France Regional Elections: Macron Crashes, Le Pen Falters, EU-Barnier Plan Begins

ER Editor:  As a quick reminder, France had the first round of its regional elections last Sunday, and neither Le Pen nor Macron did particularly well. (See French Voters Stay Home – Record Abstention in Regional Elections) For Macron, that was more or less expected but not so for Le Pen, who had been polling respectably. With Michel Barnier moving in, is the globalist EU establishment smelling blood around her?

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This is the article The Duran team link to: Barnier outlines plot to oust Macron & Le Pen –ex-Brexit chief hatches election masterplan. Of note:

The EU’s former Brexit negotiator said he has a “duty” to put up a fight against frontrunners President Emmanuel Macron and eurosceptic leader Marine Le Pen. Mr Barnier has held meetings with more than 100 right-wing politicians in the hope of revitalising France’s conservative movement ahead of next April’s presidential ballot. In an interview with France’s oldest newspaper La Figaro, he said: “Our duty is to propose, in the fall, an alternative to the announced duel Macron-Le Pen which the French do not want.”

• MSM reporting cannot be trusted on this topic. They suggest that Macron and Le Pen have both failed in the same way, which is a distortion. Rather, they are failing in completely different ways.
• Macron’s party, LREM, has crashed completely, polling at 10%. That’s the real story of the elections. The French have genuine disdain for him. The other is that Le Pen failed to capitalize on this collapse of Macron’s party. It’s not clear at this point that she’s going to win any region of France at all. Which suggests a CEILING beyond which she cannot rise.
• Le Pen has watered down her message too much. She’s tried so hard to be the respectable choice after years of demonization that she’s coming across like everybody else. (ER: we remind readers that she said virtually NOTHING against French people’s suffering over the virus crisis, against the government’s authoritarianism, lies and mishandling.) Her watered down agenda has removed Frexit and leaving the eurozone; it has resorted to making fine distinctions between ‘Islam’ and ‘Islamists’. (ER: disgruntled members of her party who’ve quit have said that she’s playing into the LGBT agenda and has moved away from family values, or at least pretends to have done so.) The abstention rate in these elections shows that Le Pen is now stuck.
• The centre right party of traditional power, Les Républicains (LR), the party of Sarkozy and De Gaulle, did relatively better in the regional elections last week. Michel Barnier is a prominent member. He is also the EU trade commissioner that negotiated Brexit. So he would come across as ‘conservative’, the ‘steady pair of experienced hands’ opposed to ‘fascist’ Le Pen, yet in reality, he’s coming right out of the EU globalist complex. It remains to be seen if he will attract voters.
• Has the long history of attacks on Le Pen finally worked? Has she watered down her pitch based on these attacks? Has it been a major mistake on her part?
• Mercouris: this is spot-on. They’ve goaded her into this, yet her hostility to the EU and the establishment have always been her greatest strengths.
• So there is a risk that Barnier will be put in, ostensibly giving a different message to Macron, running against the so-called ‘fascist’ Le Pen, yet adopting precisely the same positions in the end. He will be the trojan horse. Like Mario Draghi in Italy, who has destroyed that country even more, Barnier will do the same in France. 
• Barnier was recently trying to harden up the EU immigration stance in relation to France so as to prop Macron up, but it now sounds like the EU has changed its mind and has cut Macron loose.
• Le Pen has alienated core voters and needs to get back to her roots. She needs to harden up her message and define it clearly. She will no longer be running against Macron but most probably Barnier. Any appeasement to him will weaken her. Is she up to the challenge?
• The malaise and pessimism in France is a very bad sign. It implies a huge disaffection that Le Pen needs to capitalize on.
• Le Pen also runs the risk of somebody more radical coming from the right or far left who can appeal to voters. Some of the French military officers who wrote an article criticizing the government have floated the idea of standing for election. They could take a lot of votes away from Le Pen. She has to reinvent herself fast; she’s running out of road.
• Christoforou: Macron was a nobody put in to take power. Surely Barnier is an easier sell for the French people? The EU have thought through all this …
• Mercouris: French politics are very manipulated. Why doesn’t Le Pen understand this? Right across the EU, right wing leaders don’t seem to have as strong a drive to get power as the Brussels’ elite do. They have the drive as well as the ‘machinery’ to get their agenda through. They’re very skilled at it. It would take an exceptional politician to counteract this successfully. So far, in western Europe, nobody has managed this – only in Eastern European countries.
• The mood in Europe is turning to the right while the left is dying out. But the ‘right’ leaning figures can be merely trojan horses. Mercouris wouldn’t be surprised to see a run-off between Macron and Barnier, in which case the Establishment has won either way.

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