all of this scaremongering and you go on voting for left-wing candidates, or not really left-wing, centrist candidates who are loyal to the EU center, you will continue to get the same failed government that you're so unhappy with. I just want to make a general observation on what you said. This trend of cobbling together various parties and putting them under one umbrella coalition during an election, this is really destroying Europe. And people are, I mean, voters are falling for it. They see this as one entity,

or maybe they believe that this is one entity. But they also know that it's not one entity. These are three, four, five different parties. Many of them hate each other. Many of them have nothing in common. They put them under an umbrella in order to achieve some sort of an election result or an election blocking the the candidate that they consider as anti-EU or far right or whatever. This is really destroying the election process in Europe. In many countries, they tried it in Hungary. They're going to try it again in Hungary in the next elections. They tried it in the previous elections. They did it in Czech Republic. We see it in France. It's being used in different ways, but that is the pattern.

In a kind of in a kind of way. They did it in British. Britain too. I mean, admittedly, Britain is outside the EU and the Labour Party is normally a single party. But, you know, the Labour Party itself is a kind of centrist coalition nowadays. But it's always the same. Always you end up creating these very kind of, playing these very kind of cynical games, which are not politics, they're anti-politics. They are taking politics away from voting, and are concentrating politics and power in the hands of basically oligarchs and manipulators who want things always to remain the same. And what it is doing is it's breeding cynicism, which is now a terrifying levels right

across Europe. It's breeding corruption, and that we have to also say. And it is creating a political desert. We have situations like the one we have in Britain where the government's support was always thin and it's collapsing. It's unable to govern in any successful way. The same thing is happening in France because no real political leader can ever emerge out of a process like this.

It's destroying Europe, as you're absolutely right to say. Yeah, because these umbrella coalitions, they don't really have a policy. Their goal is to prevent someone else from governing. That's it. That's their goal. That's all they're good for. They don't have a platform. I mean, whatever you think of national rally or whatever you think of Fidesh or whatever,

at least this is a single unit. It's a party with something that in common that has a policy, that has a policy, that has a platform that has a position. What was it in France? The NFP or whatever, there's no policy. There's no platform there. What happened in Czech Republic

at the elections, the last elections, where they cobbled together five parties. There was no platform of policy there. No. Exactly. Yeah. Well, I mean, again,

and we saw the contrast when we were in Hungary. I mean, you may not agree with everything that Fidesh does. You might not agree with Fidesh. at all. But they have given Hungary a strong and effective government. The result has been economic growth, a rise in living standards, a budget and financial systems under effective control, and effective foreign policy. No European country, France, Germany, all of these countries,

none of them, the Czech Republic that you talked about. Spain, none of them have anything. anything like that, nor can they whilst this system that we've just talked about remains in place. But of course, one entity wins from this, that is Brussels, the EU Centre, as we have talked about many, many times. the EU Centre does not want strong states, led by strong governments and strong leaders. Because if such a thing ever were to happen, inevitably, they would challenge the EU Centre. And the EU Centre doesn't want that in any shape or form. And the EU Centre is instrumental in various ways in creating the situation that you've just described. All right.

We will end the video there. The durand.orgas.com. We are on Rumbleaudetcy, pitch, you, Telegraph, Rockfin, and X. Go to the Duran Shop, pick up some merch like what we are wearing in this video. Update. A link to Duran Shop is in the description box down below. Take care.