Their initial aim was to stop Le Pen’s party winning an outright majority, which seemed a likely outcome a week ago. It seems instead their efforts may have handed the initiative to the other extreme of French politics, the far-left.
Mélenchon said the New Popular Front would want to implement its manifesto, including revoking Macron’s controversial pensions reforms and introducing big hikes in the minimum wage.
Disappointing from Politico, I thought they had a good read on politics but it seems they're incompetent enough to not be able to understand the french political landscape: the far left is mostly composed of NPA and LO who are trying to gain power through revolution, not the classic socdem parties playing by the elections rules
Edit : wow thanks for the context, friends, didn't know they had changed owners
Politico was bought years ago by German Axel Springer SE, the producers of trash like BILD and WELT (also a short-lived BILD TV that was designed as a best-of between RT and Fox News). They don't have a clue about french politics, just like they don't have a clue about anything else. All they got is a right-wing desinformation agenda.
They'd be wise to not have Melenchon to be a candidate for Macron's position though, because he still has some actually extreme views. If they can present a more moderate option then that'd be a good step though. Either way, Le Pen lost again, and that's the main goal here.
This was just an election for the French parliament. Macron is president, who is directly elected by the French public. However the next presidential election is in 2027.
Never mind the Holocaust-denying public media-disbanding police-empowering Putin-asskissing Right, the real threat is the pension-giving, minimum wage-setting Left!!
And with any luck they won't successfully manage to leave the entire continent in ruins this time around. Whenever it works, defeating fascists at the ballot feels so easy that it's almost anticlimactic.
Everyone involved with organisation these last months know damn well that it wasn't easy, though. Super proud of the French today! 🇫🇷
Mexico as well, our new president-elect is a physicist, a climate scientist no less, did her PhD training at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory... the very same one we saw the early days of in "Oppenheimer".
Sheinbaum is also a progressive, on paper seems spectacularly qualified for her six-year term as president.
Mexico - particularly the young and working classes - voted in a landslide for her, and gave her a congressional majority on both chambers, to boot.
unless there's some determination of clear majority for any one seat, there's a runoff election 7 days after. the first round was last week, and today was the second round. the far right won more seats last week, but the majority of seats were determined today, which the left took handily. over the past 7 days, the french saw what was happening, and in most cases where there were more than one center/left or left candidates and a far right candidate, one of the left candidates dropped out so as not to split the vote.
Although the projection is better than what I was dreading, it's still not over until the last results are in. With that being said, if these projections are right, the current and upcoming French government should really start thinking about how to combat the far right. Incidentally it's the same task the new Labour government should also do.
The new Labour government is basically the political equivalent of Macron only in some ways further to the Right (for example, they support Israel).
That party is controlled by the neoliberal faction who brought down Corbyn with a smear campaign orchestrated with the Tories and most of the British Press and who have even been busy kicking out from the party any lefties.
There's not a single leftie bone in the leadership of that party and the party is now straightforward Right (per broader European standards, it's not even Center-Right).
If one is in any way for of shape left of center, Britain's Election results isn't anywhere the level of good news that the French Election results are (if the polls are right).
Wow. I was really worried about France this morning. I mean, the far right is still really strong there but I honestly expected them to.get the majority.
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