2017 Apr 27 - French Election 2017
This week I thought we’d take a look at France: they take a more laid back approach to life there and are sometimes slow to copy things that the UK did years ago, like modernising employment law or discouraging children from smoking but this week they were quick to crank up the election fever just like us and soon we’re going to have a new French President sworn in – before the UK’s even had a chance to vote. And unlike the UK election, nobody knows who’s going to win the French one. So who are the candidates?
Emmanuel Macron would be the youngest leader since Napoleon. He’s fanatically pro EU and big business which, this being France, means big government, crony capitalism and helping to run the economy into the ground. Think of him maybe as a French David Milliband except with a glass of wine instead of a banana. Unsurprisingly he wants “transformation” which the kind of lazy undefined slogan that people go for these days supposedly and he’s never held public office but he was a former economic advisor for President Hollande which I suppose is like if you were applying for a job as a Theresa May’s hairdresser you let her know that your previous clients were William Hague and Ian Duncan Smith.
Marine Le Pen I think we all know, she’s the populist “Trump” style candidate running on a platform of opposing people who aren’t French enough. Policy wise, she’s the candidate described by the BBC as ‘Far Right’ which, this being France, means by BBC standards she’s to the center left on almost every issue. Workers should have to work less, they should be be paid more and they should be able to retire earlier. In many EU countries they manage to actually achieve this by scamming Germany into bankrolling it but Le Pen is also very anti-EU so I’ve no idea she intends to pay for any of it.
Anyway, overall if you had to compare it to the Westminster election, imagine that on June the 8th you went into your ballot box and the only 2 options on the card were Jeremy Corbyn or Caroline Lucas, except that one of them was also wildly islamophobic for whatever reason.
One last thing, there is one good policy from Macron I think we’d all agree with: namely he’s pledging to cut the size of the French parliament by a third. Maybe that’s one idea that Theresa May might want to think about copying…
Emmanuel Macron would be the youngest leader since Napoleon. He’s fanatically pro EU and big business which, this being France, means big government, crony capitalism and helping to run the economy into the ground. Think of him maybe as a French David Milliband except with a glass of wine instead of a banana. Unsurprisingly he wants “transformation” which the kind of lazy undefined slogan that people go for these days supposedly and he’s never held public office but he was a former economic advisor for President Hollande which I suppose is like if you were applying for a job as a Theresa May’s hairdresser you let her know that your previous clients were William Hague and Ian Duncan Smith.
Marine Le Pen I think we all know, she’s the populist “Trump” style candidate running on a platform of opposing people who aren’t French enough. Policy wise, she’s the candidate described by the BBC as ‘Far Right’ which, this being France, means by BBC standards she’s to the center left on almost every issue. Workers should have to work less, they should be be paid more and they should be able to retire earlier. In many EU countries they manage to actually achieve this by scamming Germany into bankrolling it but Le Pen is also very anti-EU so I’ve no idea she intends to pay for any of it.
Anyway, overall if you had to compare it to the Westminster election, imagine that on June the 8th you went into your ballot box and the only 2 options on the card were Jeremy Corbyn or Caroline Lucas, except that one of them was also wildly islamophobic for whatever reason.
One last thing, there is one good policy from Macron I think we’d all agree with: namely he’s pledging to cut the size of the French parliament by a third. Maybe that’s one idea that Theresa May might want to think about copying…
This week I thought we’d take a look at France: they take a more laid back approach to life there and are sometimes slow to copy things that the UK did years ago, like modernising employment law or discouraging children from smoking but this week they were quick to crank up the election fever just like us and soon we’re going to have a new French President sworn in – before the UK’s even had a chance to vote. And unlike the UK election, nobody knows who’s going to win the French one. S ......