Here's an interesting quote:
"... most [...] politicians all look and sound the same. Drawn from a narrow
social class, educated in the same elite government or scientific schools, civil
servants by profession, they believe in technocratic, top-down solutions,
because, every inflection seems to imply, They Know Best. They were not very
popular even before the economic crisis. They are now loathed."
Good grief, that sounds just like like the metropolitan mildew that grows so profusely in every nook and cranny of Westminster. Of course, despite my deliberate elision, you will have guessed that it does not refer to British politicians because I doubt that 1% of them have ever attended "scientific schools", however, the rest of it fits all too well.
No, I am quoting from an article in The Telegraph by Ann-Elisabeth Moutet who is commenting on President Hollande's 'Waterloo' at the weekend. He and his party were thrashed and perhaps it is not entirely silly to suggest that should he be considering yet another affair he might care to try his hand with the not unattractive, blonde, Marine Le Pen, leader of the ultra-Right-wing Front National which gave him such a sound slapping at the weekend election.
Such was the magnitude of the defeat that Hollande's entire government has been forced to resign and in what I suspect is a last desperate throw of the dice he has appointed a man who definitely breaks the mold of French politics as described above. He is Manuel Valls, a Spanish-born but French nationality politician whose views seem to be hard to pin down with exactitude. Described in places as being France's Tony Blair, other reports quoting his very hardline stance on immigrants put him even further to the Right.
Meanwhile, according to Ms. Moutet, Marine Le Pen is busy recruiting amongst the disillusioned young and active far-Left which is very shrewd of her given that we know, although every socialist will deny it, that the far-Left and the far-Right hold hands on their part of the political circle. The French face similar confusions to us and others in Europe:
France is, of course, not alone in seeing a grassroots revolt from ordinary people who feel that the powers that be, in their respective capitals or in Brussels, at best nanny them, and at worst despise them. From Geert Wilders’s Partij voor de Vrijheid to Nigel Farage’s Ukip, they have made similar inroads in the political discourse.
The centralising down-thrust of rule by European diktat is squeezing some very odd people out onto the edges of political life and in hard times they can seem dangerously attractive. That's why we must use UKIP at the European elections and then drop them like a hot potato at the general election.
