The first phase of the French presidential election has completed. The result is that Marine Le Pen – a right wing candidate who has nothing to do with the French “establishment – will duke it out with Emmanuel Macron, who, on paper, started his own socialist party but, in reality, is a tied to current French President Francois Hollande.
It is, however, a virtual certainty that Macron will win this election.
Though he and Ms. Le Pen were very close in the first round of balloting – Macron with 24% of the vote, Le Pen with 21% – the #3 and # 4 candidates, conservative Francois Fillon and leftist Jon-Luc Mélenchon (both at 20%) are supporting Macron.
The reason Francois Fillon is supporting Mr. Macron, a man he has little political commonality with, is that he cannot in good conscience support Ms. Le Pen, whose positions far more to the right than his are – especially on immigration (in a country of 67 million people, she proposes no more than 10,000 legal immigrants in total per year, regardless of where they come from or what their circumstances are).
Marine Le Pen is similar to Donald Trump in that she has risen much higher than expected because people are fed up with where the country is going as politicians conduct “business as usual”. But she is far more a hardliner – and, despite the media mantra about Trump, far more a hard rightist – than Trump ever will be.
It seems very clear that the Le Pen train, which was on an express track until this weekend, has a derailment ahead of it two weeks from now, when the election is finally settled.
I think it probably will be a good deal closer than what the initial polls say (they have Le Pen 24% behind in a 2 person race). But, short of some horrific tragedy (think major terrorist attack), I don’t see how she can overcome the space between them.
Personally? I wish the new French President were someone other than Emmanuel Macron. But I also have to say if he has to beat someone, I’m glad he is beating Marine Le Pen.
can you xplain what is wrong with the following policy???
(in a country of 67 million people, she proposes no more than 10,000 legal immigrants in total per year, regardless of where they come from or what their circumstances are).
Free – Does Le Pen intend to restrict emigration to 10,000 per year also? Post guards add French borders to keep the native French in? My point is that 10,000 is an exceedingly restrictive number.
this isn’t about emigrants.
why does a country have to allow any immigrants???