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yougov.co.uk
Kind of disturbing how around half of the British either can't decide or would just straight up prefer fascism.
www.thetimes.com
https://archive.ph/ulXlM
www.theguardian.com
>Emmanuel Macron has appointed the EU’s former Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, as prime minister of France, as he seeks to put an end to two months of political paralysis after a snap election. >The French president said he had tasked Barnier with forming “a unifying government in the service of the country”. >Macron shocked France by calling a snap parliamentary election in June that resulted in a hung parliament and a deeply divided political landscape. >A leftwing coalition emerged as France’s biggest political force but with not enough seats to reach an absolute majority of 289 in the national assembly. Macron’s centrist faction and the far right make up the two other major groups. Barnier’s traditional rightwing party came fourth and has 47 seats in parliament. >He replaces Gabriel Attal, who resigned on 16 July after the snap election but was kept on by Macron in a caretaker capacity. >Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally party said support for Barnier would depend on his policy programme. >The Socialist party leader, Olivier Faure, part of the leftwing coalition that won the highest number of seats in the election, said it was a “denial of democracy” for Macron to appoint a prime minister from the party that came fourth. “We’re entering a crisis of regime,” Faure said. No. Fucking. Shit. >Barnier was known for almost 50 years in rightwing French politics as a centrist, liberal-minded neo-Gaullist, devoted to the European cause. But in 2021 he stunned observers by lurching to the right and hardening his stance on immigration and security as part of an unsuccessful attempt to become the presidential candidate for the right against Macron in 2022. >At the time, Barnier claimed that unregulated immigration from outside the EU was weakening France’s sense of identity. He believed the UK’s vote to leave the EU showed how dangerous it could be when divisions in society were allowed to fester. Shocking many in Brussels, he called for a French moratorium of three to five years for non-European immigrants, in which even family members joining those already in France would be stopped, and called for the country to regain legal sovereignty from EU courts. Wow, he's practically the same as Le Pen... "National Identity" my ass. >Barnier has previously said he wanted to return to a leading role in French politics. After the post-Brexit agreement was signed with the UK, he said he realised he missed France and wanted to be “useful” in French politics. “I’ve never been a technocrat, I’ve always been a politician,” Barnier said when he tried to become the presidential candidate for Les Républicains. >At 73, Barnier becomes the oldest premier in the history of modern France. This week, Julien Odoul, an MP for Le Pen’s party, criticised him over his age, saying he was a “French Joe Biden” who often changed his views, and was “an opportunist” with “no backbone”. >Barnier has long styled himself as a dependable elder statesman – a mountaineer and hiker from the Alps, who built his career in local village politics and likes walks in ancient forests. >First elected aged 22 as a local councillor in Savoie, he entered parliament aged only 27 in 1978. He served four times as a government minister and twice as EU commissioner. His supporters point out that he has won every direct vote he has stood for since the age of 22. He is a former environment minister, and co-organiser of the 1992 Winter Olympics. How does he think he can get away with such an obvious power grab? This is absolutely ridiculous and i expect the French people really not like this.
www.workers.org
>To the thousands of people amassed in Trafalgar Square in London, Samara Ali said in the final speech at the rally: “We feel like we have turned the tide. It’s a testament to our mobilization that they failed to come out. They would not have been stopped if it was not for our mobilization.” (Independent, Aug. 11) > >In total, tens of thousands of anti-racists rallied in cities and towns across Britain, including English cities Cambridge, Exeter, Sheffield, Liverpool, Newcastle, Hastings, Oxford, Manchester and several sections of London. Banners and signs reading “No to racism!” “Refugees welcome” and “Stop the far right!” were carried by thousands of rally-goers in Glasgow and Edinburgh. > >United Against Racism mobilized 15,000 people at an anti-racism rally in Belfast, where a popular chant was “When migrants’ rights are under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!”
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1827474244856365440.html
https://www.welt.de/politik/ausland/plus252746254/Russlands-Krieg-Die-duestere-Ukraine-Realitaet-ueber-die-Nato-Insider-nur-anonym-sprechen-wollen.html
> President Emmanuel Macron continues to delay recognizing the electoral victory of the left-progressive alliance New Popular Front (NFP). > France Unbowed criticized Macron for “confiscating” democracy. “The theft of democracy we are witnessing risks putting into power a hard-right coalition aligned with the Macronists, paving the way for the National Rally and resulting in deeply antisocial policies that are hostile to workers and trade unions,” the party wrote following Macron’s refusal to nominate Castets. "Scratch a liberal and a fascist bleeds"
www.workers.org
>Undoubtedly, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s concrete proposal to repeal the criminal Emigration Law passed in January of this year and his support for the struggle of the Palestinian people, clearly expressed, together with the theme of “No Pasarán” [blocking neofascists, meaning blocking Le Pen’s NR] have revived the anti-fascist sentiment of the French people. All this has been decisive for mobilizing a vote that, neither in the European elections nor in the first round [of the French legislative votes], had taken place before. [Mélenchon is the leader of France Insoumise and a main spokesperson for the NPF.] > >In short, in both Britain and France, the vote was an instrument to oust the previous governments. In the French case, it was also an expression of a deep anti-fascist popular sentiment, a sort of emergency brake against the threat from the most extreme right wing, but little more. The New Popular Front looks very much like the colorful salad that characterizes the old/new postmodern social democracy and, like it — as Syriza showed in Greece [starting in 2015] — possesses neither the will nor the capacity to solve the problems and may even further weaken the working class. > >The big problems will continue to worsen in the midst of great political instability, either with the foreseeable alliance between Macronism and Le Pen or with a government of the New Popular Front without a parliamentary majority. > >For the moment, time has been gained in the face of the iron fist with which, either through a new threatened pandemic, climate crisis or more directly by war, the bourgeoisie is preparing to confront its own contradictions and the rise of popular mobilization provoked by the crisis. And the working class, in France, in Britain and in every country, must take advantage of this time, this kind of reprieve, to progress in the construction of a powerful communist class organization, capable of organizing the necessary force to defeat the criminal plans of the [neo]imperialist oligarchy.