I read earlier this evening that the new variant is concentrated in parts of the S West. And then you see the extraordinarily high R rates in your table all clustered in the M5 corridor from Bristol upwards, far above those in the rest of the country. Clearly that's the focal point of the new variant for now, and those rates mean that it's going to spread out very rapidly to the rest of the country. The new variant is far more virulent than it is being given credit for.
Government inaction today is absolutely breathtaking. Exhortations dont work. These are pleas to idiots who don't give a damn that their failure to do the right thing is going to plunge everyone back into the abyss. For goodness sake, do something effective to get the vaccination programme going again, fast.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I have been to the Algarve twice this summer and never before and the thing that I was most impressed with was the professionalism of waiters. It seems to be a career here. I went to 20 - 30 restaurants and every one was impressive in terms of service. It did help that who I was with was friends with a number of owners I guess.
Amusing to see the logical contortions of those arguing that the Northern Ireland Protocol was indeed a triumph, as claimed at the time by Boris and Frost, precisely because it was so disastrous that it has to be binned now. Chapeau, Brexiteers, that's brilliant
Or Frost saw it what a pile of shite Robbins had left for him, stuck in A16 and decided that dealing with it after the main deal made more sense than holding up the whole lot. And Robbins really did leave behind a complete steaming shitpile across the whole negotiation, not just wrt NI.
Poppycock. Boris had boxed himself in with an entirely self-inflicted and stupid deadline, and wriggled out of it at the last moment by going back to exactly the EU's opening negotiating position which Theresa May had rightly rejected (as had Boris, of course). There are no words strong enough to capture the utter ludicrousness of claiming an agreement is s triumph and then a few months later, having presumably read a summary of it, claiming it's a disaster.
Of course it IS a disaster. All the grown-ups pointed that out at the time, and were reviled for it. To improve things now, we need above all else to rebuild trust and improve relations. Boris and Frost are doing the opposite.
Hold on, if Boris had boxed himself in then how do you reconcile that with the EU agreeing to renegotiate the NI Protocol?
Those views are mutually exclusive, either he boxed himself in and we're stuck with what we have or he didn't and we're able to renegotiate. Given what's going on I'm going to go with the latter. When that renegotiation happens is immaterial, delaying the Brexit deal wasn't viable back then and it would have achieved precisely zero. Only those ardent remainers who wanted to lock the UK into the EU's orbit permanently wanted to keep extending, hoping that Labour would win.
There's no harm in admitting that Frost played the hand he got given very well. He proved in the main deal negotiation that we wouldn't easily settle for the same old repackaged rubbish that Barnier kept going back to like he did with Robbins. Now with the NI protocol he's got a full renegotiation of what everyone agrees was a subpar deal that Robbins signed us up to.
He boxed himself in with his stupid deadline, and signed any old garbage to meet it. Of course any agreement can be renogiated, with.the consent of the other party, and of course the EU, no doubt after intense lobbying by Ireland, are trying to de-dramatise things. They are playing a long game, enjoying the bizarre spectacle of the UK pushing business their way, whilst they wait for sanity to return to the UK.
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Didn't he talk about changes to freedom of movement not so long ago? Not sure that's consistent with him being someone who 'fully supports' it.
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Zemmour is Farage a la Francaise. His job is to push l’Overton window to the right
This is exactly right. And it's starting, Barnier demanding sovereignty be returned from the EU to France is their equivalent of the Tories being rattled by UKIP. Soon it will become a mainstream centre right position that French law be supreme in the land and the people will say "well why isn't it" just as they have done here for decades.
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Spot on - Barnier wants to tweak /reform some aspects of the EU, but remains a keen supporter of it. Can't imagine whose interest it is in to spread fake news about him.
Amusing to see the logical contortions of those arguing that the Northern Ireland Protocol was indeed a triumph, as claimed at the time by Boris and Frost, precisely because it was so disastrous that it has to be binned now. Chapeau, Brexiteers, that's brilliant
Or Frost saw it what a pile of shite Robbins had left for him, stuck in A16 and decided that dealing with it after the main deal made more sense than holding up the whole lot. And Robbins really did leave behind a complete steaming shitpile across the whole negotiation, not just wrt NI.
Poppycock. Boris had boxed himself in with an entirely self-inflicted and stupid deadline, and wriggled out of it at the last moment by going back to exactly the EU's opening negotiating position which Theresa May had rightly rejected (as had Boris, of course). There are no words strong enough to capture the utter ludicrousness of claiming an agreement is s triumph and then a few months later, having presumably read a summary of it, claiming it's a disaster.
Of course it IS a disaster. All the grown-ups pointed that out at the time, and were reviled for it. To improve things now, we need above all else to rebuild trust and improve relations. Boris and Frost are doing the opposite.
May's opening negotiating position didn't have an exit mechanism in it. If we'd signed May's deal the EU would be laughing away suggestions of renegotiations right now.
We don't need trust, we need strength and realpolitik.
The exact opposite is the case. We'd have had all the advantages of the Single Market without any of the financial obligations, and been under zero time pressure. The EU would have been the ones under pressure to do a deal. It was a spectacular triumph of British diplomacy. Thrown away to further the career of a charlatan.
Absolute codswallop. Pure nosnsense.
We'd have been still stuck within the Single Market, but without any Article 50 or any other unilateral exit mechanism to get out of it.
The EU would have had a blank cheque to demand we sign whatever they wanted, or they could keep us trapped within their sphere of influence as a supplicant state stuck in their Market without any say in their rules and any unilateral way out of the trap.
Err, you totally missed the point Do you really think that the EU would be happy to have us as full members of the Single Market without paying a Euro for the privilege?
Yes they'd have been over the moon to have us trapped within their sphere of influence as their pet colony subject to their rules without any say in them and without any exit.
They'd have diminished us into a Hotel California situation where you can check out but you can never leave. They could write whatever rules they wanted and we wouldn't get a say and would have sacrificed away Article 50 so we could never legally choose to leave without a deal again.
I've been trying to work out why the vaccination of the 12-15 year olds is going so slowly.
any ideas would be interesting, but one I just thought of was that number of Booster jabs, 199,000 in a day somebody posted a few hours ago. if correct then are all the people/places that can give Jabs full of booster shots not first doses for the kids?
I assume its not the supply of the jabs as I understand that we have lots of them in a where house.
There's no excuse for the slowness of it. Children in school is almost the perfect situation for doing the vaccinations.
I think the mistake Is not using the large vaccination centres as in the initial vaccination effort, but to try to do a school by school approach. Anecdotally the vaccination teams are surprised by how large some of the schools are. I heard of one school of around 2000 pupils where two vaccinators were supposed to be doing the lot. This was cancelled and not yet rearranged. Using the large sites and getting the kids taken there by parents would probably be working better, even if the idea of doing them in school feels like it should be better.
I've been trying to work out why the vaccination of the 12-15 year olds is going so slowly.
any ideas would be interesting, but one I just thought of was that number of Booster jabs, 199,000 in a day somebody posted a few hours ago. if correct then are all the people/places that can give Jabs full of booster shots not first doses for the kids?
I assume its not the supply of the jabs as I understand that we have lots of them in a where house.
There's no excuse for the slowness of it. Children in school is almost the perfect situation for doing the vaccinations.
If only the post of School Nurse hadn't been abolished, it would be near to ideal.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
In what ways?
Slow, clueless, confused, well meaning but illtrained
I suspect this shortage of good staff is worldwide, why should it not be?
I have terrible trouble getting a bill in spaij and portugal. I use the correct words in the correct language, they nod, and then the bill simply doesn’t appear. It gets embarassing on the third time of asking…
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Didn't he talk about changes to freedom of movement not so long ago? Not sure that's consistent with him being someone who 'fully supports' it.
No he fully supports that . The subject of immigration from countries outside the EU was what he was talking about .
Amusing to see the logical contortions of those arguing that the Northern Ireland Protocol was indeed a triumph, as claimed at the time by Boris and Frost, precisely because it was so disastrous that it has to be binned now. Chapeau, Brexiteers, that's brilliant
Or Frost saw it what a pile of shite Robbins had left for him, stuck in A16 and decided that dealing with it after the main deal made more sense than holding up the whole lot. And Robbins really did leave behind a complete steaming shitpile across the whole negotiation, not just wrt NI.
Poppycock. Boris had boxed himself in with an entirely self-inflicted and stupid deadline, and wriggled out of it at the last moment by going back to exactly the EU's opening negotiating position which Theresa May had rightly rejected (as had Boris, of course). There are no words strong enough to capture the utter ludicrousness of claiming an agreement is s triumph and then a few months later, having presumably read a summary of it, claiming it's a disaster.
Of course it IS a disaster. All the grown-ups pointed that out at the time, and were reviled for it. To improve things now, we need above all else to rebuild trust and improve relations. Boris and Frost are doing the opposite.
Hold on, if Boris had boxed himself in then how do you reconcile that with the EU agreeing to renegotiate the NI Protocol?
Those views are mutually exclusive, either he boxed himself in and we're stuck with what we have or he didn't and we're able to renegotiate. Given what's going on I'm going to go with the latter. When that renegotiation happens is immaterial, delaying the Brexit deal wasn't viable back then and it would have achieved precisely zero. Only those ardent remainers who wanted to lock the UK into the EU's orbit permanently wanted to keep extending, hoping that Labour would win.
There's no harm in admitting that Frost played the hand he got given very well. He proved in the main deal negotiation that we wouldn't easily settle for the same old repackaged rubbish that Barnier kept going back to like he did with Robbins. Now with the NI protocol he's got a full renegotiation of what everyone agrees was a subpar deal that Robbins signed us up to.
He boxed himself in with his stupid deadline, and signed any old garbage to meet it. Of course any agreement can be renogiated, with.the consent of the other party, and of course the EU, no doubt after intense lobbying by Ireland, are trying to de-dramatise things. They are playing a long game, enjoying the bizarre spectacle of the UK pushing business their way, whilst they wait for sanity to return to the UK.
It will be a long wait, but they are patient.
Ireland are pretty much on record saying no renegotiation. Varadker has been warning the EU not to give anything away. This is the commission and the other countries saying "fucks sake just end this shite, we need to work with the UK on so much other shit tell the Irish to shut the fuck up".
The idea that Ireland have been lobbying to reopen the protocol is laughable and that you're suggesting it shows how far removed you are from reality on this.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
In what ways?
Slow, clueless, confused, well meaning but illtrained
I suspect this shortage of good staff is worldwide, why should it not be?
So where did the good staff go to ?
Better opportunities discovered through covid ?
Anyway I've not noticed any difference in service which means that either tourism areas had better than average staff before or worse than average staff now.
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Didn't he talk about changes to freedom of movement not so long ago? Not sure that's consistent with him being someone who 'fully supports' it.
No he fully supports that . The subject of immigration from countries outside the EU was what he was talking about .
Ah right, he wants to make EU immigration policy even more discriminatory than it already is.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Didn't he talk about changes to freedom of movement not so long ago? Not sure that's consistent with him being someone who 'fully supports' it.
No he fully supports that . The subject of immigration from countries outside the EU was what he was talking about .
In practice the two aren't so easy to separate, so once you begin the conversation it leads to questioning EU free movement too.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
In what ways?
Slow, clueless, confused, well meaning but illtrained
I suspect this shortage of good staff is worldwide, why should it not be?
So where did the good staff go to ?
Better opportunities discovered through covid ?
Anyway I've not noticed any difference in service which means that either tourism areas had better than average staff before or worse than average staff now.
A good waiter or waitress is a ultimately a good employee. They'll probably also make for good office managers or other admin people and that is a 9-5 role with no late nights or dealing with customers.
Amusing to see the logical contortions of those arguing that the Northern Ireland Protocol was indeed a triumph, as claimed at the time by Boris and Frost, precisely because it was so disastrous that it has to be binned now. Chapeau, Brexiteers, that's brilliant
Or Frost saw it what a pile of shite Robbins had left for him, stuck in A16 and decided that dealing with it after the main deal made more sense than holding up the whole lot. And Robbins really did leave behind a complete steaming shitpile across the whole negotiation, not just wrt NI.
Poppycock. Boris had boxed himself in with an entirely self-inflicted and stupid deadline, and wriggled out of it at the last moment by going back to exactly the EU's opening negotiating position which Theresa May had rightly rejected (as had Boris, of course). There are no words strong enough to capture the utter ludicrousness of claiming an agreement is s triumph and then a few months later, having presumably read a summary of it, claiming it's a disaster.
Of course it IS a disaster. All the grown-ups pointed that out at the time, and were reviled for it. To improve things now, we need above all else to rebuild trust and improve relations. Boris and Frost are doing the opposite.
May's opening negotiating position didn't have an exit mechanism in it. If we'd signed May's deal the EU would be laughing away suggestions of renegotiations right now.
We don't need trust, we need strength and realpolitik.
The exact opposite is the case. We'd have had all the advantages of the Single Market without any of the financial obligations, and been under zero time pressure. The EU would have been the ones under pressure to do a deal. It was a spectacular triumph of British diplomacy. Thrown away to further the career of a charlatan.
And this is why you're so very, very upset. You wanted to tie the UK into the EU's orbit permanently. Frost has smashed your dreams, permanently. We've left the EU and left its orbit entirely. Brexit has seen an end to any real EU influence over the UK. The EU would have been under precisely zero pressure to deal. It would have got everything it wanted from the UK which would be permanently tied into its rules and regulations with zero say in them with no way out.
Over time the EU will simply become a less important place, it's already started and the French outbursts against the UK and other countries is their realisation of how irrelevant they are becoming. The EU diminishes the countries inside it, it isn't a force multiplier, it's a detractor.
Err, I really think you shouldn't be so stupid. Of course I don't want anything of the sort, but the EU is there, right next to is, supplying 40% of our food and overwhelmingly being our export market. And it's a regulatory superpower, the biggest in the world in terms of regulatory influence (except in finance). We can't pretend it doesn't exist.
I'm not upset for abstract reasons, but because this government's ideological lunacy is so disastrous for business. Conservatives used to care about that.
Amusing to see the logical contortions of those arguing that the Northern Ireland Protocol was indeed a triumph, as claimed at the time by Boris and Frost, precisely because it was so disastrous that it has to be binned now. Chapeau, Brexiteers, that's brilliant
Or Frost saw it what a pile of shite Robbins had left for him, stuck in A16 and decided that dealing with it after the main deal made more sense than holding up the whole lot. And Robbins really did leave behind a complete steaming shitpile across the whole negotiation, not just wrt NI.
Poppycock. Boris had boxed himself in with an entirely self-inflicted and stupid deadline, and wriggled out of it at the last moment by going back to exactly the EU's opening negotiating position which Theresa May had rightly rejected (as had Boris, of course). There are no words strong enough to capture the utter ludicrousness of claiming an agreement is s triumph and then a few months later, having presumably read a summary of it, claiming it's a disaster.
Of course it IS a disaster. All the grown-ups pointed that out at the time, and were reviled for it. To improve things now, we need above all else to rebuild trust and improve relations. Boris and Frost are doing the opposite.
May's opening negotiating position didn't have an exit mechanism in it. If we'd signed May's deal the EU would be laughing away suggestions of renegotiations right now.
We don't need trust, we need strength and realpolitik.
The exact opposite is the case. We'd have had all the advantages of the Single Market without any of the financial obligations, and been under zero time pressure. The EU would have been the ones under pressure to do a deal. It was a spectacular triumph of British diplomacy. Thrown away to further the career of a charlatan.
And this is why you're so very, very upset. You wanted to tie the UK into the EU's orbit permanently. Frost has smashed your dreams, permanently. We've left the EU and left its orbit entirely. Brexit has seen an end to any real EU influence over the UK. The EU would have been under precisely zero pressure to deal. It would have got everything it wanted from the UK which would be permanently tied into its rules and regulations with zero say in them with no way out.
Over time the EU will simply become a less important place, it's already started and the French outbursts against the UK and other countries is their realisation of how irrelevant they are becoming. The EU diminishes the countries inside it, it isn't a force multiplier, it's a detractor.
Err, I really think you shouldn't be so stupid. Of course I don't want anything of the sort, but the EU is there, right next to is, supplying 40% of our food and overwhelmingly being our export market. And it's a regulatory superpower, the biggest in the world in terms of regulatory influence (except in finance). We can't pretend it doesn't exist.
I'm not upset for abstract reasons, but because this government's ideological lunacy is so disastrous for business. Conservatives used to care about that.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Amusing to see the logical contortions of those arguing that the Northern Ireland Protocol was indeed a triumph, as claimed at the time by Boris and Frost, precisely because it was so disastrous that it has to be binned now. Chapeau, Brexiteers, that's brilliant
Or Frost saw it what a pile of shite Robbins had left for him, stuck in A16 and decided that dealing with it after the main deal made more sense than holding up the whole lot. And Robbins really did leave behind a complete steaming shitpile across the whole negotiation, not just wrt NI.
Poppycock. Boris had boxed himself in with an entirely self-inflicted and stupid deadline, and wriggled out of it at the last moment by going back to exactly the EU's opening negotiating position which Theresa May had rightly rejected (as had Boris, of course). There are no words strong enough to capture the utter ludicrousness of claiming an agreement is s triumph and then a few months later, having presumably read a summary of it, claiming it's a disaster.
Of course it IS a disaster. All the grown-ups pointed that out at the time, and were reviled for it. To improve things now, we need above all else to rebuild trust and improve relations. Boris and Frost are doing the opposite.
Hold on, if Boris had boxed himself in then how do you reconcile that with the EU agreeing to renegotiate the NI Protocol?
Those views are mutually exclusive, either he boxed himself in and we're stuck with what we have or he didn't and we're able to renegotiate. Given what's going on I'm going to go with the latter. When that renegotiation happens is immaterial, delaying the Brexit deal wasn't viable back then and it would have achieved precisely zero. Only those ardent remainers who wanted to lock the UK into the EU's orbit permanently wanted to keep extending, hoping that Labour would win.
There's no harm in admitting that Frost played the hand he got given very well. He proved in the main deal negotiation that we wouldn't easily settle for the same old repackaged rubbish that Barnier kept going back to like he did with Robbins. Now with the NI protocol he's got a full renegotiation of what everyone agrees was a subpar deal that Robbins signed us up to.
He boxed himself in with his stupid deadline, and signed any old garbage to meet it. Of course any agreement can be renogiated, with.the consent of the other party, and of course the EU, no doubt after intense lobbying by Ireland, are trying to de-dramatise things. They are playing a long game, enjoying the bizarre spectacle of the UK pushing business their way, whilst they wait for sanity to return to the UK.
It will be a long wait, but they are patient.
Ireland are pretty much on record saying no renegotiation. Varadker has been warning the EU not to give anything away. This is the commission and the other countries saying "fucks sake just end this shite, we need to work with the UK on so much other shit tell the Irish to shut the fuck up".
The idea that Ireland have been lobbying to reopen the protocol is laughable and that you're suggesting it shows how far removed you are from reality on this.
Which bit of 'de-dramatise' did you fail to understand?
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Didn't he talk about changes to freedom of movement not so long ago? Not sure that's consistent with him being someone who 'fully supports' it.
My guess, FWIW, is that there is close to a majority position in the EU to return freedom of movement back to what it was pre-Maastricht. That is, you could go to another EU country and work, but that there was no presumption of benefits.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Oh well. that didn't last long then.
It didn’t last at all. ‘Remoaner’ is a highly useful term and we all know what it means, and the type of person it describes
For balance, I think ‘ukipper’ is also useful. We know what it identifies
‘Gammon’ I find mildly offensive. Because it refers to skin colour and that is just not a good idea, ever
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I love France, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet still find the Mediterranean system of bars bizarrely alien. Why would I want to wait at least ten minutes for a drink (via waitress) then a further 15 minutes to pay the bill so I can leave? Just back from sunny Spain, where the sunshine was very welcome but the bars would have been vastly improved by bar service!
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Not only is it an insult it means any remainer no matter how accepting of the result will view any post with that term as biased so ignored. It is like any post that refers to Bliar or LieDums or the Nasty Party. One just assumes the post should be ignored because the language shows bias.
They are remainers even if extreme in their views. Regarding the other examples they are Blair, LibDems and Tories. The argument is stronger if insults aren't used.
An update on Emma Raducanu watch. Bromley Council took 40 minutes on Monday to decide not to make her a freeman (freewoman?) of Bromley Borough, seemingly on the basis that it was proposed by the Labour group and the Tories therefore refused to support it.
Should we lay Emma for SPotY then, if she will receive no votes from Conservatives south of the river?
As good as her win was at the US open, and it was, Cameron Norrie’s win at the ‘fifth slam’ runs it pretty close.
Yes, Norrie's Indian Wells win Monday further complicates the task of those drawing up the SPotY shortlist.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
In what ways?
Slow, clueless, confused, well meaning but illtrained
I suspect this shortage of good staff is worldwide, why should it not be?
I have terrible trouble getting a bill in spaij and portugal. I use the correct words in the correct language, they nod, and then the bill simply doesn’t appear. It gets embarassing on the third time of asking…
I just had to ask for some nuts with my wine FOUR TIMES. In a swish popular upmarket bar in faro on the algarve by the Marina. This didn’t happen 3 years ago
It is, of course, the most trivial of problems, but I have noticed the same inept service in posh london bars recently.
My guess is a lot of highly trained people have left hospitality during covid, and they have recruited a load of kids in desperation. Hey ho. It’s still a beautiful evening on the algarve and the Douro wine is still fine. And cheap
An update on Emma Raducanu watch. Bromley Council took 40 minutes on Monday to decide not to make her a freeman (freewoman?) of Bromley Borough, seemingly on the basis that it was proposed by the Labour group and the Tories therefore refused to support it.
Should we lay Emma for SPotY then, if she will receive no votes from Conservatives south of the river?
As good as her win was at the US open, and it was, Cameron Norrie’s win at the ‘fifth slam’ runs it pretty close.
Yes, Norrie's Indian Wells win Monday further complicates the task of those drawing up the SPotY shortlist.
I think the general publics ignorance about tennis means he won’t cut through in the same way, and her win was truly astounding. But yes the spoty long list to short list full will be tricky.
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Didn't he talk about changes to freedom of movement not so long ago? Not sure that's consistent with him being someone who 'fully supports' it.
No he fully supports that . The subject of immigration from countries outside the EU was what he was talking about .
In practice the two aren't so easy to separate, so once you begin the conversation it leads to questioning EU free movement too.
A disturbing proportion on the continent (and a few here) don’t really consider freedom of movement to be immigration as such, because the people moving are white.
Oh God not the CPTPP again . This is a non starter for a host of reasons but bizarrely keeps being banded about .
What reasons?
I mean, I know it's called "Pacific", but the reality is that it's a sensibly organised free trade agreement, with lots of large markets in. It's not a gamechanger, of course, because the UK is organising bilateral FTAs with a number of the players already, but it would put the UK inside a decent multinational free trade agreement, that will probably continue to add countries over the years. Indeed, it makes a good counterpoint to the overly centralised, political project that is the EU.
Now, there are issues with it. For a start, there's relatively little provision for mutual recognition of professional standards for our services industries. There is no requirement for countries to allow British banks to get banking licenses, or law firms to be allowed to do business. We'd probably also find ourselves annoyed that some of the dispute resolution mechanisms lacked teeth.
But it's still a good, workable set of agreements, and a great alternative template for the world.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Not only is it an insult it means any remainer no matter how accepting of the result will view any post with that term as biased so ignored. It is like any post that refers to Bliar or LieDums or the Nasty Party. One just assumes the post should be ignored because the language shows bias.
That’s why I specifically say REMOANER. Not Remainer. A Remoaner is someone so obsessed and upset by Brexit they were prepared to overturn democracy to thwart it, and they are still banging on about it
Yes it is a harsh term but what Remoaners proposed to do was crazy and evil
Remainers are entirely different. They regret the referendum result but they accept it. There are many like that on here. I respect them. As I respect any Democrat. I do not respect Remoaners
Oh God not the CPTPP again . This is a non starter for a host of reasons but bizarrely keeps being banded about .
Explain why if you can
The thing I really don't get about us joining CPTPP is won't they have to rename it? Like call it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific and a bit of Europe Partnership?
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Not only is it an insult it means any remainer no matter how accepting of the result will view any post with that term as biased so ignored. It is like any post that refers to Bliar or LieDums or the Nasty Party. One just assumes the post should be ignored because the language shows bias.
As a portmanteau Remoaner refers to a subset of Remainer who is so bitter that all they do is moan.
See the response to the post above about the trade deal with New Zealand or the CPTPP, or the link, there's a certain subset that even to good news just wants to moan about how we left Europe.
Not all Remainers are Remoaners. William, Big G and plenty of others have accepted the result with grace and dignity. Mr Nabavi not so much, and Rochdale is a born again Remoaner.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
In what ways?
Slow, clueless, confused, well meaning but illtrained
I suspect this shortage of good staff is worldwide, why should it not be?
I have terrible trouble getting a bill in spaij and portugal. I use the correct words in the correct language, they nod, and then the bill simply doesn’t appear. It gets embarassing on the third time of asking…
I just had to ask for some nuts with my wine FOUR TIMES. In a swish popular upmarket bar in faro on the algarve by the Marina. This didn’t happen 3 years ago
It is, of course, the most trivial of problems, but I have noticed the same inept service in posh london bars recently.
My guess is a lot of highly trained people have left hospitality during covid, and they have recruited a load of kids in desperation. Hey ho. It’s still a beautiful evening on the algarve and the Douro wine is still fine. And cheap
By the way, if you haven’t been to Porto, it’s fucking lovely. On the feast of St George, everyone goes out into the streets and hits each other over the head with soft plastic hammers. A modern tradition, and God knows why. There is also one of the world’s nicest train rides into Pinhão in the interior.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I love France, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet still find the Mediterranean system of bars bizarrely alien. Why would I want to wait at least ten minutes for a drink (via waitress) then a further 15 minutes to pay the bill so I can leave? Just back from sunny Spain, where the sunshine was very welcome but the bars would have been vastly improved by bar service!
Ironically, the best service I’ve had in weeks was Luton airport pub, about 4 hours ago.
A qr code on the table. You order from the table via the code. Your booze appears in 3 minutes. Magic
Oh God not the CPTPP again . This is a non starter for a host of reasons but bizarrely keeps being banded about .
Explain why if you can
The thing I really don't get about us joining CPTPP is won't they have to rename it? Like call it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific and a bit of Europe Partnership?
Strictly (and as mentioned On University Challenge on Monday) we still have territories in the Pacific.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
In what ways?
Slow, clueless, confused, well meaning but illtrained
I suspect this shortage of good staff is worldwide, why should it not be?
I have terrible trouble getting a bill in spaij and portugal. I use the correct words in the correct language, they nod, and then the bill simply doesn’t appear. It gets embarassing on the third time of asking…
I just had to ask for some nuts with my wine FOUR TIMES. In a swish popular upmarket bar in faro on the algarve by the Marina. This didn’t happen 3 years ago
It is, of course, the most trivial of problems, but I have noticed the same inept service in posh london bars recently.
My guess is a lot of highly trained people have left hospitality during covid, and they have recruited a load of kids in desperation. Hey ho. It’s still a beautiful evening on the algarve and the Douro wine is still fine. And cheap
You being singled out for 'special' service Leon? Maybe it's those Union Jack shorts.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Not only is it an insult it means any remainer no matter how accepting of the result will view any post with that term as biased so ignored. It is like any post that refers to Bliar or LieDums or the Nasty Party. One just assumes the post should be ignored because the language shows bias.
As a portmanteau Remoaner refers to a subset of Remainer who is so bitter that all they do is moan.
See the response to the post above about the trade deal with New Zealand or the CPTPP, or the link, there's a certain subset that even to good news just wants to moan about how we left Europe.
Not all Remainers are Remoaners. William, Big G and plenty of others have accepted the result with grace and dignity. Mr Nabavi not so much, and Rochdale is a born again Remoaner.
I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from totally misrepresenting my views. I have always accepted the referendum result. It was a mistake, of course, but that's what was decided. In any case there's no going back.
Oh God not the CPTPP again . This is a non starter for a host of reasons but bizarrely keeps being banded about .
Explain why if you can
The thing I really don't get about us joining CPTPP is won't they have to rename it? Like call it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific and a bit of Europe Partnership?
Strictly (and as mentioned On University Challenge on Monday) we still have territories in the Pacific.
Will we need a referendum of Pitcairn islanders to join?
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
I think Remoaner is much less nasty than traitor/quisling; that implies that you think the counterpart is a criminal and possibly ought to be executed. Remoaner is merely childishly derisive. But FWIW kjh is right that it devalues whatever you're saying because a glance at the word suggests the message is going to be a sneer, so why bother to read it? In the same way, I never bother to read malcolmG, since he's always sneering about somebody, and that's just boring. Revoker could be the non-derisive equivalent if you really mean someone who wants to reverse the referendum (lots of people grumble about Brexit without actually favouring revoking the referendum).
I think you're often interesting, funny and thought-provoking, if occasionally disturbing, so it's a pity if you put people off from reading your stuff by being sneery. But I don't think it's offensive.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
In what ways?
Slow, clueless, confused, well meaning but illtrained
I suspect this shortage of good staff is worldwide, why should it not be?
I have terrible trouble getting a bill in spaij and portugal. I use the correct words in the correct language, they nod, and then the bill simply doesn’t appear. It gets embarassing on the third time of asking…
I just had to ask for some nuts with my wine FOUR TIMES. In a swish popular upmarket bar in faro on the algarve by the Marina. This didn’t happen 3 years ago
It is, of course, the most trivial of problems, but I have noticed the same inept service in posh london bars recently.
My guess is a lot of highly trained people have left hospitality during covid, and they have recruited a load of kids in desperation. Hey ho. It’s still a beautiful evening on the algarve and the Douro wine is still fine. And cheap
By the way, if you haven’t been to Porto, it’s fucking lovely. On the feast of St George, everyone goes out into the streets and hits each other over the head with soft plastic hammers. A modern tradition, and God knows why. There is also one of the world’s nicest train rides into Pinhão in the interior.
I know Porto well. I went there with a stunning girlfriend about 7 years ago. We got a boat up the river to a 5 star hotel where we made our own blend of wine
Oh God not the CPTPP again . This is a non starter for a host of reasons but bizarrely keeps being banded about .
Explain why if you can
The thing I really don't get about us joining CPTPP is won't they have to rename it? Like call it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific and a bit of Europe Partnership?
The CPP is less of a mouthful anyway. I can certainly see this framework becoming THE framework for world trade, as a neutral environment that avoids either EU or US or Chinese dominance.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Not only is it an insult it means any remainer no matter how accepting of the result will view any post with that term as biased so ignored. It is like any post that refers to Bliar or LieDums or the Nasty Party. One just assumes the post should be ignored because the language shows bias.
That’s why I specifically say REMOANER. Not Remainer. A Remoaner is someone so obsessed and upset by Brexit they were prepared to overturn democracy to thwart it, and they are still banging on about it
Yes it is a harsh term but what Remoaners proposed to do was crazy and evil
Remainers are entirely different. They regret the referendum result but they accept it. There are many like that on here. I respect them. As I respect any Democrat. I do not respect Remoaners
Yes but by just using the term you are simply insulting people without qualification. You are insulting all remainers by using that term regardless if you think it is just a subset. Eg if you say LibDum that is an insult and devalues the post . If you say you think the LibDems are lying and or stupid because of whatever reason that is not insulting.
I hope you can see the difference. It is true for any generalised insult. The fact that several people find it insulting is the giveaway.
Oh God not the CPTPP again . This is a non starter for a host of reasons but bizarrely keeps being banded about .
Explain why if you can
The thing I really don't get about us joining CPTPP is won't they have to rename it? Like call it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific and a bit of Europe Partnership?
I don't see why - the Eurovision Song Contest isn't called the EuroAusIsraelivision Song Contest.
Oh God not the CPTPP again . This is a non starter for a host of reasons but bizarrely keeps being banded about .
Explain why if you can
The thing I really don't get about us joining CPTPP is won't they have to rename it? Like call it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific and a bit of Europe Partnership?
Easy, we can just move the capital to the Pitcairns.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
I think Remoaner is much less nasty than traitor/quisling; that implies that you think the counterpart is a criminal and possibly ought to be executed. Remoaner is merely childishly derisive. But FWIW kjh is right that it devalues whatever you're saying because a glance at the word suggests the message is going to be a sneer, so why bother to read it? In the same way, I never bother to read malcolmG, since he's always sneering about somebody, and that's just boring. Revoker could be the non-derisive equivalent if you really mean someone who wants to reverse the referendum (lots of people grumble about Brexit without actually favouring revoking the referendum).
I think you're often interesting, funny and thought-provoking, if occasionally disturbing, so it's a pity if you put people off from reading your stuff by being sneery. But I don't think it's offensive.
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Didn't he talk about changes to freedom of movement not so long ago? Not sure that's consistent with him being someone who 'fully supports' it.
My guess, FWIW, is that there is close to a majority position in the EU to return freedom of movement back to what it was pre-Maastricht. That is, you could go to another EU country and work, but that there was no presumption of benefits.
Even if there was, once it had been done for a year or so, people would realise it wasn't enough to address mass immigration of low skilled people depressing local wages.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Not only is it an insult it means any remainer no matter how accepting of the result will view any post with that term as biased so ignored. It is like any post that refers to Bliar or LieDums or the Nasty Party. One just assumes the post should be ignored because the language shows bias.
As a portmanteau Remoaner refers to a subset of Remainer who is so bitter that all they do is moan.
See the response to the post above about the trade deal with New Zealand or the CPTPP, or the link, there's a certain subset that even to good news just wants to moan about how we left Europe.
Not all Remainers are Remoaners. William, Big G and plenty of others have accepted the result with grace and dignity. Mr Nabavi not so much, and Rochdale is a born again Remoaner.
Yes Rochdale is the worst of all possible worlds: a Brexiteer-cum-hypocritical-Remoaner.
At least the other Leavers on here have the courage of their convictions.
I’m a Remainer that is just bored of it all. I just want it to go away!
Oh God not the CPTPP again . This is a non starter for a host of reasons but bizarrely keeps being banded about .
Explain why if you can
The thing I really don't get about us joining CPTPP is won't they have to rename it? Like call it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific and a bit of Europe Partnership?
Strictly (and as mentioned On University Challenge on Monday) we still have territories in the Pacific.
Didn't Churchill want us to be involved in a Pacific agreement at the time (which became ANZUS) precisely using that logic?
But the Americans didn't want us involved because that would complicate matters regarding the French and others.
Between AUKUS and this, the UK is righting what Churchill considered a snub. I wonder if anyone near the top of Government has ever studied Churchill's biography?
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Didn't he talk about changes to freedom of movement not so long ago? Not sure that's consistent with him being someone who 'fully supports' it.
My guess, FWIW, is that there is close to a majority position in the EU to return freedom of movement back to what it was pre-Maastricht. That is, you could go to another EU country and work, but that there was no presumption of benefits.
Even if there was, once it had been done for a year or so, people would realise it wasn't enough to address mass immigration of low skilled people depressing local wages.
Maybe, maybe not.
But there isn't an unlimited number of low skilled people leaving Eastern Europe. The UK, even before Brexit, was seeing net outflows of people from the EU8.
Oh God not the CPTPP again . This is a non starter for a host of reasons but bizarrely keeps being banded about .
Explain why if you can
The thing I really don't get about us joining CPTPP is won't they have to rename it? Like call it the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific and a bit of Europe Partnership?
Strictly (and as mentioned On University Challenge on Monday) we still have territories in the Pacific.
Didn't Churchill want us to be involved in a Pacific agreement at the time (which became ANZUS) precisely using that logic?
But the Americans didn't want us involved because that would complicate matters regarding the French and others.
Between AUKUS and this, the UK is righting what Churchill considered a snub. I wonder if anyone near the top of Government has ever studied Churchill's biography?
The report tonight says that this deal together with the Australian and Japan deals clears the way towards full membership of CPTPP by the end of 2022
And the two complaining tonight are Sturgeon and Thornberry FBPE
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I love France, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet still find the Mediterranean system of bars bizarrely alien. Why would I want to wait at least ten minutes for a drink (via waitress) then a further 15 minutes to pay the bill so I can leave? Just back from sunny Spain, where the sunshine was very welcome but the bars would have been vastly improved by bar service!
Ironically, the best service I’ve had in weeks was Luton airport pub, about 4 hours ago.
A qr code on the table. You order from the table via the code. Your booze appears in 3 minutes. Magic
Sure - although that involves using a bar ‘app’, which is clearly out of the question.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Not only is it an insult it means any remainer no matter how accepting of the result will view any post with that term as biased so ignored. It is like any post that refers to Bliar or LieDums or the Nasty Party. One just assumes the post should be ignored because the language shows bias.
That’s why I specifically say REMOANER. Not Remainer. A Remoaner is someone so obsessed and upset by Brexit they were prepared to overturn democracy to thwart it, and they are still banging on about it
Yes it is a harsh term but what Remoaners proposed to do was crazy and evil
Remainers are entirely different. They regret the referendum result but they accept it. There are many like that on here. I respect them. As I respect any Democrat. I do not respect Remoaners
Yes but by just using the term you are simply insulting people without qualification. You are insulting all remainers by using that term regardless if you think it is just a subset. Eg if you say LibDum that is an insult and devalues the post . If you say you think the LibDems are lying and or stupid because of whatever reason that is not insulting.
I hope you can see the difference. It is true for any generalised insult. The fact that several people find it insulting is the giveaway.
For the last time, I use the word Remoaner specifically, and with precise intent. I genuinely do not sling it around.
Richard Nabavi is a definite Remainer, but he is NOT a Remoaner. I do not recollect him ever wanting to overturn the referendum. Alistair Meeks - very sadly, as he is such a smart guy - did become a Remoaner. Regrettable
If you find the term offensive then perhaps consider this: it offends because it is true, and the truth hurts
There are very few Remoaners on this site, as it happens. Most of us are democrats, on all sides
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I love France, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet still find the Mediterranean system of bars bizarrely alien. Why would I want to wait at least ten minutes for a drink (via waitress) then a further 15 minutes to pay the bill so I can leave? Just back from sunny Spain, where the sunshine was very welcome but the bars would have been vastly improved by bar service!
Ironically, the best service I’ve had in weeks was Luton airport pub, about 4 hours ago.
A qr code on the table. You order from the table via the code. Your booze appears in 3 minutes. Magic
Catering staff are at a premium yet round here at least, the number of restaurants and takeaways seems to be increasing. The two might be related.
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Didn't he talk about changes to freedom of movement not so long ago? Not sure that's consistent with him being someone who 'fully supports' it.
My guess, FWIW, is that there is close to a majority position in the EU to return freedom of movement back to what it was pre-Maastricht. That is, you could go to another EU country and work, but that there was no presumption of benefits.
Even if there was, once it had been done for a year or so, people would realise it wasn't enough to address mass immigration of low skilled people depressing local wages.
Maybe, maybe not.
But there isn't an unlimited number of low skilled people leaving Eastern Europe. The UK, even before Brexit, was seeing net outflows of people from the EU8.
realy?
in the years after the vote and before leaving 2016-2019 yes, but before that, i didn't think so, am I woring?
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Not only is it an insult it means any remainer no matter how accepting of the result will view any post with that term as biased so ignored. It is like any post that refers to Bliar or LieDums or the Nasty Party. One just assumes the post should be ignored because the language shows bias.
As a portmanteau Remoaner refers to a subset of Remainer who is so bitter that all they do is moan.
See the response to the post above about the trade deal with New Zealand or the CPTPP, or the link, there's a certain subset that even to good news just wants to moan about how we left Europe.
Not all Remainers are Remoaners. William, Big G and plenty of others have accepted the result with grace and dignity. Mr Nabavi not so much, and Rochdale is a born again Remoaner.
But the point is that unless you are going to put that definition in every post it just comes over as sneering at all remainers so comes over as offensive and not objective. It does no favours to the person posting it because it puts preconceptions in the readers mind.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
So you're trying not to be overwrought? Well, you deserve a ribbon for making it to the start line.
Zemmour has zero chance of winning the Presidency and his stunt today together with calling for more people to be armed will go down very badly . Barniers views seem to have been deliberately misreported by some Brexiters in an effort to paint him as some new convert .
He fully supports freedom of movement and would never push for a Frexit .
Didn't he talk about changes to freedom of movement not so long ago? Not sure that's consistent with him being someone who 'fully supports' it.
My guess, FWIW, is that there is close to a majority position in the EU to return freedom of movement back to what it was pre-Maastricht. That is, you could go to another EU country and work, but that there was no presumption of benefits.
Even if there was, once it had been done for a year or so, people would realise it wasn't enough to address mass immigration of low skilled people depressing local wages.
Maybe, maybe not.
But there isn't an unlimited number of low skilled people leaving Eastern Europe. The UK, even before Brexit, was seeing net outflows of people from the EU8.
realy?
in the years after the vote and before leaving 2016-2019 yes, but before that, i didn't think so, am I woring?
I don't think we're in disagreement. For 2016, there was close to zero net migration to the UK from the eight, and it has since sped up slightly.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Not only is it an insult it means any remainer no matter how accepting of the result will view any post with that term as biased so ignored. It is like any post that refers to Bliar or LieDums or the Nasty Party. One just assumes the post should be ignored because the language shows bias.
That’s why I specifically say REMOANER. Not Remainer. A Remoaner is someone so obsessed and upset by Brexit they were prepared to overturn democracy to thwart it, and they are still banging on about it
Yes it is a harsh term but what Remoaners proposed to do was crazy and evil
Remainers are entirely different. They regret the referendum result but they accept it. There are many like that on here. I respect them. As I respect any Democrat. I do not respect Remoaners
Yes but by just using the term you are simply insulting people without qualification. You are insulting all remainers by using that term regardless if you think it is just a subset. Eg if you say LibDum that is an insult and devalues the post . If you say you think the LibDems are lying and or stupid because of whatever reason that is not insulting.
I hope you can see the difference. It is true for any generalised insult. The fact that several people find it insulting is the giveaway.
For the last time, I use the word Remoaner specifically, and with precise intent. I genuinely do not sling it around.
Richard Nabavi is a definite Remainer, but he is NOT a Remoaner. I do not recollect him ever wanting to overturn the referendum. Alistair Meeks - very sadly, as he is such a smart guy - did become a Remoaner. Regrettable
If you find the term offensive then perhaps consider this: it offends because it is true, and the truth hurts
There are very few Remoaners on this site, as it happens. Most of us are democrats, on all sides
And for the last time, if you want to use aggressive language, I know you do. But if you bothered to read my post properly you would know that is not the point whatsoever is it. Try addressing the point made and not one I didn't make.
It was better wasn't it when we weren't being rude to one another.
If this has been mentioned already, apologies, but a number of polls from France are showing a Zemmour candidacy outpolling Marine Le Pen in the first round of voting.
This would be extraordinary if it happened - I've not seen any polling on a Macron-Zemmour runoff in round two. It seems to make little difference who the centre-right put up as a candidate - every option is behind Zemmour be it Pecresse, Barnier or Bertrand. The last named does the best at 14% in one poll, two points behind Le Pen and three points behind Zemmour.
Macron seems a bit short (no pun intended )
In what way?
I've neither seen a single poll where any other candidate gets near him on the second round nor a poll where he isn't leading the first round.
He beats Le Pen on every run off poll and I suspect he would beat Zemmour by a larger margin. The only hope for those opposed to Macron is for Bertrand perhaps to get past the warring Zemmour and Le Pen candidacies and snatch second - it's feasible.
Zemmour gets 43% in the latest runoff poll against Macron, Le Pen gets 46%, compared to the just 33% Le Pen got in the 2017 runoff against Macron.
So Macron might survive this time but if there is the same swing again to the populist right candidate in 2027 they could actually win the French Presidency
I think it is very wrong to write off the chances of Le Pen (if she gets through).
The French are in a state of despair. Macron was elected last time not only because he wasn’t Le Pen but because voters thought he would be a break from the past. He wasn’t.
I wouldn’t be surprised in a run-off if the French didn’t decide let’s give it a spin and see how Le Pen goes.
I agree.
But it's important to realise as well how much Le Pen has moved the FN: for example Barnier (from LR) and Zemmour are both openly Eurosceptic, while Le Pen now sounds more like a LibDem on the subject of Europe. (Her previous pledge for a referendum on the membership of the Euro has been dumped.)
It's hard to see much in the Le Pen policy book that looks very different to Cameron (except perhaps more aggressive government spending), and that's why she has gained from traditional LR voters, and lost them to her Right.
Barnier is a eurosceptic?
There are at least four serious French Presidential candidates who are more Eurosceptic than Le Pen:
- Barnier (who seems to have had a Damascene conversion being involved with Brexit) - Zemmour - Melanchon - Nicolas Dupont-Aignan
The only difference between Le Pen and a mainstream Europhile is that she describes her vision for the EU as a Christian club designed to keep out the Muslim hordes. (She might not actually use the word 'hordes'.)
A Eurosceptic French President Barnier could just break Twitter.
So we should all hope he wins.
I think Barnier would be a pretty good President, and I think he'd work to increase the sovereignty of EU members at the expense of the centre, and that might work well for all concerned.
I don't think Le Pen would be great. Not because she's a fascist (she's not), but because her economic policy would be all about subsidising failing French businesses.
Melanchon would be worse, of course. And NDA is flailing around failing to get traction right now.
Note you omit Zemmour there who has a far better chance of being French president than Barnier or Melenchon at the moment and about as good a chance as Le Pen if not slightly more
I'm not as convinced by Zemmour's electability as you are. I think that he's a bit too... Macron.
They are both super smug French intellectuals, one from a "Greater Glory of France through the EU" perspective and one from a "Greater Glory of France through going back to our Nationalistic Catholic roots".
I don't think either of them speaks the forgotten voters, the people whom Johnson and Trump energized - and who see Le Pen as one of them. If Zemmour were to beat out Le Pen in the first round, I'm not convinced he would do that well.
Johnson and Trump also won the supporters of the main traditional Conservative party though, Zemmour I think would be a more respectable choice for Les Republicains voters still than Le Pen
Zemmour respectable? I'm not sure about that. I've been doing some reading on him. He's undoubtedly an intellectual (though I thought those were out of fashion these days). And he's difficult to pigeonhole, combining elements of the far right with a soupcon of classical Marxism. But there are also strong whiffs of misogyny in his stuff about 'virile masculinity' and the evils of feminism, of very reactionary views on homosexuality, and of outright racism (for which he has two convictions, I believe).
So interesting, yes. But respectable, no.
Respectable to socialists and liberals no, respectable to Les Republicains voters, many of whom are Gaullist social conservatives like him, potentially yes.
Zemmour is no neoliberal on economics, much more Gaullist but he is a social conservative with traditional views on gender and hostile to what he sees as the radical elements of Islam
I'm not persuaded that his 'traditional views on gender' will go down well with most of the women (of all political persuasions) of modern France, or many men. And the evidence suggests he's pretty hostile to Islam as a whole, not just its radical elements.
There is no doubt many of his social views would go down well in the US right not just France but there is a market for some of it in conservative France too combined with his distinctive French nationalism.
"The legalization of abortion was a “collective suicide,” because the demographic heft of the French children who were never to be born amounted to “lost power, gone forever more.” The emergence of “triumphant homosexuality” is tied to “the decisive evolution of capitalism,” because Western capitalism has an insatiable need for consumerism, and “the homosexual universe, especially the male one, embodies the temple of unbridled pleasure, sexuality without restraint, hedonism without limit.” The sexual revolution led to a “feminine Bovaryism that is sanctified as a supreme value in relations between the sexes.”
The normalization of divorce revealed the “paradoxical destiny of feminists to accomplish the dream of absolute irresponsibility, for which they railed against generations of predatory males.” Zemmour goes on and on: the rise in delinquency in the nineteen-eighties and nineties came mostly from “immigrant families that France had welcomed,” and has been so twisted around by the left that “gangs of traffickers, thieves, and rapists are sanctified, eternal victims of a neocolonial and racist order. What we call delinquency, they call victims; what we call victims, they call guilty parties.” And, of course, once de Gaulle was gone, France was faced with the choice of “bowing down before the American empire or drowning itself in Europe.” https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/frances-frenzy-discourse-decline-zemmour
To beat Macron he would need to unite both Les Republicains voters and Le Pen voters behind him and his first round voters in the runoff
Excellent long quotation, thanks.
Zemmour really isn't very woke, is he?
One day someone like Zemmour will win in a big western country. Brexit can be seen as britain’s way of heading this off at the pass, so it didn’t happen to us
Imagine if the Remoaners had succeeded in cancelling the 2016 referendum. Britain would either have toppled into civil strife, or we would have elected our own Zemmour
Trump's already done it - isn't the USA a big western country?
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
I said I’d stop using words like ‘traitor’. Or ‘quislings’. In fact I stopped using them many months ago, because they are wrong, divisive, ugly and overwrought. And I regret ever uttering them.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
Not only is it an insult it means any remainer no matter how accepting of the result will view any post with that term as biased so ignored. It is like any post that refers to Bliar or LieDums or the Nasty Party. One just assumes the post should be ignored because the language shows bias.
As a portmanteau Remoaner refers to a subset of Remainer who is so bitter that all they do is moan.
See the response to the post above about the trade deal with New Zealand or the CPTPP, or the link, there's a certain subset that even to good news just wants to moan about how we left Europe.
Not all Remainers are Remoaners. William, Big G and plenty of others have accepted the result with grace and dignity. Mr Nabavi not so much, and Rochdale is a born again Remoaner.
But the point is that unless you are going to put that definition in every post it just comes over as sneering at all remainers so comes over as offensive and not objective. It does no favours to the person posting it because it puts preconceptions in the readers mind.
It's playing the man and not the ball. It's making an argument on the basis of an assigned negative identity, rather than on its merits.
It's a useful shorthand that enables someone to make an argument without having to start from first principles. It's a way to signal to others what side you are on, and where the dividing lines are.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I love France, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet still find the Mediterranean system of bars bizarrely alien. Why would I want to wait at least ten minutes for a drink (via waitress) then a further 15 minutes to pay the bill so I can leave? Just back from sunny Spain, where the sunshine was very welcome but the bars would have been vastly improved by bar service!
I was in a tabanco in Jerez at lunch time. Prop up the bar, order a sherry or a tapa, it's served, they chalk the price on the bar in front of you. So some places get it right. And flamenco too.
[Richard] told us George Osborne was a ‘near perfect chancellor’. You told us Cameron would win his EU referendum 70/30
It turns out the near-perfect Cameron and Osborne were so clever they steered the country into an entirely unnecessary catastrophe (for a europhile like you), born entirely from their arrogant complacent stupidity, and the sense that they were ‘the grown ups’
You are of their ilk. Completely. If you were prime minister you’d probably call an unlose-able referendum on culling 50% of all children and you would campaign against this culling, and somehow you’d be so off-puttingly up yourself, you’d lose it
In fairness to the near-perfect chancellor he reportedly told Cameron the referendum was a stupid idea. (The EU one, I mean, I think he supported the child-culling one.)
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I love France, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet still find the Mediterranean system of bars bizarrely alien. Why would I want to wait at least ten minutes for a drink (via waitress) then a further 15 minutes to pay the bill so I can leave? Just back from sunny Spain, where the sunshine was very welcome but the bars would have been vastly improved by bar service!
I was in a tabanco in Jerez at lunch time. Prop up the bar, order a sherry or a tapa, it's served, they chalk the price on the bar in front of you. So some places get it right. And flamenco too.
Will you make it to Cadiz? Jerez I found a bit run down (tostada con mantequilla with Stork margerine, in one unpleasant incident) but Cadiz a revelation. Foodwise and otherwise.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I love France, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet still find the Mediterranean system of bars bizarrely alien. Why would I want to wait at least ten minutes for a drink (via waitress) then a further 15 minutes to pay the bill so I can leave? Just back from sunny Spain, where the sunshine was very welcome but the bars would have been vastly improved by bar service!
I was in a tabanco in Jerez at lunch time. Prop up the bar, order a sherry or a tapa, it's served, they chalk the price on the bar in front of you. So some places get it right. And flamenco too.
Will you make it to Cadiz? Jerez I found a bit run down (tostada con mantequilla with Stork margerine, in one unpleasant incident) but Cadiz a revelation. Foodwise and otherwise.
Cadiz is a conundrum. It’s always been a bit lost. Yet it’s one of the oldest cities in Europe
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I love France, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet still find the Mediterranean system of bars bizarrely alien. Why would I want to wait at least ten minutes for a drink (via waitress) then a further 15 minutes to pay the bill so I can leave? Just back from sunny Spain, where the sunshine was very welcome but the bars would have been vastly improved by bar service!
Maybe you could take your own tube and they could serve you intravenously
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I love France, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet still find the Mediterranean system of bars bizarrely alien. Why would I want to wait at least ten minutes for a drink (via waitress) then a further 15 minutes to pay the bill so I can leave? Just back from sunny Spain, where the sunshine was very welcome but the bars would have been vastly improved by bar service!
I was in a tabanco in Jerez at lunch time. Prop up the bar, order a sherry or a tapa, it's served, they chalk the price on the bar in front of you. So some places get it right. And flamenco too.
Will you make it to Cadiz? Jerez I found a bit run down (tostada con mantequilla with Stork margerine, in one unpleasant incident) but Cadiz a revelation. Foodwise and otherwise.
Yes, day trip to Cádiz tomorrow.
After the big Andalusí cities, Jerez has felt a bit more like proper Spain. And the tour of Lustau was interesting. Let's see what what I get on my breakfast tostada tomorrow.
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I love France, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet still find the Mediterranean system of bars bizarrely alien. Why would I want to wait at least ten minutes for a drink (via waitress) then a further 15 minutes to pay the bill so I can leave? Just back from sunny Spain, where the sunshine was very welcome but the bars would have been vastly improved by bar service!
I was in a tabanco in Jerez at lunch time. Prop up the bar, order a sherry or a tapa, it's served, they chalk the price on the bar in front of you. So some places get it right. And flamenco too.
Will you make it to Cadiz? Jerez I found a bit run down (tostada con mantequilla with Stork margerine, in one unpleasant incident) but Cadiz a revelation. Foodwise and otherwise.
Yes, day trip to Cádiz tomorrow.
After the big Andalusí cities, Jerez has felt a bit more like proper Spain. And the tour of Lustau was interesting. Let's see what what I get on my breakfast tostada tomorrow.
Just avoid the place opposite the railway station. Everywhere else is kosha.
TBF the source they got the "0% effect on GDP" number from says it boosts wages and productivity:
In both scenarios, productivity gains – resulting from a reallocation of resources within and across sectors - are expected to drive increases in take-home pay for UK workers; the modelling estimates an increase in the long run level of the average real wage in the UK of around 0.01% (£100 million) in scenario 1 and 0.02% (£200 million) in scenario 2.26
God the bar staff in Portugal are worse than the UK, now
I love France, Spain, Italy and Portugal yet still find the Mediterranean system of bars bizarrely alien. Why would I want to wait at least ten minutes for a drink (via waitress) then a further 15 minutes to pay the bill so I can leave? Just back from sunny Spain, where the sunshine was very welcome but the bars would have been vastly improved by bar service!
I was in a tabanco in Jerez at lunch time. Prop up the bar, order a sherry or a tapa, it's served, they chalk the price on the bar in front of you. So some places get it right. And flamenco too.
Will you make it to Cadiz? Jerez I found a bit run down (tostada con mantequilla with Stork margerine, in one unpleasant incident) but Cadiz a revelation. Foodwise and otherwise.
Yes, day trip to Cádiz tomorrow.
After the big Andalusí cities, Jerez has felt a bit more like proper Spain. And the tour of Lustau was interesting. Let's see what what I get on my breakfast tostada tomorrow.
Just avoid the place opposite the railway station.
Is there a farmer left in the UK who still thinks Brexit was a good idea . You’d have to be completely delusional as a farmer to still cling to that. They are going to suffer the double hit of having a flood of cheaper imports combined with huge cuts to their subsidies.
Is there a farmer left in the UK who still thinks Brexit was a good idea . You’d have to be completely delusional as a farmer to still cling to that. They are going to suffer the double hit of having a flood of cheaper imports combined with huge cuts to their subsidies.
Perhaps there are motives in life other than self interest.
Good grief the USA is screwed! The 39% figure is shocking and shows just how many now believe the lies about the election . Whilst many might be looking east and be concerned the USA could be just 3 years away from becoming a failed state .
Good grief the USA is screwed! The 39% figure is shocking and shows just how many now believe the lies about the election . Whilst many might be looking east and be concerned the USA could be just 3 years away from becoming a failed state .
Plus Sinema and Manchin are knee capping all the funding mechanisms for Biden to get an agenda through reconciliation, and refuse to adapt the filibuster to do it through normal processes. The Dems will lose the House in 2022 and that GOP House will put Trump back in the White House regardless of the election result. The US will be in an early 2000s Russia situation with respect to democracy.
Comments
Oh, and I thought you were going to desist from using divisive language like 'remoaner' following the discourse after last week's murder. I may be misremembering, of course.
It will be a long wait, but they are patient.
11pm and a balmy 20C. Not too hot. No mosquitoes. Shirtsleeves. Full moon. Good red wine is £3 for a massive glass, overlooking the tranquil harbour
Portugal or Greece. I want to end up in Portugal or Greece. With a little bolthole in Lunnun taaaahn
They'd have diminished us into a Hotel California situation where you can check out but you can never leave. They could write whatever rules they wanted and we wouldn't get a say and would have sacrificed away Article 50 so we could never legally choose to leave without a deal again.
https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1450854328189718530
The idea that Ireland have been lobbying to reopen the protocol is laughable and that you're suggesting it shows how far removed you are from reality on this.
Better opportunities discovered through covid ?
Anyway I've not noticed any difference in service which means that either tourism areas had better than average staff before or worse than average staff now.
I certainly won’t stop using the term ‘Remoaner’. It is precise and useful. It describes the kind of extreme Remainer who was willing to subvert democracy like a Trumpite at the Capitol, by annulling the referendum and calling another one (without enacting the first) or by simply Revoking
If you know of a better more forensic word to describe this insane and dangerous political viewpoint, do tell
I'm not upset for abstract reasons, but because this government's ideological lunacy is so disastrous for business. Conservatives used to care about that.
Good night.
For balance, I think ‘ukipper’ is also useful. We know what it identifies
‘Gammon’ I find mildly offensive. Because it refers to skin colour and that is just not a good idea, ever
They are remainers even if extreme in their views. Regarding the other examples they are Blair, LibDems and Tories. The argument is stronger if insults aren't used.
It is, of course, the most trivial of problems, but I have noticed the same inept service in posh london bars recently.
My guess is a lot of highly trained people have left hospitality during covid, and they have recruited a load of kids in desperation. Hey ho. It’s still a beautiful evening on the algarve and the Douro wine is still fine. And cheap
I mean, I know it's called "Pacific", but the reality is that it's a sensibly organised free trade agreement, with lots of large markets in. It's not a gamechanger, of course, because the UK is organising bilateral FTAs with a number of the players already, but it would put the UK inside a decent multinational free trade agreement, that will probably continue to add countries over the years. Indeed, it makes a good counterpoint to the overly centralised, political project that is the EU.
Now, there are issues with it. For a start, there's relatively little provision for mutual recognition of professional standards for our services industries. There is no requirement for countries to allow British banks to get banking licenses, or law firms to be allowed to do business. We'd probably also find ourselves annoyed that some of the dispute resolution mechanisms lacked teeth.
But it's still a good, workable set of agreements, and a great alternative template for the world.
Yes it is a harsh term but what Remoaners proposed to do was crazy and evil
Remainers are entirely different. They regret the referendum result but they accept it. There are many like that on here. I respect them. As I respect any Democrat. I do not respect Remoaners
See the response to the post above about the trade deal with New Zealand or the CPTPP, or the link, there's a certain subset that even to good news just wants to moan about how we left Europe.
Not all Remainers are Remoaners. William, Big G and plenty of others have accepted the result with grace and dignity. Mr Nabavi not so much, and Rochdale is a born again Remoaner.
A qr code on the table. You order from the table via the code. Your booze appears in 3 minutes. Magic
I think you're often interesting, funny and thought-provoking, if occasionally disturbing, so it's a pity if you put people off from reading your stuff by being sneery. But I don't think it's offensive.
*enormous existential sigh*
I hope you can see the difference. It is true for any generalised insult. The fact that several people find it insulting is the giveaway.
What greater precedent do you need?
At least the other Leavers on here have the courage of their convictions.
I’m a Remainer that is just bored of it all. I just want it to go away!
But the Americans didn't want us involved because that would complicate matters regarding the French and others.
Between AUKUS and this, the UK is righting what Churchill considered a snub. I wonder if anyone near the top of Government has ever studied Churchill's biography?
But there isn't an unlimited number of low skilled people leaving Eastern Europe. The UK, even before Brexit, was seeing net outflows of people from the EU8.
And the two complaining tonight are Sturgeon and Thornberry FBPE
Richard Nabavi is a definite Remainer, but he is NOT a Remoaner. I do not recollect him ever wanting to overturn the referendum. Alistair Meeks - very sadly, as he is such a smart guy - did become a Remoaner. Regrettable
If you find the term offensive then perhaps consider this: it offends because it is true, and the truth hurts
There are very few Remoaners on this site, as it happens. Most of us are democrats, on all sides
in the years after the vote and before leaving 2016-2019 yes, but before that, i didn't think so, am I woring?
https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/long-term-international-migration-flows-to-and-from-the-uk/
It was better wasn't it when we weren't being rude to one another.
It's a useful shorthand that enables someone to make an argument without having to start from first principles. It's a way to signal to others what side you are on, and where the dividing lines are.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/oct/20/uk-strikes-trade-deal-with-new-zealand-but-it-may-add-nothing-to-gdp
It has a unique vibe
Depressing
After the big Andalusí cities, Jerez has felt a bit more like proper Spain. And the tour of Lustau was interesting. Let's see what what I get on my breakfast tostada tomorrow.
https://twitter.com/10downingstreet/status/1450938806522290177
Obviously that's not much in the grand scheme of things and it doesn't begin to make up for the damage done by Brexit but a win's a win.
Is lockdown coming this winter?
Are we ever going to escape Covid?
Will the Tory part split over Boris's "Green Revolution" as it did over the corn laws?
#Enjoy
I feel my Leave vote has incentivised the British people