Mailwatch(ed) Forum

The heavyweight pundits are rolling in. Surely the story here is the terrifying number of young voters Le Pen has. It's really not that unusual for the left to win with young voters, anywhere. Nor has it been for ages. Here for instance is centrist Blairite Tony Blair winning the youth vote in 2005 very easily.

https://www.ipsos.com/en-uk/how-britain-voted-2005

Note to the attempt to bank every vote for Labour, as a vote for "Corbyn" and "socialism".

To paraphrase a slogan commonly used before the second round of the 2002 French Presidential Election for 2022, "Vote for the dick, not the fascist!"

He came over 59/39 on one which is a bit up on his polling and more than a bit down on her.

Seems to have steadied with a sizeable absence, if I’m honest I think that might be hard for Le Pen to claw to her side and likely to break a few % to Macron. We will see i guess.

It's our old friend Goodwin again.

Macron projected to win 58,2 v 41.8, but he's really lost, or something. Going to be quite a few departements won by Le Pen.

My old stomping ground of Pas de Calais is a dead cert, though St-Omer will be for Macron. I am never going to the Pas de Calais ever again.

Le Pen speaking now. Hilariously having a pop at Macron for being divisive.

Talking about "Emmanuel Macron's elites". This is her non elite Dad, from whom she inherited a political party.

In 1977, Le Pen inherited a fortune from Hubert Lambert (1934–1976), son of the cement industrialist Leon Lambert (1877–1952), one of three sons of Lambert Cement founder Hilaire Lambert. Hubert Lambert was a political supporter of Le Pen and a monarchist as well.[11] Lambert's will provided 30 million francs (approximately €5 million) to Le Pen, as well as his opulent three-storey 11-room mansion at 8 Parc de Montretout, Saint-Cloud, in the western suburbs of Paris. The home had been built by Napoleon III for his chief of staff Jean-François Mocquard

That's actually a decent effort by the Melenchon voters.

Turnout at 5pm stands at 63.2%, accoring to the interior ministry – that’s 1.8% lower than during the first round, and 2.1% down on the second round five years ago.

For the time being this doesn’t look like the surge in abstentions that some had feared.

That’s a Tony Benn win for Matt.


More bad news for Matt from Slovenia where an incumbent nationalist populist leader has been ousted.

Luckily, Macron can draw on advice from a formidable group of proven winners.

Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate defeated by Nocolas Sarkoy in 2007, warns of trouble ahead for Macron if he does not take into account the nature of his victory:

I think that the French have been deprived of a true choice. It would be a serious mistake on the part of Emmanuel Macron to consider that this re-election means that he can continue carrying out the same policy, in the same manner, for the next five years.

Pollsters. Bookies who are too dumb to factor in a guaranteed profit.

BBC News are going to be gutted at the news of a Macron win. I have been left to my own devices all weekend and the World Service has been on with barely a break.

The general tone had been that, even if Macron won, Le Pen will have shattered the consensus of French politics, (no, me neither), and her lieutenants have been given a free run of the schedules. Same thing happened a couple of years ago with a Swedish GE. At least, on that occasion and when the right got a thumping, the BBC had the grace to shut up.

I am expecting the Today Programme tomorrow to be rather light on all things Gallic.

It could never happen here meets Abroad is bloody. 2 of the common tropes driving British news.

kreuzberger wrote: ↑Sun Apr 24, 2022 9:25 pm I am expecting the Today Programme tomorrow to be rather light on all things Gallic.

I'll suffer it for the first hour tomorrow when I drive to work.

The Mail's BTLs on the story are predictably depressing.

I watched bbc news at ten watching that you'd have thought Le Pen had won.

if I understand the thinking, 58%:42% is a humiliating loss for the person with 58% while 52%:48% is an historic victory which demands the most extreme implementation.

And so it came to pass. Nick Robinson in Paris with the "notable" Lucy Williamson chirping about low turnouts (higher than any British GE since 1992) helping Macron and how la femme-fashy should be buoyed by being pipped by a mere 16 points.

It's like the Farage love-bombs, all over again.

In Paris? Le Pen got murdered there.