Europe has been unravelling and overextending at the same time with Russia invading Ukraine just at the moment when the French elect their Presidency!
But could Le Pen destroy the central tenant of the EU by fracturing it by ‘fraxit’ instead of ‘Frexit’? What lengths would Le Pen go to, to migrate France or mutate it into a European penal colony through delusional anti-immigration ideology?
It took Brexit 30 years of post-Thatcher to win by consent and not dissent by the British people who had twice the choice in the referendum and through the general election to vote against Brexit but refused to do so! Are the French ready for that level of internal conflict and internecine bickering? Or have they decided to vote for Le Pen instead? But voting for Le Pen ish ideology may have to rest with ironically a sizeable chunk of trade unionist disaffection with the status quo, where blue-collar traditional left-wing vote to win outright against Macron, but who will revert to political type to destroy a Le Pen Presidency!!?? This paradox of social demographics that normally vote according to class lines may preside over a Le Pen victory and a Le Pen defeat controlled by the Left minority in France!! But a Le Pen victory reminds us of recent British political history when the white Norther working-class vote defected to win a Tory Brexit based upon similar fixations about immigration; do the French really want to take a left out of the British patriotic manual of Anglo saxonism?
Shouldn’t this prove alarming to the French who trust their national identity and its proud competitive spirit to absolutely not advocating any British policy on principle alone! It’s also true to say that the same Le Pen voters may welcome a Le Pen victory as a starting pistol to take industrial action within days of the election on principle too! Or has that calculation already been made by Le Pen? Any sense of Trade Union entitlement without a democratic mandate of an electoral nature would revolt a Le Pen Presidency but would also arm it with legitimacy for legal enforcement. Or Le Pen believes she could convert the mass movement of Trade Unions by appealing to the very same sense of victimhood, social injustice, and economic inequality that the predominantly Left-wing egalitarian Trade Unions espouse! How? To reconstitute by misappropriation into a hybrid of entitlement through a ‘collective solidarity’ but with an exclusive self-interest concealing a gravitational ideological shift by solidarity of mutual self-aggrandisement by a psychological inversion that extols the virtues of redistributing wealth to the many but not to a non-sectarian majority!
The White Working Class (WWC) ‘victims’ who may prefer instant activism and its immediate gratification to settle a social vendetta rather than self-sacrifice with a sprinkling of conciliatory patience, social passivity and a side dish of altruism that is totally unrewarded. But that check-out depends on how palatable and how unrealistic failed orthodox egalitarianism is. Loyal selfless and idealistic WWX may still be turned by the gut instinct and centuries of pain compared with a gratifying backlash and vengeful lashing-out against the new kids on the block (Ethnic minorities) who may be joining in the fight against social and racial injustice recently and couldn’t understand WWC ancient moral status and traditions and status. Generation of inaction to redress WWC concerns would only fill the atmosphere full of doubts and suspicions of slow-roll tokenism and limited social inclusion within a wider social and historical context. This may include middle-class 1st, 2nd, 3rd 4th etc ethnic minority Frenchman enjoying all the benefits of being French whilst the WWC may not have done so.
The concept and agenda of Racist conflict getting priority over social class conflict may be so internally destructive to the Left that it might be perceived as an elitist agenda that the Left inhabits whose social class obsession at the expense of all other social issues, ignoring racism, immigration, and post-imperialism; is equally matched by the reverse! An elitist agenda proselytizing racial elitism and its corollary, racism. Rather than excluding, relegating, or marginalizing the issues of immigration, post-colonialism and racism, it prioritises it! How? What? The democratic minority (ethnic Frenchmen) are seen by the Le Pen supporters as either consuming welfare or being elevated into the professions and beyond, leaving the WWC stranded even as the democratic majority, where someone gets mobility at the expense of the WWC. The irony is that the WWC who are so easily persuaded to ‘victimhood status’ accuse the ethnic minorities (who have been displaced by exclusion) of championing a system that is racist to the WWC majority. How does that work? In short, when you project your racism onto someone else do you project your racism on the victim of racism… and then call them racist? A hate crime by projection, where the perpetrator becomes the self-assigned victim?!
The social anxiety may afflict all European societies that have neglected their WWC who tend to have inherited exclusion from social change such as the indigenous communities in France today, and who tend to support socialism, but are we seeing a new phenomenon called the transition from Socialism to Democratic parties to avoid a Leftist meltdown? All the Le Pens of this world offer is a psychological condition and an ideological degenerative disease that aspires to rob ideas and mutate them! But we can clearly demonstrate that Marxists omitted that the ‘Dictatorship of the Proletariat; would lead to a terrifying knife edge that Communism would succeed over the reaction to is; Fascism! It seems that Marx might have known that this risk that would almost flip-flop and drown all of Europe in Nazism, but like some City trader took the risk! Let’s be clear, Dialectical materialism would endanger the world by provoking Fascism! He might have known that the Marxist paradigm would be precarious and reckless, and he conned billions with it!?! He abandoned the world to the ideological extremes for virtually all of the 20th century!! Fascism and Sovietism it seems can’t have one without the other? Is this why the Cold War was unsustainable because Sovietism collapsed because it couldn’t endure without fascism? Was the west too advanced and did its relativist consumer democracy drain the aggression away from Sovietism? So rather than a political version of Capitalism, China’s capitalism is actually a front for Sovietism and Nationalism to plug the gap of the absence of fascism to counter-balance Sovietism, and Le Pen’s role in this ideological earthquake? She provides the European crypto Fascism to prevent Soviet China from meltdown and pave the way for a more orthodox Marxist Soviet generation! Thanks for nothing Le Pen!! Dialectical materialism works for the wrong people!! In fact, it was destined to fail but you didn’t warn us!!
Le Pen could be the Goddess of sectarian division as well as a serial manipulator just to launch and indulge her vice for crypto racism. She’d enjoy the conspiracy of destroying the legitimate honourable Trade Union function which does its job and fits its brief by action to protect and advance its membership’s interests, just like any business extracting maximum advantage over its rivals and maximum profit for its product as well as creating a new more advanced generation of it to meet its future market projections!
So, what if trade unions went on stroke to ensure its product with ‘legitimate reasons and legitimate concerns wouldn’t Le Pen relish a crackdown on the trade unions (TU)? An opportunity to spark and widen a general attach on French life by provocation and intimidation to roll out her lockdown agenda? Machiavellian deviance would give her a way to trump-up excuses to broaden her power base by a crackdown started by martial law to enforce a replication of the Covid lockdown to inure and normalise such severe action.
It is also true to say the same Le Pen voters may welcome a Le Pen victory as a starting pistol to go on strike within days of this election on Principle too! Any Trade Union sense of entitlement for a better deal that is deliberately unrealistic would undermine not just the democratic process but would allow Le Pen to champion an attack on Trade Union power per se! So, any legitimate union function to do its job by action to protect and advance its membership’s interests generally involves a left-wing sense of egalitarianism but that could be reconstituted and misappropriating to a new hybrid of collective solidarity by exclusive self-interest with nationalistic values that would gratify a shift in materialistic status of a self-aggrandizing and ex re-distribution of wealth that would only benefit a sectarian Trade Unionism.
Le Pen does understand the language of hierarchy as well as the anger at unfair ‘under-representation’ as well as the powerlessness of the under-privileged, but she replaces the demands for justice with the justification of sectarian ‘payback time’ or in short, a society built upon social revenge and belligerent socialisation and a twisted restitution without democratic consent! She is both infiltrator of the benign and executor of extremity! This is why the trade unions must block her creating chaos whilst ostensibly working alongside Capitalism and Democracy. But this is not new to the European scene! During the ‘Winter of discontent in 1978/9 in Britain the predominantly white professionals in nursing, teaching, firefighting together with the blue-collar parts of the workforce shared a platform if dissent an strikes (withdrawing one’s labour was actually a legal right ironically won by Labour) which was used as a weapon to strike at the heart of the Labour government to traumatize a nation into enforcing an ‘anti-trade unionist Thatcher government’?? How does that switch and betrayal work? How did strike action get so twisted into using it to prevent others from using it??! Perhaps Le Pen will copy the moral or the ‘Winter of discontent’ (1978/9) by inappropriate repatriation of pre-Socialist anxiety!! But when did Le Pen ever ape Britain?
In hindsight, Thatcherite Britain would’ve always led us to a path of Brexit even if it would take 30 years! But a post-French EU is unthinkable! President Chirac once said to Blair that France was Europe and thus the EU can only properly function with the French! Didn’t people like me vote for Remain to provide a Remain France in the EU rather than a pro-British policy within EU?
France is well located as an ancient kingdom of many regional ethnicities from Gallic Celtic Brittany to German influence in Alsace, to competitive Lyon with Parisian culture, government etc. to the Alpine or Pyrenean elevations, to the Mediterranean southern Riviera contrasted with the western Atlantic – I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point! Suffice to say that France is uniquely placed with many borders with considerable French influence with many fellow EU countries!
If anti EU Le Pen got her way, she would defer to the German influence in any non-Franco EU, just when Anglo-Saxon British influence is over!? It just doesn’t many any political sense! So why give up on being in a fare more influential position that augments and reasserts French continental influence!? It sounds like the sort of nonsense only an Englishman could sand in the baking hot sun for!? Mad dog Englishmen surely shouldn’t be translated into French Policy!!
Economically its estimated 300,000 French working in or around London have benefitted from the absence of the sort of trade union and health and safety interference that is often the affliction of the domestic French economy. So, what happens to your immigration policy Le Pen when an estimated 250,000 French might be compelled (not just threatened in Le Pen law) but to the very Brexit that Le Pen offers to France in recent years?? A post-EU France would tighten-up border restrictions to the South but have to open its borders in the North? Isn’t that a further division that French society would have to suck-up??
Furthermore, image if French domestic traditions, dynasties and trailblazing expertise in the vineyard and the fashion houses (to name just a few of French expertise) may become too expensive and over-taxed domestically? Here’s a hypothetical scenario: instead of the French market what if that French consumer couldn’t afford or compete with exports? What if the UK market swallowed whole French business that were selling at a loss in France? What if the French consumer was dependent on the UK market selling to France French produce and had to defer to UK price setting of its own French product? What commercial poverty trap that would widen the French balance of payments deficit? To export and then import quintessential French produce made worse by having t pay import duty for its produce…from a competitor like the UK!! Welcome to a Le Pen Presidency! A Fraxit not a Frexit? Just how provocative is that! It borders on the paranoiac!!
Let’s fly a few kites here: I do understand that Brexit ended the UK’s connection with the EU by drawing a line on the ex-colonial European colleagues from the low countries to Spain, Portugal via the filter of France, but why do the Le Pen French want to cultivate the EU connection to bring Italy to Spain, Belgium to Scandinavia and Germania to eastern Europe whilst the French economy is abandoned to the Le Pen obsessive parochial nationalism? Why would Le Pen want to give its competitors that advance and leave the French economy behind? Why encourage these competitors and then give away French markets? Whereas a streamlined EU without the over-deliberation of the Britain should enjoy a Remain vote in both EU and Nato issues? Why build a gated anti-progressive community imprisoned by ideology when the very definition of the EU without France is beyond contemplation!? Chirac reminded Blair that France is Europe, so why destroy what the French originally cultivated? Why would a French farmer abandon his very farm that he/she built when it’s harvest time?
To me France is far more than a test-tube Le Pen spawn of mutiny and of ideological non-anger-management whilst blaming an evolving EU as a gateway to deny French ‘purity?’ France isn’t just part of Free open France but is the destination of all Europeans because it is the hub or Europe? So why would you blame France for being popular, Le Pen? Indeed, why pass up a new and exciting opportunity that is an EU without both Covid and the UK? This could make France an economic suntrap, and be the closest to off-loading and investing in a new dawn for Brexiteers across the channel? Why would Le Pen stall France’s recovery from Covid lockdowns? Why not cote for a President who stood up and shunned trump especially when it was time sensitive when just before the US presidential vote? Why do you have to like Macron to vote for him? Why not at least respect him with your vote, not because he’s entitled to it but because in spite of different allegiances or you may not like his personality it says a lot for the man who can, in spite of everything, can still do so! Open for business France is not a Le Pen policy!!
Entitlement through social seniority and white suprematism will still not end social class division which is the real elephant in the room that Le Pen can only disguise as crypto racism that is meant to include and promote the white working classes but actually exclude everyone else?! Doesn’t this cause another society to create another tier of social hierarchy, which is meant to do the opposite, right? Impose and institutionalise cruel inhuman prejudice based upon a delusional distortion of inclusivity when you’re actually excluding everyone else!?! Why pretend that you want a redistribution of wealth when you want to pay for it by impoverishing everyone else? This is actually making class conflict even worse!?! Don’t let Le Pen invade your ballot papers La France! Le Pen’s in effect sanctioning a redistribution of wealth for her supports, that amount to a ‘racial tax’!
But there is more damage that Le Pen can do! Don’t induce the Left in France to ‘legitimate a justification’ to ferment anti-government anti-establishment agendas that it has been nurturing for decades? OKAY this may divide the room and aggravate the Left, but to keep out Le Pen, … so if the Trade Unions seize this opportunity for a dark cloud over the democratic process, although not in power would yield more power than a left-wing president could hope for! So, a Le Pen vote would be potentially a bote for the left-wing puppeteer who actually isn’t even on the ballot paper!>! The Left out of power but in charge??? But has Macron been able to control the Left in a way that confrontational Le Pen could never do? So, Macron has been successful enough to relegate the Left candidate from the ballot! A Macron Presidency us the epitome of the Art of Politics being the Art of the possible but also the Art of defiance against extremism! Now that the EU has ‘dispatched Anglo-Saxon Celtic UK into obscurity (obviously I take a different point of view to that narrative, along the lines of a British vote twice to consent to Brexit) why not distance itself from the USA from the comfort of your European allies? But Britain may have to suck it up until the rest of the world catches up? So, Britain doesn’t just need a sword but also a shield to express independence, whereas Le Pen will only use the stick that she’ll use to beat the shit out of the carrot!
It is very Anglo-Saxon to rejoice in the influence of spin, so it is surprising that apart from the slick suited Macron presidential security detail it is Le Pen who has parachuted in on her single parenthood and her ‘apple pie mom’ image! Some have tried to impress upon her some gender politics as well? Forget the ‘perfect maternal influence’, can you airbrush your all balls out football hooligan like policies out, or are you spinning who and what you represent by subterfuge and ‘spin-sleaze’. Vote for Le Pen and you will be deluged by an era of post truth spin! Remember spin is the Art not of the possible but of the obscure narrative made by concealment that is all absolute! Le Pen may not be able to control even her own now that she’s committed to political spin!
Le Pen may not be able to control even her own backers, and the French always demand strong leadership, and that’s not something that Le Pen can guarantee without being overdependent on those that bank roll her! She is over exposed to political spin in a way that Macron is used to? Youthful experience is not something that you can’t buy, but a strong French President is compulsory!
Here's the law of Spin to all Spin Doctors: Know when common sense or extremism can’t be spun because they are spin proof! Better to embark on a political campaign having plan ‘B’ up your sleeve! What is ‘plan B’ over-simplification or information overload can win votes by the principle of disorientation; spin someone around long enough and they will not be able to find their bearing let along their allegiances! Le Pen is slightly unusual because her Spin Doctors can rearrange your perspectives and rearrange people like me with their fists too! But when did blood sweat and tears not be a large part of political exercise? Now that’s a contradiction that seems to fit all modern societies engaged in planning for the future!
But not for everyone, right Le Pen? You may be eligible to vote today but Le Pen wants to gerrymander by excluding Frenchmen from a French elevation? Is that vote for me and you’ll never vote again? I’ve heard of football fans appropriating songs etc, but this is not what Liverpool FC had in mind! You would have thought in the 21st century that trailblazer countries like France would be extending its influence and not restricting it!?! Isn’t this a bit retro… well actually 19th Century retro? Whilst Le Pen may try and turn back time, she will always remain yesterday’s politician! Macron is looking pretty good now, isn’t he? He has vision enough to preside over the recharged EU and not peer enviously at the UK but trumpet and announce the EU a post-Brexit agenda! That’ll send a message to Putinism, or would you have France erupt in socio political and economic civil war with Le Pen? Let the Anglo-Saxon Celtic British revival run and don’t let an anti EU Le Pen rekindle an EU in the shadow of the UK!
Remember that anglo-saxon French unwritten relationship demands mutual advantage by a keen rivalry which does not include Brits enjoying the turmoil of a hypothetical Le Pen presidency and would prefer France to be in the driving seat in continental Europe without Britain! Unfortunately, Le Pen will always be a back seat driver but never let her get behind the wheel! If Macron wins, he’ll boast that he’s taught Britain a lesson in ‘moderation, national accommodation’ and loyalty that the demographic of Northern white working-class Brexit voters didn’t appear to share, abandoning the Labour party to be at the mercy of Boris! Clearly a consistent France at the heart of the EU allows the UK to leave it in good shape! Like Britain I believe I’m at my best when left to do my own thing under my own steam.
Moreover, I have a backbencher mentality of holding the UK to account but support any bold moves to both sword and shield especially during international crises. Just as Britain is not a desperate life raft adrift on the high seas of anonymity but a self-defining entity and that is a progressive ever evolving identity and it does advocate that you can’t rock the boat when you’re on British terra firma! But Britain still needs France as a trading partner in post Brexit and not a country in political lockdown created by social provocation that legitimates a backlash of social militarisation and economic curfew France!!! Hasn’t France under covid lockdown suffered enough to not impose another social breakdown polarizing and imposing a Le Pen lockdown?
But Brexit has also afforded an opportunity for our PM to confirm Britain’s status as a positive European and assist the defence of Ukraine establishing a precedent of defending a nation state right to sovereignty for Ukraine as Europeans to self-determine their own path free from oppression and invasion! The precedent of our Brexit leader trashes the concept that a Brexit Britain would not fulfil its European responsibilities or would be excluded from EU members in doing so because of a different international relationship would not include Brexit Britain. Indeed, PM Johnson may argue that Britain is in a better Brexit place to be a beacon of solidarity rather than ‘Little Englanders’ in self-imposed isolation due to Brexit; in fact, no harm has befallen Brexit or the EU because of a break-up and a new national direction – political divorce seems to be working for all parties, and the PM is the benefactor of this initial process! Control of one’s borders is something that you don’t have to be a member of the EU for; this may benefit Ukraine when in full recovery when the Russians have gone! Sovereignty transcends official borders with all foreign powers, and we see that in part Ukraine will need our experience of being outside the EU – perhaps we can learn together? Ukraine like Britain may be ahead of the curve on development beyond the parameters of the EU!
Clearly the French presidential election may have illuminated more about Britain than expected! Poor old Jeremy Corbyn must have wished he’d been more candid about Brexit and its possibilities? What a turnaround that would have been of he’d secured more of the pro Brexit vote!?! Boris’ clarity and Corbyn’s information and policy overload to draw a multi-issue manifesto only served to diffuse Labour’s vote in contrast to ‘open, hungry and direct message Toryism! Brexit was decided by national consent twice, let’s hope and pray that the second round of voting in France will be an unambiguous confirmation of new democratic parties that have survived and moved on from Cold War socialism so the continent of Europe can defend itself against extremism without fear and dread of the shadow of the Le Pen’s of this world!. This morning I can confirm that the decency and pragmatism of the French people has prevailed. Thank you, France and congratulations. But the Le Pen vote still concerns me! The ‘spoilt vote’ came in two categories: firstly, the destruction of the ballot paper literally, and secondly, the metaphorical spoilt vote for Le Pen! The latter may have been specifically distinctive in this election because many protested against Macron by voting for Le Pen because there was ‘no way Le Pen could win’ that could have backfired! Or could backfire in the future? A calculated risk that may turn into your worst nightmare, where bravado and rhetoric can tread a very dangerous path, where ultimate political peril resides.