France election: Marine Le Pen on the brink of power, as Emmanuel Macron's big gamble looks set to fail
French politics has been in turmoil since the president's shock decision to call early parliamentary elections after his party's reverses in the European elections, but if Marine Le Pen's right-wing RN group pull off their expected victory, further turbulence could follow.
After Sunday's election, the polls suggest that her far-right Rassemblement National (RN) will be the biggest winner, even allowing for the curious complexities of the French system.
A left-wing alliance will probably come second with the centre-ground party of President Emmanuel Macron trailing along in third.
Within the walls of mainstream media, these appear to be examples of the three political labels most widely disseminated - left-wing alliance, centre-ground and far-right. It has been noted many times, but this type of commonly used narrative label obscures a drift towards the extreme left which has occurred across the developed world.
Or perhaps not so much a traditional leftward drift but a loss of political oversight over government bureaucracy. Effectively this loss is a drift towards a more totalitarian state where voters no longer have political oversight over any significant aspect of government. Not that voters ever had much oversight, but what there was has almost gone.
The 'far-right' label in this context appears to signify little more than politically organised opposition to that totalitarian drift. As far as voters are concerned, even the political labels no longer work.
5 comments:
Statism and its henchmen, myrmidons, karens and the indoctrinated by teachers and indoctrinated parents ... versus those opposed.
'Labels' can be useful in reducing the amount of thought necessary to address the irregularities of life. But there is a danger that 'labels' can easily be converted into prejudices... and cosy politicians and lazy journalists find it all to easy to use labels as ways of reducing their mental effort.
But what causes my mental indigestion is that some activists also weaponise their own labels as 'evidence' that they are poor misunderstood victims deserving exceptional treatment because they are 'special'.
And in the end 'labels' as social or political weapons loose their effectiveness. Using them exposes the lack of though behind their use and the labels become mere 'filler' words like 'um' and 'ah' (and 'like' :) . Not only do they become ineffective, people don't even hear them.
One significant aspect of the drift (or determined push) towards government by unelected bureaucrat is the perceived loss of legitimacy that it entails. Tyrants would threaten or have you killed or injured if you challenged them, but at least that meant that you knew they took your grievances seriously. Elected politicians had to pretend all the time that they took you seriously, either by dealing with "casework" at the level of the individual, or by appealing to abstract groupings like the "nation", or "class" or "community".
Bureaucrats, however, don't even feign respect. They have no reason to. Our "ruling class" has expanded and now includes thousands - probably millions - of people who are paid to serve us, but clearly don't. And they clearly don't care. Ironically, governments can do more, but lie and treat us with contempt.
I still wonder how far this can go without violent insurrection, perhaps precipitated by something like Net Zero.
James - and rackets, many of them public sector.
DJ - "Not only do they become ineffective, people don't even hear them."
I've just posted something roughly along those lines. Yes some activists do weaponise their own labels as 'evidence' and they don't want to go further than that, their label has settled the matter and they won't hear anything to the contrary, it's screened out.
Sam - "Bureaucrats, however, don't even feign respect. They have no reason to."
Good point, I've a vague and very incomplete post in draft along those lines. It links to the idea that people do things because they can, which isn't enough to explain behaviour, but it does account for a very low barrier against all kinds of hidden mischief. It could be said that the human capacity for evil is in there.
Tammly - if it happens it could build up very rapidly as these things often do. We need something considerably better than Labour to tone down the possibility.
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