The French political class is tearing itself apart with feuding and backbiting ahead of this month’s vote.
We’re only four days into France’s election campaign and the vendettas are already boiling over in a melodramatic flurry of grab-your-popcorn vaudeville acts.
Humiliated in the EU election, President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday called a national parliamentary election, hoping to stem the tidal advances of the far right.
His rivals tried to seize on the historic moment to set enmities aside and unite — but things haven’t gone as planned, to put it mildly.
In the country’s main center-right party, the besieged leader barricaded himself in party headquarters claiming he was still in command, until a rival turned up with a spare key to demonstrate that was no longer the case.
On the far right, two prominent figures descended into open warfare, with one accusing the other of setting “the world record for betrayal.”
Meanwhile, on the left, a co-operation agreement has been struck and parties seem intent on putting their differences behind them — but tensions still crackle between two star figures, in terms of both personality and issues including Ukraine and Gaza.
I remember working in France right after Trump got elected. So many ppl told us how bizarre our politics were and what a joke it was.
That didn’t age very well
Still very far from US shitshow. I mean Trump could be back what the actual fuck
Saw the headline and thought, “this is what the US has to look forward to this year.” We love to one-up everyone else. Oh god.
I don’t know, this sounds pretty crazy, whereas US is only two sided. I don’t know any details besides this article but the imagine in the US, the differences are starker, the consequences more dire, for both us and the rest of the world (I apologize if it seems like exceptionalism, but this really is a situation with global consequnces both now and the future)
These guys have like five political parties duking it out, I wish this is what America had to look forward to. It would be a step up from two-party FPTP.
A common saying in France is that we are 5 years behind the USA.
In America, the coalitions are created before the election based on party. “Republicans” and “Democrats” need to be thought of as right and left wing coalitions.