The rise of French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen has made a lot of people nervous since, among many other things, she’s in favor of leaving the eurozone, which would pretty much end the common currency. But since polling has shown her making the two-person run-off round but then losing to a mainstream candidate, the euro-elites haven’t seen any reason to panic.
Here, for instance, is a chart based on February polling that shows Le Pen getting the most votes in the first round, but then – when mainstream voters coalesce around her opponent – losing by around 60% – 40%. The establishment gets a bit of a scare but remains firmly in power, no harm no foul.
Then came the past month’s debates in which a previously-overlooked communist candidate named Jean-Luc Mélenchon shook up the major candidates by pointing out how corrupt they all are. Voters liked what they heard and a significant number of them shifted his way.
Mélenchon: Far-leftist surges in French polls, shocking the frontrunners
(France 24) – In a presidential campaign with more twists than a French braid, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s sudden play to become France’s third man — or better — is shaking up the race.With ten days to go before April 23’s first round vote, the colourful, cultured and cantankerous far-leftist has the frontrunners on the defensive.
Suddenly, the grumpy far-leftist — a showman in a Chairman Mao jacket who openly admired late Venezuelan populist leader Hugo Chavez — holds the mantle of France’s most popular politician. In the course of a whirlwind month, the 65-year-old Mélenchon surged nine spots to number one in weekly glossy Paris Match’s opinion poll. A full 68 percent of those surveyed hold “favourable opinions” of the far-left candidate, the poll by the Ifop-Fiducial firm showed.
On some polls, Mélenchon has now bypassed embattled conservative François Fillon for third place in a presidential race that will see the top two advance to the May 7 run-off.
An Ipsos poll on Tuesday put Mélenchon a half-point ahead of Fillon for third place in the race, behind National Front leader Marine Le Pen and the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron. With 18.5 percent, the far-leftist has gleaned 4.5 percent in just two weeks, with Macron and Le Pen tied on 24 percent.
Mélenchon wants to quit NATO, the World Trade Organization, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and block European trade treaties with the United States and Canada. He promises a French referendum on whether to stick with the reworked EU he is pledging to negotiate or leave the bloc altogether.
Here’s a chart from the Washington Post showing just how tight the race for the run-off spots has become:
It’s still unlikely that both Le Pen and Mélenchon will make the run-off, but based on the above chart it’s suddenly possible. This would be the cultural equivalent of a Trump – Bernie Sanders race in the US, but with – believe it or not — even higher stakes because both Le Pen and Mélenchon would threaten the existence of both the euro and the European Union, the world’s biggest economic entity.
So it almost doesn’t matter who wins that run-off. Just the prospect of having one or the other in charge would tank the euro and set off a stampede out of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese bonds, possibly doing irreparable damage to the eurozone before the eventual winner even takes power.
To repeat the theme of this series, when you screw up a country’s finances you take its politics along for the ride. In France, the right feels betrayed by open borders and excessive regulation, the left by an unaccountable elite that always seems to profit at everyone else’s expense. And both sides suffer from soaring debt at every level of society.
So if a fringe candidate doesn’t win this time around, the mainstream will just make an even bigger mess, raising the odds of a fringe victory next a few years hence.
34 thoughts on "Why We’re Ungovernable, Part 17: Europe Gets Its Doomsday Scenario"
I say we should welcome the demise of any group of people who are weak & gullible enough to succumb to guilt inducing PC agendas that allow hordes of foreign savages to ruin their nation and displace them.
Germany, France & Sweden are committing national suicide? Fine! They’re too weak to self preserve!
It’s natures way, even if these policies were pushed by globalists (most of whom are Jews dedicated to their preservation & the destruction of Christian nations).
Wow,……
Didn’t we get the same predictions last November in America?,….All the usual propaganda outlets were predicting a Clinton Victory over Trump!
These same main stream suspects wouldn’t now lie & distort facts in France,…Would they?
Interesting times we live in.
“…if a fringe candidate doesn’t win this time around…”
I would argue that any candidate who wins cannot be a “fringe” candidate. They are the choice of more voters than anyone else.
Does it matter?
The French are perverse people,only perverse people would create the Vichy!
What they do a couple of weeks from now is of no importance because the EU is dying a death inflicted by gigantic leverage & the Euro.
I note that, unsurprisingly, only Le Pen wins the moniker of “far (anything)”. Mélenchon Is rarely identified as “far left”. He’s just the more rational choice, of course. Apparently only nationalists can be extremists.
Boom!
So… Mélenchon thinks Venezuela’s Chavez was great. If the useful idiot French vote for him, they will get their own version of Venezuela – and deservedly so. The only upshot is that it will become such a dump even the Islamofascists will leave in droves.
Guh. France is such a dump. Does it really matter that another socialist-douche will prevail? Will anything change? They’re just delaying the inevitable, and I couldn’t care less. Just wish they’d get it over with. No one wants to watch a 20-year suicide.
I would challenge the concept that: “Guh. France is such a dump”. A most unkind sentiment. IMHO the French have a wonderful concept of ‘life-quality’ as opposed to ‘quantity’ (we call it culture). I have spent many happy times in France and love their way of life; their lanugage and art, their fierce nationalism, their police (complete lack of glaring USA-style flashing, blaring sounds & lights), their attitude toward the English (so long as we TRY to speak French), their wine and gastro-environment/restaurants and bars, their space (they have 2x the land area of UK with approx the same population) and it shows in their roads and countryside outside the August holidays….I could go on, but then I am a Francophile.
I agree. Love France.
You conveniently failed to mention their mind-blowing taxes, and the Muslim influx (including the sale of young N African girls to much older Muslim men in France as their “brides”). Oh, and the unemployment?
But if you fail to distinguish between “visiting as a tourist” and “actually living there,” you’re bound to come up with these ridiculous conclusions. What’s preferable, a country that looks good in photos? or one that has jobs, low taxes, and a genuine future for its children?
I agree, visiting gives one a ‘rose-coloured tint’ to a country and more to the good as I don’t see taxes and unemployment visible or social dysfunction unless I am resident. This makes a holiday so much more enjoyable. I spent 10 years resident in South Africa – a great place to visit – but equally decided not to stay indefinitely for the similar sentiments which you express. I guess you too have forsaken this troubled nation for comparable reasons.?
If that’s the case then the whole western world is gonna go belly up. The future belongs to Russia, China, and maybe perhaps South America.
The French talk big,…but do very little that is grand!
If you like illusions,perceptions & grand declarations…..France is your kind of place!
Absolutely right. At least when the Islamofascists leave, we now have a President who won’t let them come here.