Almost everyone on here is happy macron has won handily, even if some are less confident of how much a success he will be - why some ranting, petty, hateful bitterness this morning conjuring hordes of disappointed neo fascists? Moments like these show the pathetic side of us only too vividly.
Good day.
The blessed sponge of Lethe is getting saturated by this post. Leavers for Fascists were numerous enough last week.
There will have been some with money on it, some who felt that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", and, yes, a small number who may have wanted her to win. But I think numerous is a bit of an exaggeration.
According to YouGov, Leavers who expressed a preference broke more than 80% for Marine Le Pen as best for Britain. Even discounting those who didn't, that's more than 6 million voters.
Leavers need to take a good hard look around themselves and start wondering about priorities.
Given that the question was "best for Britain", I expect a significant number of them thought it meant "worst for France".
Having said that, I am a eurosceptic who voted remain precisely because I did not want to be associated with people like that.
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It would be nice to think the tide is turning but it's a bit early to tell. One spin off is likely to be the reinvigoration of the Remainers as we watch the new optimism spreading from accross the channel.
I think we should wait until his unveils his program, and passes his first budget without the whole country grinding to a halt from strikes before we get to carried away. Sure, he looks good on TV, and talks a good line, but can he actually achieve anything.
Running against MLP is one thing, she pretty much gets his vote out for him. I am interested in how he is going to attempt to get a good showing in the assembly without a local party machine to put in the shoe leather, canvaas his voters, deliver his leaflets and get his vote out.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
I despise Saudi Arabia. But they are not May's "new" best friends. Every single British government has cosied up to them, regardless of political affiliation.
And you should read up on how France, even more than Britain, cosies up to the Middle Eastern world, including every single one of their despotic and hateful regimes. France - just as much as Britain - has mislaid its moral compass when it comes to foreign affairs. That's realpolitik for you.
Hallo cyclefree. I hope your spell in hospital went well? I guess you're out now so keep in good health.
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It would be nice to think the tide is turning but it's a bit early to tell. One spin off is likely to be the reinvigoration of the Remainers as we watch the new optimism spreading from accross the channel.
I think we should wait until his unveils his program, and passes his first budget without the whole country grinding to a halt from strikes before we get to carried away. Sure, he looks good on TV, and talks a good line, but can he actually achieve anything.
Running against MLP is one thing, she pretty much gets his vote out for him. I am interested in how he is going to attempt to get a good showing in the assembly without a local party machine to put in the shoe leather, canvaas his voters, deliver his leaflets and get his vote out.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
Why would it be? In the case of Corbyn, he's hardly the most pro-European leader out there!
I'd also caution against thinking that an election result in France is going to have much impact on sentiment towards the EU in Britain. The idea that the British people are going to awake from their slumber and march headlong into the ranks of the European federalists is a pipe dream. That sentiment has never widely been held in Britain - even in the days of Blair, whose was possibly the most pro-European government since Heath's, he could not get the Euro introduced.
That's not to say that I'm disappointed by the result. I am relieved that the FN lost. Moreover, it is not in any of our interests to have a Europe collapsing in front of our eyes. But people are too hasty to ascribe the fact that France just rejected a far-right leader as leading to some kind of eruption of pro-EU sentiment in Britain.
Optimism is contagious.
Watching the jubilance in France contrasting with Theresa May and her team scabbling around looking for friends like pigs in search of truffles is bound to have an effect.
The Tories will fiddle about with NI, maybe even integrate it with Income Tax, and curtail reliefs such as those on pension contributions, to raise the money the next government will need. They won't be as blatant (honest) as raising a headline rate; instead we are in for five years of stealth taxes.
I think that is right. We have had 7 years of stealth taxes on the better off which has been the main driving force towards reducing the deficit. The irony is that in practice the Tories have been quite aggressive about this but still feel able to abuse Labour about "tax bombshells".
I think Hammond will try hard to avoid the kinds of commitments that caused him such problems with the NI increases. Cameron felt the need to have sharp and hard commitments on these issues because the election was so close. He was right of course in that he only got a small and slightly unexpected majority. I think this time around there will be considerably more studied ambiguity and wriggle room.
On balance, this is probably a good thing. The next government will have to significantly increase spending on Social Care and the NHS and it would be nice if there was some left over for infrastructure spending.
And this nonsense about zero deficit ! Which other country pursues moronic policy like that ? In the US, Trump is increasing the deficit.
We should be running a surplus by now, as Germany has been doing for some considerable time. The horrendous debt built up as a result of Brown's policy errors and general incompetence is a millstone around our children's necks that will adversely affect their standard of living and significantly reduce our ability to respond to international turmoil in future.
And Trump is an idiot. I thought you knew that.
Trump is a Republican and, as Cheney put it: Reagan showed that deficits don't matter. Meanwhile, back in Britain, it was Gordon Brown paying off Tory debt and George Osborne increasing it.
The idea that Gordon Brown paid off "Tory debt" is laughable. He inherited a budget surplus and continued to run a surplus for the first 3 years, sticking to a manifesto promise to follow Tory spending plans. Thereafter he ran a deficit every year. Before the financial crisis hit the debt had risen by around 65% on his watch. Even if we ignore the financial crisis the truth is that Brown massively increased the debt.
Macron won comfortably in the end but Le Pen still put on about 17% from the 17% her father got in 2002 if the FN did that a third time they would get to 51%. Anyway the focus now is the UK election and if May can get a landslide for hard Brexit after which the real negotiations begin. The German election will be a Merkel win again it seems of more interest next year will be the Italian election where Beppe Grillo's Eurosceptic 5* leads current polls and has none of the Fascist baggage of Le Pen and Wilders
I'm beginning to get a little worried about you. No matter how sane you may be otherwise, you seem to wander straight up Loony avenue where Brexit is concerned.
Sometimes people have different opinions. I've often been in the minority. it's called life. Why 10,000,000 French people and 17,000.000 leave voters should apologise to you is puzzling.
I suspect the French picked the least bad President from several bad choices, but I may be wrong. Even Corbynites are entitled to their opinions.
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It would be nice to think the tide is turning but it's a bit early to tell. One spin off is likely to be the reinvigoration of the Remainers as we watch the new optimism spreading from accross the channel.
I think we should wait until his unveils his program, and passes his first budget without the whole country grinding to a halt from strikes before we get to carried away. Sure, he looks good on TV, and talks a good line, but can he actually achieve anything.
Running against MLP is one thing, she pretty much gets his vote out for him. I am interested in how he is going to attempt to get a good showing in the assembly without a local party machine to put in the shoe leather, canvaas his voters, deliver his leaflets and get his vote out.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
Why would it be? In the case of Corbyn, he's hardly the most pro-European leader out there!
I'd also caution against thinking that an election result in France is going to have much impact on sentiment towards the EU in Britain. The idea that the British people are going to awake from their slumber and march headlong into the ranks of the European federalists is a pipe dream. That sentiment has never widely been held in Britain - even in the days of Blair, whose was possibly the most pro-European government since Heath's, he could not get the Euro introduced.
That's not to say that I'm disappointed by the result. I am relieved that the FN lost. Moreover, it is not in any of our interests to have a Europe collapsing in front of our eyes. But people are too hasty to ascribe the fact that France just rejected a far-right leader as leading to some kind of eruption of pro-EU sentiment in Britain.
Optimism is contagious.
Watching the jubilance in France contrasting with Theresa May and her team scabbling around looking for friends like pigs in search of truffles is bound to have an effect.
The Tories are still heading for 390-420 seats,, IMHO.
And this nonsense about zero deficit ! Which other country pursues moronic policy like that ? In the US, Trump is increasing the deficit.
We should be running a surplus by now, as Germany has been doing for some considerable time. The horrendous debt built up as a result of Brown's policy errors and general incompetence is a millstone around our children's necks that will adversely affect their standard of living and significantly reduce our ability to respond to international turmoil in future.
And Trump is an idiot. I thought you knew that.
Trump is a Republican and, as Cheney put it: Reagan showed that deficits don't matter. Meanwhile, back in Britain, it was Gordon Brown paying off Tory debt and George Osborne increasing it.
Good luck selling that message on the doorstep. The public know that Labour increase spending and the Conservatives reduce it. Whether or not it is true (and its truth depends on careful selection of definitions and start dates, an argument I'm not going to get into in this post) doesn't really matter.
Agreed, and the converse is that Conservatives are wary of attacking Labour on health and NHS privatisation. Nonetheless, a competent opposition (and I'm not sure we've had one of those since Labour in the mid- to late 90s) should be prepared at least to respond to Conservative attacks on both the economy and defence, rather than go on telly with a line-by-line analysis of Karl sodding Marx.
The issue with NICs is not the employee side of them but the hidden employers side of them.
Having had multiple conversations with HMRC regarding IR35 over the years their pet hate is the loss of those employers NIC contributions - the dividend tax removed most of the rest of the tax differential between limited company contractors and employment...
I think the employee side is a problem too - I run my own limited company and I haven't paid any NI of either kind for years while still qualifying for benefits, state pension etc. just by paying my self a small salary and topping up with dividends. Every director with half a brain does the same.
IanB2: I think if the candidate breaks 50%, no runoff is held.
All I'm saying is that it's difficult to extrapolate trends in France into trends in the UK. Both countries have fundamentally different cultures, national senses of identity and outlooks. I remember when Hollander (remember him?) won there was much made of the fact that this could lead to a renaissance for the centre-left and a rejection of austerity in Britain. That didn't happen. But what I do hope it does is continue to make Europe aware of the threat from the far right (albeit a threat that has thankfully not materialised in any gaining of power yet) and for European leaders to sit up and try and understand why this is happening.
It would be interesting to have a definitive answer on the French Q, if anyone knows?
I agree with you. The British tradition is that when public sentiment is trending to the extremes, more extreme ideas and extreme people get absorbed into one of the two mainstream parties, hopefully tempered a bit in the process (for example some of what passed for Conservative opinion in the 1930s). Whether this is better than having a third of the population support them but see them rejected is an argument for the historians.
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It would be nice to think the tide is turning but it's a bit early to tell. One spin off is likely to be the reinvigoration of the Remainers as we watch the new optimism spreading from accross the channel.
I think we should wait until his unveils his program, and passes his first budget without the whole country grinding to a halt from strikes before we get to carried away. Sure, he looks good on TV, and talks a good line, but can he actually achieve anything.
Running against MLP is one thing, she pretty much gets his vote out for him. I am interested machine to put in the shoe leather, canvaas his voters, deliver his leaflets and get his vote out.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
Why would it be? In the case of Corbyn, he's hardly the most pro-European leader out there!
I'd also caution against thinking that an election result in France is going to have much impact on sentiment towards the EU in Britain. The idea that the British people are going to awake from their slumber and march headlong into the ranks of the European federalists is a pipe dream. That sentiment has never widely been held in Britain - even in the days of Blair, whose was possibly the most pro-European government since Heath's, he could not get the Euro introduced.
That's not to say that I'm disappointed by the result. I am relieved that the FN lost. Moreover, it is not in any of our interests to have a Europe collapsing in front of our eyes. But people are too hasty to ascribe the fact that France just rejected a far-right leader as leading to some kind of eruption of pro-EU sentiment in Britain.
Optimism is contagious.
Watching the jubilance in France contrasting with Theresa May and her gang scabbling around looking for friends like pigs in search of truffles is bound to have an effect.
Our politics looks squalid and backward looking today. Depressing.
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
meanwhile back in Schleswig Holstein the SPD once again has failed to live up to its billing with a drop in support of 3.2% while the CDU nudged up by 1.2%.
The Schulz effect appears to have been and gone.
Merkel ! Merkel !! [ all together ] Merkel !!! The alt-right AfD are in a spin as well. After France, this will be another disappointment amongst the Alt-Right here on PB.
Who it seems are nicely balanced by the Ctrl-Left on PB
If I were you, don't push the humour button. You lot are an embarrassment. You only excel in "hate".
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It would be nice to think the tide is turning but it's a bit early to tell. One spin off is likely to be the reinvigoration of the Remainers as we watch the new optimism spreading from accross the channel.
Running against MLP is one thing, she pretty much gets his vote out for him. I am interested in how he is going to attempt to get a good showing in the assembly without a local party machine to put in the shoe leather, canvaas his voters, deliver his leaflets and get his vote out.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
I'd also caution against thinking that an election result in France is going to have much impact on sentiment towards the EU in Britain. The idea that the British people are going to awake from their slumber and march headlong into the ranks of the European federalists is a pipe dream. That sentiment has never widely been held in Britain - even in the days of Blair, whose was possibly the most pro-European government since Heath's, he could not get the Euro introduced.
That's not to say that I'm disappointed by the result. I am relieved that the FN lost. Moreover, it is not in any of our interests to have a Europe collapsing in front of our eyes. But people are too hasty to ascribe the fact that France just rejected a far-right leader as leading to some kind of eruption of pro-EU sentiment in Britain.
Optimism is contagious.
Watching the jubilance in France contrasting with Theresa May and her gang scabbling around looking for friends like pigs in search of truffles is bound to have an effect.
Our politics looks squalid and backward looking today. Depressing.
It's not depressing. It could be the beginning a shift in the pushing us in a more progressive direcion. At least there is now the likelihood of a strong and united European alliance against the dark forces of Trump/Farage/ and May
Almost everyone on here is happy macron has won handily, even if some are less confident of how much a success he will be - why some ranting, petty, hateful bitterness this morning conjuring hordes of disappointed neo fascists? Moments like these show the pathetic side of us only too vividly.
Good day.
The blessed sponge of Lethe is getting saturated by this post. Leavers for Fascists were numerous enough last week.
I can think of only one outright supporter from last week - plus a few worried about losing bets. Your analysis for the GE is spot on. Anything related to Brexit is rather less so sadly.
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It would be nice to think the tide is turning but it's a bit early to tell. One spin off is likely to be the reinvigoration of the Remainers as we watch the new optimism spreading from accross the channel.
I think we should wait until his unveils his program, and passes his first budget without the whole country grinding to a halt from strikes before we get to carried away. Sure, he looks good on TV, and talks a good line, but can he actually achieve anything.
Running against MLP is one thing, she pretty much gets his vote out for him. I am interested in how he is going to attempt to get a good showing in the assembly without a local party machine to put in the shoe leather, canvaas his voters, deliver his leaflets and get his vote out.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
I despise Saudi Arabia. But they are not May's "new" best friends. Every single British government has cosied up to them, regardless of political affiliation.
And you should read up on how France, even more than Britain, cosies up to the Middle Eastern world, including every single one of their despotic and hateful regimes. France - just as much as Britain - has mislaid its moral compass when it comes to foreign affairs. That's realpolitik for you.
Hallo cyclefree. I hope your spell in hospital went well? I guess you're out now so keep in good health.
Hello Roger: Yes I'm out and slowly getting better. Time out of the office and rest has helped enormously though still have bad and good days. But the direction of travel is right.
And I am on the brink of a momentous work decision so have all the hopes and anxieties associated with that to manage.
I try to be a glass half full person. Some days it's harder than others.
Given the absence of hype, I assume it's less sensational than last time.
Tories about 10% ahead from that chart: are those the numbers from last time?
Yes, both opinion polls from last time, one national and one local. The local one wasn't far off the actual result in Wales, I believe. The take home point is that Welsh people said before they voted that they would break with a 2% lead for Labour in the local elections but a 10% lead for the Tories in the General. Salutary for anyone looking for crumbs of reassurance in the local election results for the opposition parties. If this were to actually happen, and be replicated across the UK, the Tories would fulfil some of the hyperbolic projections being made for them on PB the week before last.
It's not depressing. It coud be the beginning a shift in the tectonic plates pushing us in a more progressive direcion. At least there is now the likelihood of a strong and united European alliance against the dark forces of Trump/Farage/ and May
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It would be nice to think the tide is turning but it's a bit early to tell. One spin off is likely to be the reinvigoration of the Remainers as we watch the new optimism spreading from accross the channel.
I think we should wait until his unveils his program, and passes his first budget without the whole country grinding to a halt from strikes before we get to carried away. Sure, he looks good on TV, and talks a good line, but can he actually achieve anything.
Running against MLP is one thing, she pretty much gets his vote out for him. I am interested in how he is going to attempt to get a good showing in the assembly without a local party machine to put in the shoe leather, canvaas his voters, deliver his leaflets and get his vote out.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
Why would it be? In the case of Corbyn, he's hardly the most pro-European leader out there!
I'd also caution against thinking that an election result in France is going to have much impact on sentiment towards the EU in Britain. The idea that the British people are going to awake from their slumber and march headlong into the ranks of the European federalists is a pipe dream. That sentiment has never widely been held in Britain - even in the days of Blair, whose was possibly the most pro-European government since Heath's, he could not get the Euro introduced.
That's not to say that I'm disappointed by the result. I am relieved that the FN lost. Moreover, it is not in any of our interests to have a Europe collapsing in front of our eyes. But people are too hasty to ascribe the fact that France just rejected a far-right leader as leading to some kind of eruption of pro-EU sentiment in Britain.
Optimism is contagious.
Watching the jubilance in France contrasting with Theresa May and her team scabbling around looking for friends like pigs in search of truffles is bound to have an effect.
Macron did so well that his win over the FN was only half as good as a deeply tainted Chirac.
The whole sorry cesspit. If May is the best we have, we're in so much trouble.
In politics it's always about the least worst.
For me, the whole point of democracy is the ability to get rid of a poor government without having to kill anyone. That is why Corbyn is so dangerous and needs to be got rid of as soon as possible: we need a PM in waiting on the opposition front bench.
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
That's an odious comment that says more about its author than its subject.
Almost everyone on here is happy macron has won handily, even if some are less confident of how much a success he will be - why some ranting, petty, hateful bitterness this morning conjuring hordes of disappointed neo fascists? Moments like these show the pathetic side of us only too vividly.
Good day.
The blessed sponge of Lethe is getting saturated by this post. Leavers for Fascists were numerous enough last week.
'It's not depressing. It coud be the beginning a shift in the tectonic plates pushing us in a more progressive direcion. At least there is now the likelihood of a strong and united European alliance against the dark forces of Trump/Farage/ and May'
Roger - give it a rest - Le Pen and Farage are well beaten but May is hugely popular in our Country and to even suggest she is the same bracket as the others shows your ridiculous intolerance and how out of step with UK opinion you are.
One can nevertheless hope that seeing so many Brexiters, from Farage downwards, hoping for the LePen victory that the French had the good sense to turn away from might prompt a bit of self reflection.
It's not depressing. It coud be the beginning a shift in the tectonic plates pushing us in a more progressive direcion. At least there is now the likelihood of a strong and united European alliance against the dark forces of Trump/Farage/ and May
Name an interesting, fresh political idea.
someone on Zerohedge (I know, I know) suggested that Le Pen is the likely winner in 2022...
I can see the argument (Macron was the safe anti-establishment candidate this time around, he won't succeed so next time the real anti-establishment candidate will win) but I'm not 100% sure of that...
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Some good points. Enjoy your break in sunny Canada.
I would simply observe that voting against the party you don't want isn't peculiar to France, but is a big feature of UK politics - both tactical voting at local level and people choosing May essentially for fear of Corbyn.
An interesting contrast to the increasingly convoluted arguments that the right was making to persuade itself (& everyone else) that MLP was not a fascist a few days ago.
Of course now we're getting 'Lefties and Frogs should be worried & ashamed that a notafascist got 11million votes'. Entirely different people making that argument I'm sure.
Almost everyone on here is happy macron has won handily, even if some are less confident of how much a success he will be - why some ranting, petty, hateful bitterness this morning conjuring hordes of disappointed neo fascists? Moments like these show the pathetic side of us only too vividly.
Good day.
The blessed sponge of Lethe is getting saturated by this post. Leavers for Fascists were numerous enough last week.
There will have been some with money on it, some who felt that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", and, yes, a small number who may have wanted her to win. But I think numerous is a bit of an exaggeration.
According to YouGov, Leavers who expressed a preference broke more than 80% for Marine Le Pen as best for Britain. Even discounting those who didn't, that's more than 6 million voters.
Leavers need to take a good hard look around themselves and start wondering about priorities.
Much as I enjoy watching you bait a section of Leave, it a little unfair that there seems to be a trend to equate Leave voters with tacit support for fascism which is probably true in a microscopic amount of cases.
And cherry picking data from that poll as you have..
I was surprised to note that 18 percent of Remainers expressing an opinion considered Le Pen to be the best option for the UK, compared to the less than 1 in 4 Leave voters in total who nominated her.
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Enjoy sunny Llandudno. At least one poster who admits to having favoured a Le Pen victory
(PS. I went to prep school in Penmaenmawr so I know Llandudno well)
I think we should wait until his unveils his program, and passes his first budget without the whole country grinding to a halt from strikes before we get to carried away. Sure, he looks good on TV, and talks a good line, but can he actually achieve anything.
Running against MLP is one thing, she pretty much gets his vote out for him. I am interested in how he is going to attempt to get a good showing in the assembly without a local party machine to put in the shoe leather, canvaas his voters, deliver his leaflets and get his vote out.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
Why would it be? In the case of Corbyn, he's hardly the most pro-European leader out there!
I'd also caution against thinking that an election result in France is going to have much impact on sentiment towards the EU in Britain. The idea that the British people are going to awake from their slumber and march headlong into the ranks of the European federalists is a pipe dream. That sentiment has never widely been held in Britain - even in the days of Blair, whose was possibly the most pro-European government since Heath's, he could not get the Euro introduced.
That's not to say that I'm disappointed by the result. I am relieved that the FN lost. Moreover, it is not in any of our interests to have a Europe collapsing in front of our eyes. But people are too hasty to ascribe the fact that France just rejected a far-right leader as leading to some kind of eruption of pro-EU sentiment in Britain.
One can nevertheless hope that seeing so many Brexiters, from Farage downwards, hoping for the LePen victory that the French had the good sense to turn away from might prompt a bit of self reflection.
Whilst we often observe that the French system has similarities with AV, the biggest difference is the period of reflection (and realignment) that it allows between vote one and vote two.
Apparently it's bad form to remind Leavers that those who expressed a preference overwhelmingly backed Marine Le Pen as best for Britain.
Leave means never having to say you're sorry.
Funny, leave apparently means endless foot stamping and hissy fits from your good self.
Almost everyone on here is happy macron has won handily, even if some are less confident of how much a success he will be - why some ranting, petty, hateful bitterness this morning conjuring hordes of disappointed neo fascists? Moments like these show the pathetic side of us only too vividly.
Good day.
The blessed sponge of Lethe is getting saturated by this post. Leavers for Fascists were numerous enough last week.
Really, please name say ten of these people?
I could only think of one. On Brexit he makes no sense.
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Enjoy sunny Llandudno. At least one poster who admits to having favoured a Le Pen victory
I NEVER favoured Le Pen - please retract your coment
Astute political positioning from M Macron as it turns out. He realised the one permanent fixture in French politics is the Front National so he set out to be everything they were not: pro EU, globalisation and liberal values. He was undoubtedly aided by M Fillon's difficulties, but the fact he was a challenger at all was due to his clear positions. Those pointing to his less than universal support may be missing the key thing: he was offering a very stark position.
To move on, Macron will need to call in favours from Germany and the EU. Above all he will need to demonstrate an improvement in the French economy.
Good morning. As @Roger implies, it does now look as if the Brexit and Trump votes were the fag-end of the wave of closed nativism. I hope May has the good sense to bin off the nationalists once her election is out of the way, and sit down with Macron to find a sensible way forward. But I fear she has been brainwashed by the Hard Right.
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Some good points. Enjoy your break in sunny Canada.
I would simply observe that voting against the party you don't want isn't peculiar to France, but is a big feature of UK politics - both tactical voting at local level and people choosing May essentially for fear of Corbyn.
Thanks Ian - you make a good point but isn't UK tactical voting less obvious
An interesting contrast to the increasingly convoluted arguments that the right was making to persuade itself (& everyone else) that MLP was not a fascist a few days ago.
Of course now we're getting the 'Lefties and Frogs should be worried & ashamed that a notafascist got 11million votes'. Entirely different people making that argument I'm sure.
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It would be nice to think the tide is turning but it's a bit early to tell. One spin off is likely to be the reinvigoration of the Remainers as we watch the new optimism spreading from accross the channel.
I think we should wait until his unveils his program, and passes his first budget without the whole country grinding to a halt from strikes before we get to carried away. Sure, he looks good on TV, and talks a good line, but can he actually achieve anything.
Running against MLP is one thing, she pretty much gets his vote out for him. I am interested in how he is going to attempt to get a good showing in the assembly without a local party machine to put in the shoe leather, canvaas his voters, deliver his leaflets and get his vote out.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
Why would it be? In the case of Corbyn, he's hardly the most pro-European leader out there!
I'd also caution against thinking that an election result in Fra
Optimism is contagious.
Watching the jubilance in France contrasting with Theresa May and her gang scabbling around looking for friends like pigs in search of truffles is bound to have an effect.
Our politics looks squalid and backward looking today. Depressing.
The sick man of Europe. Run by Liam Fox and Jacob Rees Mogg.
I can't think of one genuinely interesting or intelligent idea that British politics has generated in the last 10 years.
Brexit, obviously.
Nope. Brexit is nostalgia. Nothing new in it whatsoever.
Brexit is what you get if you don't provide a means for people to get the jobs they want.
If you talk about the American Dream (for its a nice shorthand for a better future) the people who voted for change / none of the above (which what both Brexit and Trump represented) are those who believe the American Dream is dead.... And that is the poorer parts of the UK (outside cities) and America (away from the coasts).
Almost everyone on here is happy macron has won handily, even if some are less confident of how much a success he will be - why some ranting, petty, hateful bitterness this morning conjuring hordes of disappointed neo fascists? Moments like these show the pathetic side of us only too vividly.
Good day.
The blessed sponge of Lethe is getting saturated by this post. Leavers for Fascists were numerous enough last week.
There will have been some with money on it, some who felt that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", and, yes, a small number who may have wanted her to win. But I think numerous is a bit of an exaggeration.
According to YouGov, Leavers who expressed a preference broke more than 80% for Marine Le Pen as best for Britain. Even discounting those who didn't, that's more than 6 million voters.
Leavers need to take a good hard look around themselves and start wondering about priorities.
Much as I enjoy watching you bait a section of Leave, it a little unfair that there seems to be a trend to equate Leave voters with tacit support for fascism which is probably true in a microscopic amount of cases.
And cherry picking data from that poll as you have..
I was surprised to note that 18 percent of Remainers expressing an opinion considered Le Pen to be the best option for the UK, compared to the less than 1 in 4 Leave voters in total who nominated her.
Please, don't mix units like that. Either both as percentages (18% to 24% say) or more than 1 in 6 remainers to less than 1 in 4 leavers. Sorry, but it's the Physics teacher side of me coming out: getting units wrong has a similar effect on me to fingernails on a blackboard.
Good morning. As @Roger implies, it does now look as if the Brexit and Trump votes were the fag-end of the wave of closed nativism. I hope May has the good sense to bin off the nationalists once her election is out of the way, and sit down with Macron to find a sensible way forward. But I fear she has been brainwashed by the Hard Right.
Nationalism is like smoking. May will find it hard to give it up.
Congratulations first to Macron - just glancing at the transfers he did better (and Le Pen worse) from Fillon supporters than I had expected. I thought I saw a poll which suggested up to a third of Fillon's backers would switch to Le Pen in R2 but that clearly didn't happen.
That being said, the more significant political news overnight was the strong CDU performance in the Schleswig-Holstein election. The CDU, Greens and FDP all advanced and it's interesting the local CDU leader is trying to put together what is apparently called a "Jamaica Coalition" of these three parties which would have a majority in the local Parliament.
There's another big provincial election next weekend in North Rhine-Westphalia next Sunday. In 2012, the SPD trounced the CDU by 13% with Hannelore Kraft's SPD-Green coalition retaining power but there looks a distinct possibility of an upheaval.
Latest polls show the SPD and CDU almost level (SPD down 7, CDU up 6) with the Greens down and the FDP up three or four points. With the Pirates dead, it seems possible the Left and AfD will also get into the local Parliament. Very hard to see where this will go but it would be a serious reverse for the SPD to lose this State.
The September Bundestag elections looks fascinating - at the moment, the CDU leads the SPD 36-29 (in 2013 it was 41.5-25.7) so that's a swing of 4% to the SPD but on current numbers the Greens, FDP, Left and AfD will all make it into the Bundestag so the potential permutations to create a Government coalition are currently many and varied.
FN remains very transfer unfriendly. Neither Melenchon or right wing parties transferred in any great numbers. Contrary to the view of the PB blackshirts.
I find charts like this fascinating. It's the small lines that hide interesting stories: who swaps from Le Pen to Macron (or vice versa) between rounds? Why?
Because the first round doesn't really matter, whereas the second elects a President?
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Enjoy sunny Llandudno. At least one poster who admits to having favoured a Le Pen victory
(PS. I went to prep school in Penmaenmawr so I know Llandudno well)
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Enjoy sunny Llandudno. At least one poster who admits to having favoured a Le Pen victory
(PS. I went to prep school in Penmaenmawr so I know Llandudno well)
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
He'll have no problems cutting corp tax if En Marche and Les Republicans are the two largest parties as expected. If that is what he wants to do.
I fully support him on that but the left cannot accept lower corporation taxes generates jobs, growth and prosperity
I doubt lower corporation taxes actually generates jobs in France unless employment regulations are relaxed to allow far easier redundancies when times get hard...
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Enjoy sunny Llandudno. At least one poster who admits to having favoured a Le Pen victory
I NEVER favoured Le Pen - please retract your coment
I thought it was implied by you saying Macron was a bad choice for the UK. The only other choice was Le Pen. There's no fence to sit on with the French system.
FN remains very transfer unfriendly. Neither Melenchon or right wing parties transferred in any great numbers. Contrary to the view of the PB blackshirts.
I find charts like this fascinating. It's the small lines that hide interesting stories: who swaps from Le Pen to Macron (or vice versa) between rounds? Why?
Because the first round doesn't really matter, whereas the second elects a President?
Yes, voters might want to register a protest without actually wanting the protest candidate to win. There are surely Brexit and Trump voters who cast their vote not excepting, and not really wanting, their side to win?
Besides, anyone who thinks that every voter's decision-making process can be rationalised just needs to go and do a bit of canvassing.
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Enjoy sunny Llandudno. At least one poster who admits to having favoured a Le Pen victory
I NEVER favoured Le Pen - please retract your coment
I thought it was implied by you saying Macron was a bad choice for the UK. The only other choice was Le Pen. There's no fence to sit on with the French system.
Good morning. As @Roger implies, it does now look as if the Brexit and Trump votes were the fag-end of the wave of closed nativism. I hope May has the good sense to bin off the nationalists once her election is out of the way, and sit down with Macron to find a sensible way forward. But I fear she has been brainwashed by the Hard Right.
Nationalism is like smoking. May will find it hard to give it up.
Nah. I stopped and it was difficult for about a week.. All ok now
Almost everyone on here is happy macron has won handily, even if some are less confident of how much a success he will be - why some ranting, petty, hateful bitterness this morning conjuring hordes of disappointed neo fascists? Moments like these show the pathetic side of us only too vividly.
Good day.
The blessed sponge of Lethe is getting saturated by this post. Leavers for Fascists were numerous enough last week.
There will have been some with money on it, some who felt that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", and, yes, a small number who may have wanted her to win. But I think numerous is a bit of an exaggeration.
According to YouGov, Leavers who expressed a preference broke more than 80% for Marine Le Pen as best for Britain. Even discounting those who didn't, that's more than 6 million voters.
Leavers need to take a good hard look around themselves and start wondering about priorities.
Much as I enjoy watching you bait a section of Leave, it a little unfair that there seems to be a trend to equate Leave voters with tacit support for fascism which is probably true in a microscopic amount of cases.
And cherry picking data from that poll as you have..
I was surprised to note that 18 percent of Remainers expressing an opinion considered Le Pen to be the best option for the UK, compared to the less than 1 in 4 Leave voters in total who nominated her.
Please, don't mix units like that. Either both as percentages (18% to 24% say) or more than 1 in 6 remainers to less than 1 in 4 leavers. Sorry, but it's the Physics teacher side of me coming out: getting units wrong has a similar effect on me to fingernails on a blackboard.
I know. I was just pointing out that anyone can cherrypick data to suit them and express it in a Lib Dem style. If you read my post it does say so.
I do find it darkly amusing that some people think that an investment banker turned politician is some sort of progressive saviour.
Investment bankers know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Their view of the world and the economy is one we should be challenging not hailing, as some appear to be doing, the Second Coming. The financial world has - for far too long - thought of itself as top dog. Look around you: the world we have now is one which has suited financiers very well indeed. In America they have elected a President who wants to remove recent controls on banks. And France has elected someone who wants to go in the same liberalising direction.
When the penny drops what liberalising the French labour market actually means in practice, well that will be interesting.........
I don't know how May will turn out as PM but for all her faults she is one of the few leaders, certainly in Britain, who has given the impression that she doesn't give a toss about City folk.
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Enjoy sunny Llandudno. At least one poster who admits to having favoured a Le Pen victory
I NEVER favoured Le Pen - please retract your coment
I thought it was implied by you saying Macron was a bad choice for the UK. The only other choice was Le Pen. There's no fence to sit on with the French system.
Er, but he he didn't say that. I'm can't even see where he could have been misinterpreted to have implied that?
Congrats to Macron. Hopefully he'll be able to start fixing the problems France faces without callously ad carelessly blaming those problems on others.
I must admit to finding his relationship with his wife interesting. Not for the salacious reasons some on here seem to, but for another: did Brigitte Trogneux see something in the young man that marked him out for greatness, or did she mould him into the success he has become?
Good morning. As @Roger implies, it does now look as if the Brexit and Trump votes were the fag-end of the wave of closed nativism. I hope May has the good sense to bin off the nationalists once her election is out of the way, and sit down with Macron to find a sensible way forward. But I fear she has been brainwashed by the Hard Right.
I agree with your comments and am actually more hopeful May and Macron will have a sensible approach to Brexit. Hollande was always a road block
As far as the hard right is concerned I do think it is overplayed. There is no doubt that UKIP supporters are going to May in droves but they have no other choice. No one else is giving a clear Brexit message.
In the conservative party there are some in favour of a hard Brexit but, on the assumption Theresa May achieves a good majority, the mood music will almost certainly look for a deal, that is fair to both sides, but will not entirely satisfy those extreme soft and hard Brexit supporters
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Enjoy sunny Llandudno. At least one poster who admits to having favoured a Le Pen victory
(PS. I went to prep school in Penmaenmawr so I know Llandudno well)
Morning all. I holidayed in Penmaenmawr when I was a small woolie in the 70s. And wrote my name in stones on the Great Ormes Head in Llandudno, wonder if it's still there?! (jokes) I'm contemplating the theory that where there is a clear 'vote against' candidate such as Le Pen that poling tends to understate the desire to say no to that option, and whether Corbyn represents such a vote against type (for diametrically opposed reasons)
FN remains very transfer unfriendly. Neither Melenchon or right wing parties transferred in any great numbers. Contrary to the view of the PB blackshirts.
I find charts like this fascinating. It's the small lines that hide interesting stories: who swaps from Le Pen to Macron (or vice versa) between rounds? Why?
Because the first round doesn't really matter, whereas the second elects a President?
But it does matter, doesn't it? Le Pen got to the second round with a derisory percentage of the vote because too many people voted for no hopers on the first round.
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It would be nice to think the tide is turning but it's a bit early to tell. One spin off is likely to be the reinvigoration of the Remainers as we watch the new optimism spreading from accross the channel.
I think we should wait until his unveils his program, and passes his first budget without the whole country grinding to a halt from strikes before we get to carried away. Sure, he looks good on TV, and talks a good line, but can he actually achieve anything.
Running against MLP is one thing, she pretty much gets his vote out for him. I am interested in how he is going to attempt to get a good showing in the assembly without a local party machine to put in the shoe leather, canvaas his voters, deliver his leaflets and get his vote out.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
Why would it be? In the case of Corbyn, he's hardly the most pro-European leader out there!
I'd also caution against thinking that an election result in Fra
Optimism is contagious.
Watching the jubilance in France contrasting with Theresa May and her gang scabbling around looking for friends like pigs in search of truffles is bound to have an effect.
Our politics looks squalid and backward looking today. Depressing.
The sick man of Europe. Run by Liam Fox and Jacob Rees Mogg.
So sick in fact that the unemployed of Europe are flocking to its shores........
Almost everyone on here is happy macron has won handily, even if some are less confident of how much a success he will be - why some ranting, petty, hateful bitterness this morning conjuring hordes of disappointed neo fascists? Moments like these show the pathetic side of us only too vividly.
Good day.
The blessed sponge of Lethe is getting saturated by this post. Leavers for Fascists were numerous enough last week.
There will have been some with money on it, some who felt that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend", and, yes, a small number who may have wanted her to win. But I think numerous is a bit of an exaggeration.
According to YouGov, Leavers who expressed a preference broke more than 80% for Marine Le Pen as best for Britain. Even discounting those who didn't, that's more than 6 million voters.
Leavers need to take a good hard look around themselves and start wondering about priorities.
Much as I enjoy watching you bait a section of Leave, it a little unfair that there seems to be a trend to equate Leave voters with tacit support for fascism which is probably true in a microscopic amount of cases.
And cherry picking data from that poll as you have..
I was surprised to note that 18 percent of Remainers expressing an opinion considered Le Pen to be the best option for the UK, compared to the less than 1 in 4 Leave voters in total who nominated her.
Please, don't mix units like that. Either both as percentages (18% to 24% say) or more than 1 in 6 remainers to less than 1 in 4 leavers. Sorry, but it's the Physics teacher side of me coming out: getting units wrong has a similar effect on me to fingernails on a blackboard.
I know. I was just pointing out that anyone can cherrypick data to suit them and express it in a Lib Dem style. If you read my post it does say so.
The process of demonization is depressing. I voted Labour/left from Harold up to Tony, even though some of my fellow-travellers were less than ideal.
I'm sure some of the French who voted for Le Pen were fascists and racists. Equally, I'm sure some of Macron's supporters were racist and communist (think Mao).
I knew a few fellow labour voters who thought Pol Pot was too soft and Kim Jong-Il was a beacon for the whole world. I'm sure some Tory voters thought Hitler was too soft on the Jews. The extremes always demonise the extremes from the other side and claim all their voters are just as bad. It's silly and childish, and as they grow up some realise this.
I'd vote LDs if they softened their tone on Europe. I quite like Tim, but making the subject purely black and white is treating the voters as fools. There are good things about a European Union, thee are some bad things. Most people make a choice and in a democracy they are entitled to do so - the bastards.
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Enjoy sunny Llandudno. At least one poster who admits to having favoured a Le Pen victory
(PS. I went to prep school in Penmaenmawr so I know Llandudno well)
Goodness can you not even read what he wrote?!
Macron came to Downing St and indicated there he would not be good for us - it still doesn't mean it would have been preferable for Le Pen to win.
What I find very disheartening is that the Pro EU Governments and Bureaucracy should be just as pragmatic as ourselves to Brexit. Due to geographical and political position on the edge and separated from the European mainland we have always been much less keen on political and economic integration rather than co-operation. I think it would suit both sides for us to be closely working with a more integrated European Union but whether a suitably negotiated position will be agreed is unlikely
A hilarious Alan Partridge-style moment on BBC Breakfast, with an interviewer trying to interview people on the UK's tallest climbing wall, high up on a grain silo.
Good morning. As @Roger implies, it does now look as if the Brexit and Trump votes were the fag-end of the wave of closed nativism. I hope May has the good sense to bin off the nationalists once her election is out of the way, and sit down with Macron to find a sensible way forward. But I fear she has been brainwashed by the Hard Right.
I agree with your comments and am actually more hopeful May and Macron will have a sensible approach to Brexit. Hollande was always a road block
As far as the hard right is concerned I do think it is overplayed. There is no doubt that UKIP supporters are going to May in droves but they have no other choice. No one else is giving a clear Brexit message.
In the conservative party there are some in favour of a hard Brexit but, on the assumption Theresa May achieves a good majority, the mood music will almost certainly look for a deal, that is fair to both sides, but will not entirely satisfy those extreme soft and hard Brexit supporters
Theresa May will undoubtedly look for a deal but no deal remains a better option than a bad deal. The difference is that she will now have more scope to define what a 'bad deal' is.
All the same, her currently commanding position relies on (1) Labour being utterly useless, (2) keeping the Ukip switchers on board, and (3) not seriously upsetting more than 15% of her parliamentary party at any one time. Her ability to define what a bad deal is needs to be seen in that light.
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It would be nice to think the tide is turning but it's a bit early to tell. One spin off is likely to be the reinvigoration of the Remainers as we watch the new optimism spreading from accross the channel.
I think we should wait until his unveils his program, and passes his first budget without the whole country grinding to a halt from strikes before we get to carried away. Sure, he looks good on TV, and talks a good line, but can he actually achieve anything.
Running against MLP is one thing, she pretty much gets his vote out for him. I am interested in how he is going to attempt to get a good showing in the assembly without a local party machine to put in the shoe leather, canvaas his voters, deliver his leaflets and get his vote out.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
Why would it be? In the case of Corbyn, he's hardly the most pro-European leader out there!
I'd also caution against thinking that an election result in Fra
Optimism is contagious.
Watching the jubilance in France contrasting with Theresa May and her gang scabbling around looking for friends like pigs in search of truffles is bound to have an effect.
Our politics looks squalid and backward looking today. Depressing.
The sick man of Europe. Run by Liam Fox and Jacob Rees Mogg.
So sick in fact that the unemployed of Europe are flocking to its shores........
Good morning. As @Roger implies, it does now look as if the Brexit and Trump votes were the fag-end of the wave of closed nativism. I hope May has the good sense to bin off the nationalists once her election is out of the way, and sit down with Macron to find a sensible way forward. But I fear she has been brainwashed by the Hard Right.
Nationalism is like smoking. May will find it hard to give it up.
You don't realise May was a Remainer, do you?
Now that's cleared up, could you point to the evidence for her nationalism?
I agree with your comments and am actually more hopeful May and Macron will have a sensible approach to Brexit. Hollande was always a road block
As far as the hard right is concerned I do think it is overplayed. There is no doubt that UKIP supporters are going to May in droves but they have no other choice. No one else is giving a clear Brexit message.
In the conservative party there are some in favour of a hard Brexit but, on the assumption Theresa May achieves a good majority, the mood music will almost certainly look for a deal, that is fair to both sides, but will not entirely satisfy those extreme soft and hard Brexit supporters
It's quite probable once the election is over and the triumphalism fades the mood music will become more conciliatory.
I do think immigration remains a huge elephant in the room - it's not just a question of "taking back control" but assessing what that means not only in terms of future policy but the status of those already here. It's hard to underestimate the role immigration played in the events of 23/6/16.
Beyond the A50 negotiations, there remain a raft of serious issues for the new Government to tackle and for all the euphoria about a wave of doctors to ensure your local GP surgery is open as long as your local Tesco's (I'm far from convinced), the complex issues of housing and the funding of adult social care need to be debated. Everyone knows the Hammond sticking plaster of funding was just that and the question of how care for older people is to be funded and resourced remains filed in the "too difficult to talk about" tray.
As for housing, it's much more than just tearing up planning regulations and controls and building new homes - it's more about the provision of communities and that means infrastructure in the forms of roads, schools, shops, GP surgeries, libraries and all the rest.
Planning isn't just about the Green Belt - it's about ensuring the infrastructure exists or can be provided to support thousands of people moving into new communities.
Good morning. As @Roger implies, it does now look as if the Brexit and Trump votes were the fag-end of the wave of closed nativism. I hope May has the good sense to bin off the nationalists once her election is out of the way, and sit down with Macron to find a sensible way forward. But I fear she has been brainwashed by the Hard Right.
The FN still doubled their runoff vote from 2002 even with the Macron landslide. I also think the Eurosceptic 5* could well win the Italian elections next year, Beppe Grillo is more Boris Johnson than Marine Le Pen. As for hard Brexit if May wins a landslide having committed to take the UK out of the single market and end free movement and reduce payments to the EU that is what the voters will expect her to deliver!
I NEVER favoured Le Pen - please retract your coment
Roger said
'I thought it was implied by you saying Macron was a bad choice for the UK. The only other choice was Le Pen. There's no fence to sit on with the French system'.
Roger - you simply did not read my quote and implied I favour Le Pen.
Fortunately, there are posters on here who have jumped to my support and I am so grateful to them
A big disappointment for Trump Farage and many posters on here but a great day for the French who would never choose the fascist however it was wrapped.
Farage said yesterday that Le Pen would be much the best choice for Brexit which I'm afraid tells you all you need to know about the choice we have made.
Actually Gove on the same programme said he would have voted for Fillon in round 1 but Macron in the runoff and Trump like May congratulated Macron on his win unlike Farage
The process of demonization is depressing. I voted Labour/left from Harold up to Tony, even though some of my fellow-travellers were less than ideal.
I'm sure some of the French who voted for Le Pen were fascists and racists. Equally, I'm sure some of Macron's supporters were racist and communist (think Mao).
I knew a few fellow labour voters who thought Pol Pot was too soft and Kim Jong-Il was a beacon for the whole world. I'm sure some Tory voters thought Hitler was too soft on the Jews. The extremes always demonise the extremes from the other side and claim all their voters are just as bad. It's silly and childish, and as they grow up some realise this.
I'd vote LDs if they softened their tone on Europe. I quite like Tim, but making the subject purely black and white is treating the voters as fools. There are good things about a European Union, thee are some bad things. Most people make a choice and in a democracy they are entitled to do so - the bastards.
Would you welcome a choice once the details of Brexit have been agreed between May's government and the EU. Maybe
Accept the deal Send it back for renegotiation Stay in EU
And this nonsense about zero deficit ! Which other country pursues moronic policy like that ? In the US, Trump is increasing the deficit.
We should be running a surplus by now, as Germany has been doing for some considerable time. The horrendous debt built up as a result of Brown's policy errors and general incompetence is a millstone around our children's necks that will adversely affect their standard of living and significantly reduce our ability to respond to international turmoil in future.
And Trump is an idiot. I thought you knew that.
Trump is a Republican and, as Cheney put it: Reagan showed that deficits don't matter. Meanwhile, back in Britain, it was Gordon Brown paying off Tory debt and George Osborne increasing it.
The idea that Gordon Brown paid off "Tory debt" is laughable. He inherited a budget surplus and continued to run a surplus for the first 3 years, sticking to a manifesto promise to follow Tory spending plans. Thereafter he ran a deficit every year. Before the financial crisis hit the debt had risen by around 65% on his watch. Even if we ignore the financial crisis the truth is that Brown massively increased the debt.
Before the global financial meltdown, Brown either ran a surplus or a deficit smaller than the previous Conservative governments had been running. It is because it was low by historical and international standards that the Conservative Opposition felt able to announce it would follow Labour's spending levels.
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Enjoy sunny Llandudno. At least one poster who admits to having favoured a Le Pen victory
I NEVER favoured Le Pen - please retract your coment
I thought it was implied by you saying Macron was a bad choice for the UK. The only other choice was Le Pen. There's no fence to sit on with the French system.
Er, but he he didn't say that. I'm can't even see where he could have been misinterpreted to have implied that?
You're quite right. I apologise. I skim read it and knowing him to be an extreme May loyalist I filled in the blanks wrongly.
When someone makes a move Of which we don't approve Who is it that always intervenes? UN and OAS They have their place I guess But first: Send the Marines!
Hello Roger: Yes I'm out and slowly getting better. Time out of the office and rest has helped enormously though still have bad and good days. But the direction of travel is right.
And I am on the brink of a momentous work decision so have all the hopes and anxieties associated with that to manage.
I try to be a glass half full person. Some days it's harder than others.
Keep well.
That's promising - good luck with the work decision! All good wishes in both work and health spheres.
Congrats to Macron. Hopefully he'll be able to start fixing the problems France faces without callously ad carelessly blaming those problems on others.
I must admit to finding his relationship with his wife interesting. Not for the salacious reasons some on here seem to, but for another: did Brigitte Trogneux see something in the young man that marked him out for greatness, or did she mould him into the success he has become?
I understand she is quite ambitious for him. He certainly has plenty arrogance.
The process of demonization is depressing. I voted Labour/left from Harold up to Tony, even though some of my fellow-travellers were less than ideal.
I'm sure some of the French who voted for Le Pen were fascists and racists. Equally, I'm sure some of Macron's supporters were racist and communist (think Mao).
I knew a few fellow labour voters who thought Pol Pot was too soft and Kim Jong-Il was a beacon for the whole world. I'm sure some Tory voters thought Hitler was too soft on the Jews. The extremes always demonise the extremes from the other side and claim all their voters are just as bad. It's silly and childish, and as they grow up some realise this.
I'd vote LDs if they softened their tone on Europe. I quite like Tim, but making the subject purely black and white is treating the voters as fools. There are good things about a European Union, thee are some bad things. Most people make a choice and in a democracy they are entitled to do so - the bastards.
Would you welcome a choice once the details of Brexit have been agreed between May's government and the EU. Maybe
Accept the deal Send it back for renegotiation Stay in EU
We no longer have the ability to stay in the EU without agreement of all 27 nations, article 50 can't be unilaterally undone.
A big disappointment for Trump Farage and many posters on here but a great day for the French who would never choose the fascist however it was wrapped.
Farage said yesterday that Le Pen would be much the best choice for Brexit which I'm afraid tells you all you need to know about the choice we have made.
Actually Gove on the same programme said he would have voted for Fillon in round 1 but Macron in the runoff
Admitting to choosing the FN is not a good career move for a Tory politician even one as washed up as Govey.
Good morning. As @Roger implies, it does now look as if the Brexit and Trump votes were the fag-end of the wave of closed nativism. I hope May has the good sense to bin off the nationalists once her election is out of the way, and sit down with Macron to find a sensible way forward. But I fear she has been brainwashed by the Hard Right.
The FN still doubled their runoff vote from 2002 even with the Macron landslide. I also think the Eurosceptic 5* could well win the Italian elections next year, Beppe Grillo is more Boris Johnson than Marine Le Pen. As for hard Brexit if May wins a landslide having committed to take the UK out of the single market and end free movement and reduce payments to the EU that is what the voters will expect her to deliver!
They will also expect all the other stuff she has promised - a fairer country in which living standards for the majority improve. It will be interesting to see how she manages that on the back of a Hard Brexit.
Would you welcome a choice once the details of Brexit have been agreed between May's government and the EU. Maybe
Accept the deal Send it back for renegotiation Stay in EU
I certainly would which is one of the reasons why I cannot support May or the Conservatives. I think the options are the first two, not the third as the implication would be by choosing the second we extend A50 through a transitional process.
I'm opposed to the way May has sought to control the negotiation purely through the prism of a Conservative Government. It's a national process in which we all should have involvement and a stake - while not wishing to stretch the analogy too far, it's a defining national moment at which point party politics should be forgotten and a negotiating team "of all the talents" put together to ensure the best possible outcome for all of us.
The left have flocked to Macron as clearly he had to beat Le Pen (rightly so, I';m not one of these mythical LePen supporters). I think they will very quickly be dissapointed when the actually work out what Macron is planning to do.
If anything if it is as 'pro-business' as stated, then those farmers and unions will be stockpiling tyres to burn within days.
The left have flocked to Macron as clearly he had to beat Le Pen (rightly so, I';m not one of these mythical LePen supporters). I think they will very quickly be dissapointed when the actually work out what Macron is planning to do.
If anything if it is as 'pro-business' as stated, then those farmers and unions will be stockpiling tyres to burn within days.
The farmers should be shafted. Here, there and everywhere. Subsidy guzzlers.
I do find it darkly amusing that some people think that an investment banker turned politician is some sort of progressive saviour.
Investment bankers know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Their view of the world and the economy is one we should be challenging not hailing, as some appear to be doing, the Second Coming. The financial world has - for far too long - thought of itself as top dog. Look around you: the world we have now is one which has suited financiers very well indeed. In America they have elected a President who wants to remove recent controls on banks. And France has elected someone who wants to go in the same liberalising direction.
When the penny drops what liberalising the French labour market actually means in practice, well that will be interesting.........
I don't know how May will turn out as PM but for all her faults she is one of the few leaders, certainly in Britain, who has given the impression that she doesn't give a toss about City folk.
Mrs May likes - no, depends upon - City folk for tax revenue and party donations. She gives a toss about them, believe me. The low regulation, low public spending, low tax regime she has threatened if there is no Brexit deal is designed specifically to ensure as few City people as possible abandon the UK.
Will it be Putin, Erdogan or May? The authoritarian leaders of the 3 main countries on the fringes of Europe, who do not support the European vision, are unlikely to welcome Macron's victory.
It would be nice to think the tide is turning but it's a bit early to tell. One spin off is likely to be the reinvigoration of the Remainers as we watch the new optimism spreading from accross the channel.
It is a victory for the EU vision and a defeat for isolationist authoritarian nationalism, as espoused by Chairman May and the UKIP-Tory party, despite their probable landslide victory on 8/6/17.
I think you could have gone wider and included the US and Saudi Arabia Theresa May's new best friends. Again too early to tell but I wonder if this could be a shot in the arm for Corbyn and Farron?
.
Hallo cyclefree. I hope your spell in hospital went well? I guess you're out now so keep in good health.
Hello Roger: Yes I'm out and slowly getting better. Time out of the office and rest has helped enormously though still have bad and good days. But the direction of travel is right.
And I am on the brink of a momentous work decision so have all the hopes and anxieties associated with that to manage.
I try to be a glass half full person. Some days it's harder than others.
Keep well.
Good morning all,
Ms @Cyclefree, wonderful to read that you are on the mend. Having made my own momentous work decision back in 2011, I can only wish you luck with yours. For what it's worth, you have all my best wishes.
In terms of Macron, I am reserving judgement. While delighted that Le Pen was defeated, let's see what he achieves in practice.
It is a beautiful morning here in Llandudno and while enjoying a pleasant cup of coffee I decided to catch up on PB.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
Enjoy sunny Llandudno. At least one poster who admits to having favoured a Le Pen victory
I NEVER favoured Le Pen - please retract your coment
I thought it was implied by you saying Macron was a bad choice for the UK. The only other choice was Le Pen. There's no fence to sit on with the French system.
Er, but he he didn't say that. I'm can't even see where he could have been misinterpreted to have implied that?
You're quite right. I apologise. I skim read it and knowing him to be an extreme May loyalist I filled in the blanks wrongly.
That's a bit of a non sequitur: why would a May loyalist support Le Pen?
Good morning. As @Roger implies, it does now look as if the Brexit and Trump votes were the fag-end of the wave of closed nativism. I hope May has the good sense to bin off the nationalists once her election is out of the way, and sit down with Macron to find a sensible way forward. But I fear she has been brainwashed by the Hard Right.
Nationalism is like smoking. May will find it hard to give it up.
You don't realise May was a Remainer, do you?
Now that's cleared up, could you point to the evidence for her nationalism?
It's about time that nationalism was given a better press. The nation state enabled democracy to be established because it provided a place in which a demos could be established. Being proud of one's country is a good thing. Wanting one's country to do well is a good thing. Being proud of being British or French or Italian, even if you come from a mixture of backgrounds (as I do), regardless of where you were born, is a good thing. Deracinated individuals/groups are to be pitied rather than admired.
It does not mean that you want other countries to do badly. Nor does it mean that you hate foreigners.
There are people and parties who think like this. But this is not an inevitable consequence of having pride in the country you live in.
Some are far too quick to assume that a desire to have your country to do well is barely a step away from death marches and camps. It isn't and it's about time someone said so.
Comments
Having said that, I am a eurosceptic who voted remain precisely because I did not want to be associated with people like that.
I'm beginning to get a little worried about you. No matter how sane you may be otherwise, you seem to wander straight up Loony avenue where Brexit is concerned.
Sometimes people have different opinions. I've often been in the minority. it's called life. Why 10,000,000 French people and 17,000.000 leave voters should apologise to you is puzzling.
I suspect the French picked the least bad President from several bad choices, but I may be wrong. Even Corbynites are entitled to their opinions.
The issue with NICs is not the employee side of them but the hidden employers side of them.
Having had multiple conversations with HMRC regarding IR35 over the years their pet hate is the loss of those employers NIC contributions - the dividend tax removed most of the rest of the tax differential between limited company contractors and employment...
I think the employee side is a problem too - I run my own limited company and I haven't paid any NI of either kind for years while still qualifying for benefits, state pension etc. just by paying my self a small salary and topping up with dividends. Every director with half a brain does the same.
I agree with you. The British tradition is that when public sentiment is trending to the extremes, more extreme ideas and extreme people get absorbed into one of the two mainstream parties, hopefully tempered a bit in the process (for example some of what passed for Conservative opinion in the 1930s). Whether this is better than having a third of the population support them but see them rejected is an argument for the historians.
The comments by some on here are amazing as they delight at Macron’s victory and the EU will now be a fantastic unified group with the far right defeated, Macron and Merkel, the new saints and that the UK is suddenly going to enjoy an uprising of love for their wonderland EU.
I am the first to accept I have little knowledge of French politics so I have listened with interest to the commentators. I did find it most surprising that nobody thought that Macron’s win was going to unite a deeply divided France.
Macron won just 24% of the vote on the first round and as I understand it, voters vote against the least liked candidate in the second round while not actually supporting that other candidate. It was very satisfying that Le Pen was well beaten as her views are just unacceptable but the concern is that she should even have achieved anywhere near a third of votes.
The Guardian are not that happy this morning and the clue is in the background of Macron. He is an ex banker who intends slashing corporation tax (just as McDonnell, the self-confessed Marxist is about to hit UK corporation tax with massive rises) and he reaffirms that France comes first and he wants reform of Europe. He sees France as having gained much more influence in Europe as UK leaves, breaking the Anglo-Saxon influence in the EU of UK and Germany.
He also needs to win over a very divisive Parliament in June otherwise, according to commentators, he will become a lame duck President
Theresa May has spoken to him today and I am actually confident that they will get on, and certainly a massive improvement from Hollande and Le Pen – well lets not talk about her
Now back to enjoying this lovely day on the week my wife and I fly to our son and daughter in laws in Vancouver and have a break from politics (possible but maybe unlikely)
And I am on the brink of a momentous work decision so have all the hopes and anxieties associated with that to manage.
I try to be a glass half full person. Some days it's harder than others.
Keep well.
Rejoining indeed.
For me, the whole point of democracy is the ability to get rid of a poor government without having to kill anyone. That is why Corbyn is so dangerous and needs to be got rid of as soon as possible: we need a PM in waiting on the opposition front bench.
'It's not depressing. It coud be the beginning a shift in the tectonic plates pushing us in a more progressive direcion. At least there is now the likelihood of a strong and united European alliance against the dark forces of Trump/Farage/ and May'
Roger - give it a rest - Le Pen and Farage are well beaten but May is hugely popular in our Country and to even suggest she is the same bracket as the others shows your ridiculous intolerance and how out of step with UK opinion you are.
You would think that you do not live in the UK
I can see the argument (Macron was the safe anti-establishment candidate this time around, he won't succeed so next time the real anti-establishment candidate will win) but I'm not 100% sure of that...
I would simply observe that voting against the party you don't want isn't peculiar to France, but is a big feature of UK politics - both tactical voting at local level and people choosing May essentially for fear of Corbyn.
Of course now we're getting 'Lefties and Frogs should be worried & ashamed that a notafascist got 11million votes'. Entirely different people making that argument I'm sure.
And cherry picking data from that poll as you have..
I was surprised to note that 18 percent of Remainers expressing an opinion considered Le Pen to be the best option for the UK, compared to the less than 1 in 4 Leave voters in total who nominated her.
(PS. I went to prep school in Penmaenmawr so I know Llandudno well)
To move on, Macron will need to call in favours from Germany and the EU. Above all he will need to demonstrate an improvement in the French economy.
If you talk about the American Dream (for its a nice shorthand for a better future) the people who voted for change / none of the above (which what both Brexit and Trump represented) are those who believe the American Dream is dead.... And that is the poorer parts of the UK (outside cities) and America (away from the coasts).
Sorry, but it's the Physics teacher side of me coming out: getting units wrong has a similar effect on me to fingernails on a blackboard.
Congratulations first to Macron - just glancing at the transfers he did better (and Le Pen worse) from Fillon supporters than I had expected. I thought I saw a poll which suggested up to a third of Fillon's backers would switch to Le Pen in R2 but that clearly didn't happen.
That being said, the more significant political news overnight was the strong CDU performance in the Schleswig-Holstein election. The CDU, Greens and FDP all advanced and it's interesting the local CDU leader is trying to put together what is apparently called a "Jamaica Coalition" of these three parties which would have a majority in the local Parliament.
There's another big provincial election next weekend in North Rhine-Westphalia next Sunday. In 2012, the SPD trounced the CDU by 13% with Hannelore Kraft's SPD-Green coalition retaining power but there looks a distinct possibility of an upheaval.
Latest polls show the SPD and CDU almost level (SPD down 7, CDU up 6) with the Greens down and the FDP up three or four points. With the Pirates dead, it seems possible the Left and AfD will also get into the local Parliament. Very hard to see where this will go but it would be a serious reverse for the SPD to lose this State.
The September Bundestag elections looks fascinating - at the moment, the CDU leads the SPD 36-29 (in 2013 it was 41.5-25.7) so that's a swing of 4% to the SPD but on current numbers the Greens, FDP, Left and AfD will all make it into the Bundestag so the potential permutations to create a Government coalition are currently many and varied.
Besides, anyone who thinks that every voter's decision-making process can be rationalised just needs to go and do a bit of canvassing.
Investment bankers know the price of everything and the value of nothing. Their view of the world and the economy is one we should be challenging not hailing, as some appear to be doing, the Second Coming. The financial world has - for far too long - thought of itself as top dog. Look around you: the world we have now is one which has suited financiers very well indeed. In America they have elected a President who wants to remove recent controls on banks. And France has elected someone who wants to go in the same liberalising direction.
When the penny drops what liberalising the French labour market actually means in practice, well that will be interesting.........
I don't know how May will turn out as PM but for all her faults she is one of the few leaders, certainly in Britain, who has given the impression that she doesn't give a toss about City folk.
I must admit to finding his relationship with his wife interesting. Not for the salacious reasons some on here seem to, but for another: did Brigitte Trogneux see something in the young man that marked him out for greatness, or did she mould him into the success he has become?
As far as the hard right is concerned I do think it is overplayed. There is no doubt that UKIP supporters are going to May in droves but they have no other choice. No one else is giving a clear Brexit message.
In the conservative party there are some in favour of a hard Brexit but, on the assumption Theresa May achieves a good majority, the mood music will almost certainly look for a deal, that is fair to both sides, but will not entirely satisfy those extreme soft and hard Brexit supporters
I holidayed in Penmaenmawr when I was a small woolie in the 70s. And wrote my name in stones on the Great Ormes Head in Llandudno, wonder if it's still there?! (jokes)
I'm contemplating the theory that where there is a clear 'vote against' candidate such as Le Pen that poling tends to understate the desire to say no to that option, and whether Corbyn represents such a vote against type (for diametrically opposed reasons)
I'm sure some of the French who voted for Le Pen were fascists and racists. Equally, I'm sure some of Macron's supporters were racist and communist (think Mao).
I knew a few fellow labour voters who thought Pol Pot was too soft and Kim Jong-Il was a beacon for the whole world. I'm sure some Tory voters thought Hitler was too soft on the Jews. The extremes always demonise the extremes from the other side and claim all their voters are just as bad. It's silly and childish, and as they grow up some realise this.
I'd vote LDs if they softened their tone on Europe. I quite like Tim, but making the subject purely black and white is treating the voters as fools. There are good things about a European Union, thee are some bad things. Most people make a choice and in a democracy they are entitled to do so - the bastards.
What I find very disheartening is that the Pro EU Governments and Bureaucracy should be just as pragmatic as ourselves to Brexit. Due to geographical and political position on the edge and separated from the European mainland we have always been much less keen on political and economic integration rather than co-operation. I think it would suit both sides for us to be closely working with a more integrated European Union but whether a suitably negotiated position will be agreed is unlikely
A hilarious Alan Partridge-style moment on BBC Breakfast, with an interviewer trying to interview people on the UK's tallest climbing wall, high up on a grain silo.
All the same, her currently commanding position relies on (1) Labour being utterly useless, (2) keeping the Ukip switchers on board, and (3) not seriously upsetting more than 15% of her parliamentary party at any one time. Her ability to define what a bad deal is needs to be seen in that light.
Now that's cleared up, could you point to the evidence for her nationalism?
I do think immigration remains a huge elephant in the room - it's not just a question of "taking back control" but assessing what that means not only in terms of future policy but the status of those already here. It's hard to underestimate the role immigration played in the events of 23/6/16.
Beyond the A50 negotiations, there remain a raft of serious issues for the new Government to tackle and for all the euphoria about a wave of doctors to ensure your local GP surgery is open as long as your local Tesco's (I'm far from convinced), the complex issues of housing and the funding of adult social care need to be debated. Everyone knows the Hammond sticking plaster of funding was just that and the question of how care for older people is to be funded and resourced remains filed in the "too difficult to talk about" tray.
As for housing, it's much more than just tearing up planning regulations and controls and building new homes - it's more about the provision of communities and that means infrastructure in the forms of roads, schools, shops, GP surgeries, libraries and all the rest.
Planning isn't just about the Green Belt - it's about ensuring the infrastructure exists or can be provided to support thousands of people moving into new communities.
I NEVER favoured Le Pen - please retract your coment
Roger said
'I thought it was implied by you saying Macron was a bad choice for the UK. The only other choice was Le Pen. There's no fence to sit on with the French system'.
Roger - you simply did not read my quote and implied I favour Le Pen.
Fortunately, there are posters on here who have jumped to my support and I am so grateful to them
Please retract your statement - thank you
Accept the deal
Send it back for renegotiation
Stay in EU
Of which we don't approve
Who is it that always intervenes?
UN and OAS
They have their place I guess
But first: Send the Marines!
I'm opposed to the way May has sought to control the negotiation purely through the prism of a Conservative Government. It's a national process in which we all should have involvement and a stake - while not wishing to stretch the analogy too far, it's a defining national moment at which point party politics should be forgotten and a negotiating team "of all the talents" put together to ensure the best possible outcome for all of us.
If anything if it is as 'pro-business' as stated, then those farmers and unions will be stockpiling tyres to burn within days.
Ms @Cyclefree, wonderful to read that you are on the mend. Having made my own momentous work decision back in 2011, I can only wish you luck with yours. For what it's worth, you have all my best wishes.
In terms of Macron, I am reserving judgement. While delighted that Le Pen was defeated, let's see what he achieves in practice.
It does not mean that you want other countries to do badly. Nor does it mean that you hate foreigners.
There are people and parties who think like this. But this is not an inevitable consequence of having pride in the country you live in.
Some are far too quick to assume that a desire to have your country to do well is barely a step away from death marches and camps. It isn't and it's about time someone said so.