Is Barnier the new PM or ......

[menthe]

is he the French version of a Tory grandee?

Anyone else thinks as I do on this one?

[anotherbanana]

He is from the Haute Savoie, I think and his hobby is climbing(!). He seems a cold fish, narrow minded, unbending. But he might be able to grease enough palms to hold a government together for a while.

[Harnser]

https://www.ouest-france.fr/politique/michel-barnier-premier-ministre-emmanuel-macron-confirme-son-cap-a-droite-b920893a-6b7e-11ef-87ff-6b83746dd621

 

The head of state has also - and above all - obtained from the National Rally the commitment that he will not censure the future executive, at least not immediately. The RN also says it is waiting for the Prime Minister's general policy speech before Parliament to decide. "Michel Barnier seems to meet the first criterion that we formulated: being able to address the National Rally in a respectful manner," says Marine Le Pen. Who also calls for the establishment of proportional representation in view of the next legislative elections. She also demands that purchasing power, the fight against immigration and insecurity be the government's priorities. So many imperatives also put forward by the right-wing LR, which expects the President to let the executive determine and lead the Nation's policy.

[Noisette]

Interesting to read the first two comments. May I ask what you base your verdicts on? Press and media opinions? Historical evidence? Personally I'll be waiting to see how he actually performs the job before condemning 🙄

Quote

 

 

[menthe]

15 hours ago, anotherbanana said:

He is from the Haute Savoie, I think and his hobby is climbing(!). He seems a cold fish, narrow minded, unbending. But he might be able to grease enough palms to hold a government together for a while.

Wooly, I don't think Haute Savoie, I read Savoie.  That's close enough but I have walked fairly extensively there and I sense some differences.  Haute Savoie has higer mountains, for a start!😆

[menthe]

1 hour ago, Noisette said:

Interesting to read the first two comments. May I ask what you base your verdicts on? Press and media opinions? Historical evidence? Personally I'll be waiting to see how he actually performs the job before condemning 🙄

 

Noisette, if mine is one of your "first two comments", here is my reply.

Firstly, I was looking for a form of words in the title in order to provoke responses.  I do this quite regularly here on the forum....yikes!  I have worked in a limited capacity in one of the biggest advertising agencies in Cardiff (serves me right but I didn't last!)  You had to generate catch-phrases!!!

What I really mean by a Tory grandee is not necessarily pejorative.  I am not thinking about scumbags like Johnson.  I merely mean that Barnier has this air of being in charge as of right, that he is open (but with reservations to all sides of an argument), his manners border on the courtly and he is naturally as reasonable as you could expect of a politician.  He himself has been quoted as claiming that he is not a technocrat but a politician by inclination.

I too am waiting to see what he does in the job.  I am also very pleased that it is him and not, for example, Bardella or Mélenchon.

[anotherbanana]

His danger comes from the nut jobs on the far right and far left. If it is wet today you might like to try and see how he might be censured by the Assemblé Nationale and if it is a real danger.

https://www.lemonde.fr/les-decodeurs/article/2024/09/06/le-gouvernement-barnier-peut-il-echapper-a-la-censure-de-l-assemblee-nationale-testez-notre-simulateur_6305669_4355770.html

[NormanH]

It is remarkable all the same that Macron has named a PM from a party that only has a small number of Députies.

Whatever one's personal preferences  there is no doubt that those who voted for the two largest groups wished for major change, and Macron has gone for the one who will be most likely to continue the  same policies, without being tarred with the brush of being in the last government.

I think there could be major trouble in the streets ahead, a bit like the 'gilets jaunes' and this time with a wide base of sympathetic support

[anotherbanana]

Those who are likely to be in the streets are actually opposed to change, imbued with old fashioned rhetoric

[menthe]

1 hour ago, NormanH said:

It is remarkable all the same that Macron has named a PM from a party that only has a small number of Députies.

Whatever one's personal preferences  there is no doubt that those who voted for the two largest groups wished for major change, and Macron has gone for the one who will be most likely to continue the  same policies, without being tarred with the brush of being in the last government.

I think there could be major trouble in the streets ahead, a bit like the 'gilets jaunes' and this time with a wide base of sympathetic support

Yes, his party has the fewest number of seats amongst the 4 main groupings.  I can imagine the left-leaning group whose solidarity did produce the eventual result and le Pen's lot would be mighty angry.

[NormanH]

1 hour ago, anotherbanana said:

Those who are likely to be in the streets are actually opposed to change, imbued with old fashioned rhetoric

 

1 hour ago, anotherbanana said:

Those who are likely to be in the streets are actually opposed to change, imbued with old fashioned rhetoric

Not only rhetoric!  They also have  a large majority of votes. Add up the numbers of those who voted for the RN and the NFP, as opposed  to the numbers who voted for the government that  was in place. https://www.publicsenat.fr/actualites/politique/legislatives-2024-tous-les-resultats-en-temps-reel

There are echoes of 2005 and the vote on Europe, when the result was ignored.

The question " is democracy in in accepting the result of the vote however distasteful to the powers-that-be,  or riding rough-shot  over the wishes of the electorate?

 

 

[NormanH]

https://www.lefigaro.fr/politique/en-direct-michel-barnier-premier-ministre-le-locataire-de-matignon-deja-au-defi-de-composer-un-gouvernement-20240906

[Noisette]

3 hours ago, NormanH said:

It is remarkable all the same that Macron has named a PM from a party that only has a small number of Députies.

Whatever one's personal preferences  there is no doubt that those who voted for the two largest groups wished for major change, and Macron has gone for the one who will be most likely to continue the  same policies, without being tarred with the brush of being in the last government.

I think there could be major trouble in the streets ahead, a bit like the 'gilets jaunes' and this time with a wide base of sympathetic support

Hmmmm...given France's method of selecting government, I'd say the electorate did what it's done for decades now and voted 'tactically'. Rather pathetic, really, because they end up with nothing more than same old same old and perhaps the smug feeling that they've been rather clever (wrong!).

I'm sure you're right about the discontent, but I would have said that it was widely, sympathetically supported the first time around until the (possibly greased) Press and media managed to discredit the movement.  Would it work the second time around?  Who knows....but I'm proud to be living in a country where at least some of the population make their feelings known, despite a loaded electoral system. Apathy doesn't (yet) rule OK.

[Noisette]

4 hours ago, anotherbanana said:

Those who are likely to be in the streets are actually opposed to change, imbued with old fashioned rhetoric

It depends what you mean by 'change'. If they're 'old-fashioned', perhaps it's a nostalgia for the France of the 60's and 70's when this was a country run for it's people, where it was good to live, where the average citizen wasn't bled dry to feed the greed of the upper 10%, voir upper 1%.

Agreed there's a tendency to call for reform and then oppose the reforms proposed, but that might just be because each proposal leaves Joe public a bit worse off each time?

[anotherbanana]

Aren’t you remembering France through rosé(!) coloured spectacles, Noisette; my memory of visiting in those early days is that there was poverty, low earnings etc, just as there were the rich or those striving to become rich; things are better now, surely?

[Noisette]

I'm remembering the overall impression that I got as an ado in UK, so hardly scientific, 😁 I didn't get to live here until 2007 and I certainly don't think that anyone gets a true 'feel' for a country and it's politics until they live there, and even then many don't care and don't get involved.

Since I've been here, I have experienced life on the sharp end of agricultural poverty and heard lots of first-hand accounts of friends' childhoods and adolescences. Maybe they and I are all victims of rose-coloured spectacle syndrome, but I don't think so. Even in the 17 years I've been here, I'd say that France is simply not the country I knew when I arrived. As for things being better.....that was a joke, right? 🤨

As an aside, thanks for the link you put on a while ago for 'Le Champ Dolent'. That really struck a chord! My maraicher friends didn't know of it, so it was a wonderful bit of nostalgia for them, albeit a bit 'dark'.

[anotherbanana]

I think the spirit of optimism has disappeared, Noisette, as governments have not really delivered on their promises over the years probably because they were never realistic, and the Eu is increasingly disappointing. It is seen as undermining French institutions and culture,mInthink.

Perhaps the seeds of this were sown in Mitterand’s time when he promised a paradise on Earth for France which has not been delivered.