The French are realizing their mistake of electing Macron over Le Pen. At least Le Pen would have been capable of doing her own makeup. :lol:
"A summer of scandals" is a slight exaggeration. there have been problems with certain people like Bayrou (dodgy looking from the beginning, however nothing proved yet) having to go, but "A summer of scandals" sounds more like the Trump administration than Macron to me.
Of course Macron's popularity has fallen. Like anybody elected on such a peak, the honeymoon period is over. That's how these things work, d'oh! Electors are notoriously fickle folk.
He has hardly had time to do anything in 100 days. He will be judged further down the line on his performance after a reasonable length of time. He has hardly started.
He was not at all my choice, but he saved us from the potential catastrophes that would have been Fillon or Le Pen, and for that alone he deserves a chance. He claims to be something new in politics, but as we all know, there is really nothing new in anybody's politics. This is like the 1990s UK; what we see is The Third Way, Beyond Left and Right, - the philosophy of British sociologist Anthony Giddens which Tony Blair followed to the letter. If that can bring France a measure of the economic success that was late 90s/early noughties Britain, all well and good. There will be labour strife ahead however: French unions do not want to easily give up the social advantages here that oppressed US workers could never dream of in a million years. Hopefully a middle ground can be found. Certain centre left governments around the world have shown that economic success and social justice can go hand in hand: many Scandiavian administrations over the years, and not least New Labour, who for all its faults, did achieve a measure of that.
Le Pen didn't even get enough deputies to form a parliamentary group and she's largely disappeared from the scene since the election. Infighting with Florian Philipot and her own father being expelled have not done much for the FN's PR machine. Even people who supported her are now largely wary of her Putin brown-nosing, and no, France as a whole doesn't regret not having voted Le Pen. If anything there is the most rising popular support for the far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon - you don't mention him, but then you don't know anything about France.
Macron is too wishy washy centrist for my liking, however, he's what we elected so for the sake of France, I hope his ideas succeed. I actually like some of his ideas and I'm always willing to be proved wrong where I don't; he is at least reasonable, while Le Pen isn't.
There are many interesting analyses out there about the Macron phenomenon, how it's still possible to win an election landslide in Europe from the centre, just how he'll shape up etc. Many interesting analyses indeed. Shame the OP failed to provide us with one.
Thoughts?
Comments?
