And yet, Mélenchon – who is like Macron in one specific way: the widespread rejection he as a person elicits among the French at large – and others in his party insisted that the left would enact “its programme, nothing but the programme, but all of the programme”.
There is just as much contempt for democracy in LFI’s “our way or the highway” approach as there was in Macron’s nomination of Barnier. The difference is that it failed, and Mélenchon’s obstinacy torpedoed the one real shot that the NFP had in governing the country and enacting some portion of its programme – Laurence Tubiana.
But to have a real second chance, it will have to truly break from Mélenchon in the way that the UK’s Labour party broke from Corbyn, and it will have to “get serious” about its economic programme.
It has one of the highest levels of taxation and the highest public spending relative to GDP (57.3 %) in the OECD, an unsustainable budget deficit, and a debt verging on unsustainable as well. When 10.9% of all French state spending currently goes to servicing existing debt, that is a leftwing issue: it means that €52bn a year is not being invested in green energy, sustainable agriculture, university facilities, research and public housing.
size of the hole is smaller than military spending, but i support french desire for first strike on london
France has a modern service and knowledge economy, where more than a fifth of the labour force either works for a small business or is self-employed, and where one of the areas actually growing – tech – requires investors to risk huge amounts of capital for very uncertain future payoffs. The left needs to speak to these people not about what the economy looked like in the 1970s, but about what it is going to look like tomorrow. And yet, in the whole of the NFP’s programme, AI wasn’t mentioned once.
imagine that
Are there ways around this? Undoubtedly. France could, for example, set up a system of public pension funds – modelled on its collection of non-profit health “mutuals” that form the backbone of its well-designed and effective hybrid public-private universal healthcare system – to redistribute market gains back to workers.
Just privatize pensions, nfp, are you nerds?
Cool to blame the left for libs once again pulling a Hindenburg
the fash are just innocent smol beans who can’t be blamed for their awfulness. Unlike those heckin’ chungus leftists who want to nom all the euros and leave the rich as poor hungry boys.
If the left didn’t exist then Hindenburg would have never needed to appoint Hitler.
it will have to truly break from Mélenchon in the way that the UK’s Labour party broke from Corbyn
By mounting baseless attacks of antisemitism to eject him only for him secure his riding as an independent because he’s still more loved and respected than any of your party members?
Liberals: “We were nearly obliterated in recent elections. Clearly this is a sign that we need to be even MORE dogmatic to neoliberal economic and social policies. Liberalism has only failed because True Liberalism® has never been achieved, but you communists need to grow up and abandon your silly utopian fantasy”
the fiscal deficit is too high
maybe higher taxes on the rich if you consider it to be such a problem? (It’s not, France can leave the Euro if it wants)
NNOOOOOOOO THAT’S COMMUNISM
Ah so cut social spending which would totally not increase the deficit because of collapse in demand and tax revenues.So did the coup just succeed?
Its not a coup, it more like macron exposing himself to be more likely to ally with le pen than with leftists.
Are they gonna riot against Macron for stealing the election?
They should just hang macron already
nah, as we can see, they have not acted during olympics, so france is in the domesticated zone until new shenanigans (and money savings time from unions)
nah, after failure to act during olympics, france is in the domesticated zone until new shenanigans
I guess that is what happens when the “popular front” and population who voted for them are all socdemsDon’t get me wrong, they have biggest, most active protests (in the west*) over pension reform. But then it fizzled out, cause they have not crossed the threshold of mass-politics. Then tfw no coherent strategy or support from unions to do more. They’ll recuperate for couple of years, probably miss couple of privatizations and maybe strike again over some working hours reform.
