https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/jun/09/eu-europe-elections-2024-results-news-updates-live-latest
I'm absolutely shocked
Almost every country had electronic voting
When will we know the results? Do they have electronic voting?
France lurches to the right
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2024/jun/30/france-election-live-polls-close-marine-le-pen-national-rally-emmanuel-macron
And we were doing even better before 2015
Poland's External Debt per capita is $9,500
Less than Ireland at $63,000
And less than Czechia at €19282 and Slovakia at €15,900
Polands Government Debt per capita is $14,829
Less than Ireland at $47,822
And Less than Slovakia at $16,798 , but more than Czechia which is at $12,208
Again looks like Poland is doing very well.
GDP Per capita in Poland in 2006 was $9.084, so 32% to 2014.
But at what cost? Check how much debt they created in that time per capita….
I got the information from the world bank.
GDP Per capita in 2015 dollars in Poland in 2014 was $12,024
In 2022 that figure had grown to $17,117
Pretty impressive growth in such a short period of time, a 42% rise.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?end=2022&locations=PL&start=1990&view=chart
Figures for Czechia go from $16,951 in 2014 to $20,237 in 2022 (19% rise)
Figures of Slovakia go from $15,600 in 2014 to $18,878 in 2022 (21% rise)
So they've massively outperformed two of their neighbouring countries in that period
Going by that argument. The same can be said of this place.
I have no idea, where are you taking this information from. Maybe from Polish propaganda TV.
Where do you see this massive growth?
But you can't imagine how much money they borrowed outside budget, which grand-grand children will pay for…
Also how much public money they used for their private campaigns, increasing salaries, generally stealing them.
Hasn't the Polish economy grown massively in the last decade or so.Hardly a sign they've ruined the country.
The point you raise here is good one — i.e. the right wingers like Le Pen and Meloni softening over time in contrast to Putin who has consolidated hard power.
The reason for that is that the closer you get to power in a liberal representative democracy the more you are forced to soften. That's because running a democratic country invariably means navigating competing interests and trying to find the right balance. That almost always means that your policies have to be churned through a machine which produces a very diluted version of what you might have sought.
That exists in autocratic systems too, but there's more scope to browbeat and force your wishes upon others — to crush competing interests where you can rather than appease them. In the democratic world, it can make politicians look useless, foolish, deceitful and ineffective — giving room for populists to mock them when it's often the case that the effectiveness of mainstream politics is the victim of the necessary drawbacks of democracy and the Western model of individual rights.
This is why modern populism, of the Trump / Brexit kind etc, has demonstrated that it is at its most potent outside of power — where you can make dramatic promises for radical change. Le Pen has softened because she has gotten closer to power, and if you talk Frexit you have to be seen to walk Frexit, so she has softened on that, and on other things — and likely will have to soften further if and when she gets power
You might find that most Europeans in wide band of countries from Norway to Turkey very much do care about living as slaves in yet another Russian occupation
As for the French they just celebrated 80th anniversary of a bunch of other countries coming to their rescue and liberating them from Nazis 1.0, you might be surprised how many of them are watching with disgust what Nazis 2.0 are doing now out east
I remember a time when Jean Marie Le Pen was considered a total joke … a relic of the Nazi era and more in tune with Vichy France than modern France …. Marine Le Pen has channelled her father's rhetoric and toned down some of it …. but if I was French I would not vote for her or trust her … surely there are other people to vote for if one was not to vote for Macron ….
Putin's Russia has moved very much to the far right in recent years too … Putin himself yes … but more notable in others …. and in Medvedev in particular ….. the current Russian regime can do business with far right regimes in Europe …. and will support them …. this is a more likely situation than the much touted verge of WW3 …. there are more than 1 way to take over your enemies !! ….
But while Putin/Medvedev/Russia can desire and support far right …. it is also true that not everything can be blamed on Russia …. electorates misguided want them or think they do …. far right populists are well able to market themselves and make promises they cannot keep …. and voter apathy has allowed far right regimes into power all over Europe, as well as the US and Iran …. because while others do not vote the far right voters will very much vote !! ….
It is possible … very likely … we could see far right politicians like Le Pen, Jalili and Trump do very well in upcoming elections and become presidents/prime ministers of their countries …. less likely is a Farage win in the UK but who knows? Anything is now possible !! …
Georgia Meloni has moderated her stance for now …. and Wilders too …. but I cannot help but feel they will be emboldened if more of them come into prominence and then they will begin their real agenda …. the only good thing is they become unpopular the more they gain power and the people turn against them ….
By right though the US people should by now be 100% against Trump …. sadly the whole system over there cannot move past this candidate despite how mad and bad he is …. I only hope that common sense prevails ….
When it comes to France if there's no protests, then you should be worried lol
Where's Sarkozy? He's still trying to keep himself out of prison after being convicted of corruption charges.
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/20230517-french-appeals-court-to-give-verdict-in-sarkozy-wiretapping-corruption-case
The last President to get significantly more than Macron in the first round of voting was Mitterand in 1988. Hollande got slightly more. His first round numbers were not disappointing, they were pretty decent.
He increased his share in the first round in his second term is what I said.
Has any French President ever not had protests in the street?
The poster said he increased his first round share in the second election he participated in. He got 24.01% in the 2017 first round and 27.9% in the 2022 first round.
In other words, after five years of his presidency, he convinced even more people to vote for him than the first time around.
Exactly! I thought it was Hilary Clinton there for a second.
I mean, the disappointing numbers of first round votes for his policies, along with protests in the street, widely supported by polling numbers, are kind of a clue.
Nobody argued that he was re-elected because people actively supported his economic policies. One could argue that he was re-elected despite them.
And of course he increased his share in the second round. That's how the system works.
As I explained above, this is not entirely clear. He was elected thanks to the anti far right vote, not because of support for his proposed reforms
There is no reasonable way to make that distinction.
He was the first choice candidate in both Presidential first rounds, and he increased his share in the first round in the second election.
I never claimed otherwise. I merely said that he had a mandate for pension reform which is true. People voted for him and then he did it. It's how a democracy is supposed to work.
This is just the old working class vs elites trope. People choose their politicians and they get the governments they deserve. That article can be summed up in two words: Politicians lie. It's one of the few things everyone can agree on.
The metropolitan elites myth has been done to death. It's no truer now than it has ever been.
This is a very good point. Matthew Syed wrote a very good article about Nigel Farage making a similar argument - that ordinary people vote for him out of fury at how their problems are dismissed by a "superior" political class with little to lose, rather than because they genuinely support racism. https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/farage-is-a-snake-but-if-we-were-honest-on-migration-hed-have-no-fangs-cwqxfshmn
(Irish politicians would do well to heed those warnings before the far right gets a hold here, but sadly it seems they despise ordinary people even more than politicians elsewhere do. Look at how the "official" take on the recent referendum is that the voters were "confused" and didn't really understand the issues.)
He has a democratic mandate to reform pensions
As I explained above, this is not entirely clear. He was elected thanks to the anti far right vote, not because of support for his proposed reforms. He promised at the time that he would take into account the nature of that vote, but then immediately ignored it.
I agree that support for Ukraine vs Russia is pretty rock solid in France. The reason many people are afraid of "boots on the ground" is because of a fear of escalation to nuclear conflict, not because they've lost interest in Ukraine.
No I don't think this is true from my contacts. People do care, very much so - and Macron was an unpopular president despite being re-elected thanks to being able to exploit the "You can't possibly vote for the far right" trump card. That worked both times for him, but at least the first time, there was some enthusiasm about who he might be - he seemed new and promised change. Ukraine was irrelevant in 2017.
Second time out, the invasion had happened but there was little to no disagreement about where France stood on that, especially in the political class. More of an issue was that he actually went out to celebrate in an expensive restaurant after the first round because he knew that going up against Le Pen again in the second round meant virtually certain victory for him. He won but not because he was popular, nor because of Ukraine.
Ukraine is not the issue that most people have against Macron. The pension reforms, more so, because he was elected on an anti far right vote, not on a pension reform one: he said that he woudl listen to those non Macron voters who'd voted against Le Pen rather than for Macron, and then he promptly ignored those voters and oushed his reforms though.
They are more traditional left than far right.
Their economics is very familiar to any left wing party, and even most Christian Democratic parties pre Thatcher and Reagan.
They are a rejection of the idea that the pure unfettered free market is always good and always beneficial.
The people who make up the left and "progressive" movements are people who have disproportionately benefit from the free market.
The working class have disproportionately lost out from it.
Hence parties like these are now the people's movement, the vehicle of the working class.
Terms like left and right are no longer really relevant.
Neither of those are mistakes. He has a democratic mandate to reform pensions and Europeans overwhelmingly support Ukraine. He may have went a bit too far threatening boots on the ground but his solid support is politically wise.
Le Pen is far right, make no mistake. She's just not quite the knuckledragger her father was. That's the only real difference. Meloni is also far right but actually being in government necessitates compromise. Italy can't afford to be a pariah state so a lot of the invective gets ditched. Same thing in the Netherlands. Wilders wanted to leave the EU but that's been dropped.
History clearly shows that the far right benefits nobody but themselves and people like this fella:
Indeed, some risk of course that voters take umbrage to a perceived "when it comes down to it, Monsieur Tout-le-Monde will fall into line" arrogance — but Macron appears to be banking on not allowing months of narrative to build up.
Yes, Macron was such a disaster that he was the first president since Chirac to get re-elected.
Also your man Sarkozy is a) retired from politics, b) probably not that interested in a public role given his multiple corruption convictions.
The benefit, I think, is puncturing expectations about a coming far-right wave. He hopes to show that people will vote for far-right parties in euro elections in numbers that simply won't be replicated in national elections with a change of government at stake. Plus he hopes that the rigours of actually holding any office will take further shine off the Le Pen movement.
The prize here is the next French presidential election. Macron can't stand — there's a two-term max — but he will hope to hand over to a centrist successor, not to Le Pen.
Did Sanchez and his government have three years left to run? I don't believe they had.
From a strategic point, with three years remaining, what is the benefit of remaining in power (if that's his plan), but having a looser grip (the best possible outcome?)?
