Camembert President
lacampagne.substack.com
lacampagne.substack.com
Although one peculiarity of the V republic is missing : it is in theory possible for the elected president and the elected parlement to have different political colors.
It is much rarer now that the term of both president and MP are 5 years long, and both elections happen a few month. But three times in my lifetime, we have been in so called "cohabitation", where a "modern-democracy"-styled prime minister was governing, under the theorical authority of the elected monarch.
This really was not the worst of time. It would have actually been a very nice way to govern, if the PMs had not caught delusion of "grandeur" at the end of their terms.
I would vote for separzting the elections, and barring any PM from running for president.
It's simple, safe and efficient. I don't understand why USA are not doing something similar. All this voting machines, mail votes, counting/recounting where ballots are manipulated by so many people seems strange, inefficient and prone to fraud.
It's a very easy explanation. France and many other countries in Western Europe like it have a National Identity register. You simply cannot exist in society without being effectively registered with the government. (Which of course is free to citizens, and primarily offers convenience not burden)
That national ID system is what ensures electoral integrity allowing the actual technical aspects of elections to be simple safe and efficient.
And the reason why this can never work in the US is because culturally and politically, Americans deem that this level of federal government knowledge of it's citizens location and existence, is an imposition on liberty. This is true broadly across political lines (even if the more Left-leaning folks are comfortable with imitating Europe, and the more Right-leaning folks are comfortable with introducing burdens to voting with NOT free identity requirements)
As a Canadian who moved to Europe and then went back, I genuinely see value in both philosophies.
Thus, many people vote in a different place than where they live and where they are registered for the tax admin. The address on one's identity card is often obsolete by a decade. The address on my passport is yet another one, obsolete as well but that doesn't actually matter because it's never used as a proof of residence.
Social security is the closest thing there is in France to a national register, but no other admin or organisation is allowed to use the social security number. And the contact address they have can very well be out of date as well.
Law enforcement came to "my door" a few months ago (to ask if I could help them with logs of my server on a case) and they actually were lucky because they came to my parents' house (an address I had forgotten to update in my host's contact info) just as I was on holidays there, but they didn't even know I had been living in Belgium for years. Since I wasn't a suspect, they had no right to actually know any info from the various national administrations.
I lived in Canada for a year and some and it seemed to me to be basically the same, although maybe I didn't stay long enough to know more about how it works there.
For elections, this is important combined with the requirement in France to show a photo ID at the polling station (well, this is France so the obligation is not always one, but still...)
In the US, requirements to show a photo ID vary by state, some don't have any, afaik. In the UK no photo ID is asked at all. Neither country has ID cards.
There's so many of them there isn't need for one centralized file, especially since news laws keep interconnecting all these files. There's so many files on everyone in France if you believe in "human rights" that'll be hard to fathom.
Since the nazi occupation (Vichy government), there is a national identity card. There's also the police file with all suspects, victims and witnesses (yes, all of them combined). Then there's the police biometrics file. The semi-secret "Base élèves" file snooping on every child going to school (which by law is quasi-mandatory). And so many others i can't list them all here.
France is pretty much a police state in all regards. If you're lucky enough to only interact with lowly assholes from the local police, it's easy enough to discard the concept. But when you see the government had to contract Palantir because they gather so much data on people they can't process it...
There is no national ID system in the UK, which has elections that are simple, safe and efficient.
Sure, there are sometimes recounts - if the margin of victory in the first count is very close. Third-party "ninjas" are not used for such recounts, which are generally complete by the end of the day after the ballot (they don't take months, as in Arizona). No scandal is associated with a recount - they're routine. There can be no parliamentary vote to allow or forbid a recount.
Each name/address pair on the register gets to vote once, because the name is struck off the register when the ballot is issued.
If I pretended to be someone else to use their ballot, it would be discovered when they attempted to cast it themselves. Since about 50% of people vote, there's about a 50:50 chance that any single fraudulent vote would be detected. Fraudulent voting on a significant scale is certain to be detected; and it hasn't been.
The motives for debating a national ID are therefore nothing to do with election security.
Some of it because there is no ID, as said, and register is often out of date: For example when you move into a new home the local council will at some point sends you a list of people registered at your address to check it is still valid. How many times can you them vote? It is said that some houses in less than great neighbourhoods have up to 30 people registered as residents on the electoral register.... Right. That said this usually raises eyebrows and people do get caught [1]
Another example, because electoral registers are independently managed by councils people can be registered in several location and thus vote several times (though it is not legal). It was admitted that some students did that to vote twice in the Brexit referendum, for instance (once at their parents', once at university).
But it is downplayed because people don't want IDs and because fraud probably does not skew results (at least nationally).
[1] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1176591/Tory-counci...
A crooked householder could, I suppose, register 5 dead people at his address; if he got caught, he'd be prosecuted. With 10 crooked householders, you could get 50 crooked votes. Hardly any elections turn on that few votes.
Then you grab your ballot form off the person, wander on over to a booth, mark it as you so desire (formally, informally, a dick drawn on the ballot paper, leaving it blank, a tirade of abuse towards the clowns in the corridors of power, a combination of the above[1], etc.), fold it over, wander to the area with the cardboard boxes for depositing it in, and stroll on out to the BBQ for a democracy snag.
If you are not in your voting area (e.g. you're on holidays on the day), you can vote at any location as they have another, bigger system that lists all of the people outside that electorate. They will print you off the corresponding ballot and then your ballot goes into a second box for collecting the votes of wayward souls who needed to do their civic duty, and those votes are dealt with separately
These boxes containing the completed ballot papers then remain sealed and under formal watch by the Australian Electoral Commission until counting time after polls close that evening. Once counted, they're securely kept for any formal review as required.
Voting only ever occurs on a Saturday. You can also do a postal vote, or pre-polling (going to a reduced set of polling booths before the election day, if you know you're going to be busy).
Many schools, churches, public buildings, etc. are commandeered as voting centres. It is rare to need to queue more than 15 mins. I usually walk in to find maybe 2 people in front of me. Like the French system, this makes tallying the votes a very parallel affair but also means that the barrier to voting is essentially nil. Given the compulsory voting laws, the government is compelled to eliminate all barriers to voting.
You'll note a few things here:
1) Although you register with the AEC, no physical ID is required to vote. The registration process is exceedingly simple, contains minimal data[2], and the government piggy-backs on to various services (e.g. drivers licences) to provide pathways for people to register. For example, I got an address change sticker for my licence today, and the page is 1/3 dedicated to that and 2/3 dedicated to reminding me to update my electoral registration to my new address.
This means you can in theory vote in multiple different polling booths in the same or different electorates. The AEC will scrutinise this and you can be fined if you do it. However, AEC research suggests that it is very low decimal percentages of voters who try to vote multiple times, and most of those that do, do so by accident rather than malice.
For example, in 2010 there were 12.4 million votes (out of 14 million elegible electors). Of that, 16,210 letters were sent to apparent multiple-voters, with 6,254 subsequently noted as clerical errors (i.e. somehow they were marked off twice accidentally). 1,454 people (0.01%) subsequently admitted to voting multiple times, and of that only 19 were referred to the police. Over 80% of multiple-voters were the elderly, new electors confused about the process, or those with language difficulties.
The AEC reviews this each year, and the magnitude of the numbers tends to be the same, and discussion + the above figures can be found here: https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...
2) You don't actually have to vote. Other countries bemoan our 'compulsory voting' laws, without understanding that you can get your piece of paper and then immediately stroll out and throw it in the bin. It's the getting-your-name-struck-off-the-register part that matters. On balance, this draws people out but gives them the ability to opt out of the democratic process if they're serious about it. This detail is often lost in the debate, I find.
3) It is all paper-based, much like the French process. The AEC employs an army of people each election (most sign up only for that specific election, only a minority are full-time AEC employees) to scrutineer the process. It is supervised and has numerous checks and measures in place. Recounts can happen at the appeal of any party, and will often occur in close races. Being paper-based, there is a relatively immutable physical record that can be scruineered and independently audited. It is a very simple system by design, and that is one of its core strengths.
[1]: the Australian Electoral Commission specifically clarified that a ballot that is legibly formal but ALSO has a dick drawn on it is still counted as a formal vote and will therefore be counted: https://twitter.com/AusElectoralCom/status/37514210996088832...
[2]: The AEC holds name, date of birth and address. They will cross-link with other state and federal systems to send reminders about registration, but otherwise they keep very little data about citizens: https://aec.gov.au/Enrolling_to_vote/About_Electoral_Roll/
This is the historical context in which ID voting requirements have been imposed. Often, ID facilities are deliberately under-resourced and placed out of reach of economically disadvantaged communities. You typically need a functioning vehicle, gas and to wait a (sometimes significant) amount of time on a workday during working hours to get an ID.
The same tactics are used with polling places themselves. During the very last Presidential election, the Texas governor limited facilities to only one ballot dropoff location per county[1], the largest of which needed to serve 4 million people.
In any case, why would you need IDs in the first place? That's a tool of social control. As anecdote, the only time in French history when it was mandatory to have an ID card was during nazi occupation.
Many homeless people here don't have ID because to make one you need an address, and to get an address to receive papers you need an ID (circling dependency).
In France, it requires citizenship to have an ID card. Legal immigrants are given a "titre de séjour", while undocumented people (by definition) don't have any of these. As a white person whose grandparents were immigrants, i've never been asked for ID in my entire life (except for official administration stuff or one of the times i was detained by police for political activities) ; this contrasts with my non-white friends who are frequently stopped by police for an "ID check".
The ID check is used by french police as a means of controlling and humiliating popular non-white suburbs. It's not uncommon in these places for cops to know the actual names of the people they're controlling, and the control itself is just another form of harassment.
There has been many anti-racist campaigns in France over the years denouncing "contrôle au faciès" (looks-based checks). If you speak some french, you can see some of the videos from those collectives who will tell you more about this practice.
Now, specifically about elections, asking for ID (not proof of residency) willingly excludes foreigners. All the while forging plausible ID cards is very accessible to bad actors (retail price of a few hundred euros a piece). So no, i don't exactly see the point.
> I am non white and find this very racist.
Sorry to offend you. It was my impression that getting an ID in the USA can also be very complex (leading to many people being undocumented) but i may be wrong about that.
The fallacy of the left is that for them (in France and USA) a black person or a muslim person is of one kind. just like a hivemind we have to be all same and opressed because cops are bad.
What was the issue for me during those 20 years were the rampant religious zealots trying to push their agenda on me. Forcing girls to wears the "right" clothes, building one-way windows hairdresser for women and islamic supermarkets right in the city center. Backed by leftists that again thought of immigrant as some kind of hivemind that all wanted this "religious freedom" they called through their "anti racism" campaigns. Ive seen all those leftist coming to some neighborhood and praising themselves of living among the diversity and sending their kids to private school too so that they don't spend time with the immigrants sons. I am not denying that the police makes mistakes, that controle au facies has some negative effects witht people who dress like rap / hood dudes and have normal decent lives but its more a by product of them tolerating the other side of the "immigrants" because of the lies the left sold them : that they are all same opressed by a society that does not want them. My life shows me that we are all same below the 1% whatever our color those are the people that will make us suffer, lower our wage, push our retirement age. the cops are just a piece of a broken system that are also victim of those 1%. Ive worked through my career with cops and I would never want to do their job in a country like France or the US.
Good for you. I can't say the same, personally, though these humiliations and violence were never "au faciès".
> they were dressing like rap singers
Yes. Just like cops harass and beat white punks, but won't bother a person in a suit: there's an intersection between class oppression and race oppression. Though in the case of muslim women (eg. in birkini) harassed by police, you can't really say that they were "swearing to cops".
> we have to be all same and opressed because cops are bad
Of course all cops are bastards, but of course not people are not all the same and don't live the same situations. Just because individual experiences vary does not mean there isn't some systemic factors at play.
> sending their kids to private school too so that they don't spend time with the immigrants sons
So true.
> we are all same below the 1% whatever our color those are the people that will make us suffer, lower our wage, push our retirement age
We are not the same: we have different experiences and perspectives. But i agree with your point that we all have interests in common against the vampires that profit off of our misery. But i feel like it's important to acknowledge our diversity and differences ; the traditional left in the first half of the 20th century has notoriously failed to incorporate antisexist and antiracist analysis in their worldview, insisting that class struggle is the unique struggle that matters. For women's rights, the situation has been reversed in the second half of the century, despite much hypocrisy and not going very far down this slope. The rise of a new generation of intersectional Left (inspired by eg. Angela Davis) could change the narrative, but this growing movement is not represented in the media or in mainstream (party) politics.
> the cops are just a piece of a broken system that are also victim of those 1%
That is true. Cops are just pawns. Yet they make the conscious decision to become pawns to those 1% and harass, imprison, mutilate or assassinate those who don't fit in this society. They are the armed hand of the State making sure people stay homeless when there are empty flats, or stay hungry when every supermarket has so much food they throw away.
Also, some cops (not all) are very happy to endorse the role of the persecutors and go beyond their role as neutral tools of the State. Police and gendarmes have famously over 60% votes for the national front. Many cops are part of conspiracies with neonazi groups or drug trafficking gangs, and they face few (if any) consequences. This is also related with how police recruitment, education, and equipment has changed over the past decades, but this is yet another can of worms to open. Overall, i would strongly recommend reading Mathieu Rigouste's books on the history of police in France.
Which is terrible because, I agree with your stake : our voting procedure is probably one of the few things that works perfectly in our political system. Nobody ever complained about it and it have never been hijacked.
That's a strange interpretation.
Regarding elections the key is that the French Republic put a very strong emphasize on equality among citizens. So all citizens should be represented in Parliament and all citizens have the right to vote for the President.
For instance there is a French MP who is elected in North America to represent French citizens who live in the USA and Canada in the French Parliament [1]. Map of the constituencies [2] (The MP for the 11th constituency must max out on air miles).
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premi%C3%A8re_circonscription_...
[2] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ais_%C3%A9tablis_hor...
We all know that having a single turn (like in the US) leads to a political landscape with 2 major political parties and few nuances (but the major problem in the US system is "the winner takes it all" policy in most states: if the number of members of the electoral college were proportional to votes in each states, the results would already be more fair)
But the French system (with 2 turns) is also very far from optimal and non-linear, and also leads (to a lesser extent, and some variants/surprises) to 2 major political parties + some smaller "satellite" political parties. And some issue are for example that
* sometimes, a candidate that would win against all others has a too low score at the first turn to pass to the 2nd turn (this is what happens in 2007 where all polls said that François Bayrou (who was center/moderate and more consensual) would have won both against Nicolas Sarkozy and against Ségolène Royal, but couldn't get enough votes to pass the 1st turn)
* sometimes, the opposite issue happens i.e. a candidate that has no chances to win the 2nd turn has enough votes to pass the 1st turn: this is what happened in 2002 when Le Pen (extreme right wing) supplanted Jospin and went to the 2nd turn (that Chirac was then 100% certain to win at that time, with a consequence that there were no real/constructive debate about the programs)
* some people who have new ideas cannot participate because you need 500 signatures of already-elected people in order to participate (so if you are not a member of an established political party, it's very hard to become a candidate to the presidential election)
Just to say that there is no binary split between "democracy" and "dictature" : the voting system and algorithm influences a lot the political landscape and therefore the debates. Maybe people here are familiar with the Condorcet method used (among other things) in https://www.debian.org/vote which is better in my opinion (yet a little bit difficult to implement in a wider scale such as a presidential election). Another approach / voting method that I quite like is this one (only in French, sorry) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jugement_majoritaire : I like it because 1°/ it is simple to implement and to understand, 2°/ it would inherently avoid the issues above and forces the candidates to be more consensual (i.e. to become "president for everyone") rather than cleaving, while still enabling nuances to express during the debates (not only on a "binary" axis left/right).
I am surprised you chose this example when an even clearer example was the Jospin/Chirac/LePen situation during the previous election
> the sole real seat of power is the office of the presidency
is plainly wrong. The president still can lose their majority in parliament, they still can have an hostile prime minister, and they still don’t control the judges. There are many examples of the 3 powers slipping away from the president at various times after De Gaulle. A minority president is also becoming more and more likely as the candidates struggle and the parties keep shooting themselves in their respective feet. Not a great start.
> The key difference of course is that in the US the President cannot dissolve Congress at his or her leisure.
Dissolving the parliament, whilst a possibility, is politically very risky and quite often works against whoever is doing the dissolving (there are many historical examples in France and elsewhere). It is a threat, but a hollow one. It is quite similar to the motions of non confidence in that respect.
> It was the last time a French parliament truly exercised its powers, on the cusp of losing them all.
The parliament, of course, did not do itself any favour with the constant bickering, instability, and general ineffectiveness in the couple of years and decades before that point. Not that long before that parliament itself committed democratic suicide with Pétain. It’s a bit hypocritical to lament the shifting of the political centre of gravity in the context.
> People know it is the only election that really matters, and they use it as an opportunity to count themselves, that is, the relative size and power of their parties or factions, and yes, to protest.
This is also very debatable. Of course, some people think this, and it is reinforced by the popularity contest that the presidential elections have become. However, the cabinet is responsible for most policies, and who ends up there is determined by the legislative elections. The cabinet is useless only when act as the president’s foot soldiers, but they don’t necessarily have to.
Anyway. The article mixes interesting takes and information with questionable interpretations.
TBH, it’s now really difficult to have this setup now that presidential and parliament elections are scheduled every 5 years, few months appart.
The people will give roughly the same parliamentary power ratio to the elected president than its election ratio. And most of the time, it will be even more because the President will do all it can to appear « good » on the first few months.
And that’s understandable. You want to give the benefit of the doubt to the elected President and the schedule doesn’t let you the time to see which counter power is needed.
It was designed to be that way, but I am not sure it will keep happening. With parties fracturing and current political stupidity, it is not hard to imagine a candidate getting elected president with the bare minimum and their party getting 30% in the legislative.
For example, there might be a centrist and a nationalist (xenophobe, populist, you know who they are) facing off in the runoff. Most people slightly on the left would tend to vote for the non-racist candidate and then turn around to vote for their party of choice in the legislative. Remember that it was almost inconceivable that Chirac would lose his majority in 1997.
As someone who lives in the UK, this is what happened for years here to people labelled "Euroseptics" who supported Brexit. Their concerned where ignored and they were dismissed as racist and uneducated. This did not end well, or it did depending on your views.
I am not dismissing them. This is just a statement of fact: they use latent xenophobia, phoney patriotism, and general anxiety as a weapon. They are nationalists and xenophobes. Which is why their only presence in a runoff guarantees that the other candidate gets elected. Until now at least: as you point out the difference gets smaller every time.
> As someone who lives in the UK, this is what happened for years here to people labelled "Euroseptics" who supported Brexit.
As a French Londoner since 2013, this hits very close to home. I am not dismissing them, and I do not think I underestimate the threat they represent. This is why whoever ends up facing them would need to be utterly corrupt for me not to vote for them. This is also why I despair reading French media these days, a they do not seem to realise what they are doing.
> is plainly wrong. The president still can lose their majority in parliament, they still can have an hostile prime minister, and they still don’t control the judges. There are many examples of the 3 powers slipping away from the president at various times after De Gaulle. A minority president is also becoming more and more likely as the candidates struggle and the parties keep shooting themselves in their respective feet. Not a great start.
Since 2002 you are wrong. The reason being that the president is elected every 5 years, and the parliament is also elected every 5 years, only a few months after the presidential election. This means there is no such thing as "losing their majority in parliament". If people elected a president, 2 months later they will vote for the parliament the president wants as there is no time for the president to f*ck up in the meantime and make people change their minds.
When the presidency was 7 years then the president could indeed lose their majority in the parliament.
Or, lower probability sure, what about by-elections? Say you have a majority of one, someone resigns/dies/does something awful, vote goes the other way in the by-election?
This rarely happens if the parliament is elected right after the president is. Electing members of the parliament becomes: "do I want the president to be able to rule the country, or do I want nothing to happen in the next 5 years?".
The clearest example of that was in 2017, when Macron was elected, and people voted in over 300 people that had never been elected before, often were completely unknown to the public, the only thing they did was declaring : "I will vote for whatever the president asks me to vote for" (not an actual quote, but in order to get support from Macron they had to sign a paper saying they would vote "yes" for every proposition emanating from their group, and "no" to every proposition from the opposition)
The 5th republic is founded on the premise of strong parties. In 2002, the landscape has been dominated by a right-wing coalition (UDR, RPR, UMP and their satellites) and a left-wing one (SFIO, then PS) for half a century. The candidate of both mainstream blocks polling below 15% was very hard to imagine.
Coupling both presidential and legislative elections might not be enough to avoid further splintering in the future.
Technically, yes. But the justice system is famously a ritual authority abiding by the execute power (see Michel Foucault), while the legislative body is ignored by the executive branch whenever they feel like it without any form of consequence (that became a national debate under Sarkozy, and is still a scandal with the health pass). France is a republic on paper, but in practice is an electoral monarchy with absolute powers for the president.
Also worth noting, all these people from the legislative/executive/judiciary are from the same caste/class and are very conscious of their material interests. They may disagree on a few policy details, but when it's about fucking the people to protect big corps and State corruption, they all stand as one.
The last two Republican presidents would beg to differ.
I think it's mostly the way we use "popular vote" in the US that is incorrect.
Yes.
> The USA, for example?
The US has, among modern democracies, pretty much the strongest Presidential system. So, no, not compared to the US, in the same way that <extremely hot city> is probably not hot compared to Death Valley.
What should be mentioned, especially to foreign readers, is that this topic is part of the left-right divide in France.
It was De Gaulle (an army General) who came up with the current system while the preceding system, favoured by the left, was parliamentary.
The left favours a parliamentary system that they claim is "more democratic" while depicting the current one as "elective monarchy" that perpetuates the "myth of the strong leader" (Napoleon, De Gaulle). Supporters of the current system point out that it does have balances and limits and that it brought stability (the preceding parliamentary system used to be very unstable, a bit like in Italy nowadays).
By what metrics does it work? I could point half a dozen metrics by which it does not work.
> it does have balances and limits
In theory yes. In practice, though? All former presidents have been involved in illegal activities ranging from severe corruption to murder and crimes against humanity. Can you name one who had to stand trial?
That's a common misrepresentation that the government is very happy for us to believe:
- when the government isn't happy with european law, they just ignore it; see also data retention laws and anti-Rroma laws in France which are famously illegal by european standards
- who controls the EU? the french government is one of the key players (along with Germany) controlling the european commission; french interests dictate what becomes european law
> average income
Minimum wage and taxes on fortune are determined by France, not by the EU.
> industries going abroad
This is determined by private industry, not by EU. However, the french government has powers to nationalize those industries, or requisition them, or help the workers self-organize the production (eg. by fundraising to keep activities going). They are just ideologically opposed to that (because they're capitalists), despite all their broken promises for the workers. 1336 and LIP are famous French examples of what workers self-organization can achieve when the government doesn't get in the way.
> pushing to welcome more immigrants
This is controlled by France, not EU, and France is definitely not welcoming immigrants. France has closed its borders (for people, not merchandise) many times since 2015 in contradiction to the Schengen treaty. There are many people dying on the French border, and the government couldn't care less (see also Aquarius scandal). France has also been condemned by the european court of human rights for deporting people before they can apply for asylum at the italian border (which is illegal in international treaties). French police is hunting for undocumented folks; you can see them in the metro in bigger cities controlling anyone who isn't white so they can deport as many people as possible.
> become jobless due to the loss of our industries
We become jobless not through lack of industry, but because the work and resources aren't shared. We live in one of the richest nations on Earth, and we could all work 5-15h weeks and enjoy modern comfort. But people in power like it that over 10% of the population lives under the poverty line. Once again, this is due to the french oligarchy, not the EU.
- The european Union is not managed by France but by non-elected people seating and advising at the European Union level. You know people like mario draghi who was working at goldman sachs before taking a leading role in the EU without winning any election. Those people ex-american bankers that bring us "open market" laws that force services to become profitable (today is the post office, high speed train, tomorrow hospitals). you know those service that charge you more for a Paris-Marseille because they also serve remote locations in France at a loss to serve the few people that use this service there and have no other solution. Well Europe is a commercial entity that doesnt care about service or people. Only thing is the free market. A free market that benefits only one country - a massive export-based economy- in this community : Germany. This is why UK left.
-minimum wage is determined by what is the open market. The open market is EU. why do you think services jobs, trucks drivers, construction workers are underpaid in germany or france? why do you think our minimum salary is so low? It is because we compete with much cheaper workforce from other european countries. Just look at england rise in salary for drivers since Brexit.
-It seems that it escaped from your mind that bringing people from poor countries lower salaries because those people will do the work for cheaper as long as they can send some money home and buy a house further down (which won't be possible anymore for french blue collars due to rising cost of living)
Finally, saying that france is not welcoming immigrants while we are most likely in the top 5 of the most welcoming countries in the world (as a reminder in USA, Australia, Canada - the woke trinity- you need to meet a POINT permit to be welcomed, which at the end means you need 5 year of postgraduate study to be an immigrant there or to come from some quotas that they push for you. In France? Well school is free and you can come to study, you can come through any kind of neighboring countries because we don't have any control there, you can bring your family using "regroupement familial". it is a fallacy to say france is not welcoming immigration.
If you think every first generation immigrant can come and do a white collar job in a developed country it is most likely because you have no immigrant background and do not know of how this works. You working 5-15hours a week doesn't mean someone that has no education, a different culture, a different language will be able to do your job. he will do a blue collar job. and those jobs are disapearing year after year in France. Funnily those job they go to the places those people are leaving. Renault, Citroen, Peugeot and others are building their factories in Magreb, Eastern Europe under the premises that cost of doing that in France is too high while Japanese with toyota are building made in France cars.
Europe is a travesty of the idea it was once. A tool to make France poorer than it was, to remove its industries that could compete with USA or Germany. UK understood it too late as their industries too disappeared but at least they made a move.
Louis XIV, Napoleon and Charles de Gaulle. Having Macron pictured next to two of them just doesn't feel right.
Maybe you meant "famous leaders".
Not sure losing a lot of money and giving up on most of your North American settlement is an example of good leadership.
He consolidated the true national borders by integrating corsica and eastern territories.
I didn't say he was a good leader, I said he was better than Louis XIV.
You'd have a much better case if you went with "since the Civil War" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War) or "since the Glorious Revolution" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution)...
It's all fun and games until Marine Le Pen gets elected...
It was never fun and games. The 5th republic was built on fascist legacy: De Gaulle was a famous authoritarian who used his powers to crush various forms of popular insurrection (Algerian independence movement, may 68...). He was famously behind the secretive "SAC" (Services d'Action Civique) fascist militias used to physically crush opposition, and oversaw the same police préfets who operated under Pétain apply the same nazi techniques against anti-colonial struggles.
Marine le Pen may not be in power, but her ideas have been for a long time. Also interesting to note that the most extreme measures proposed by the Front National (founded by her father) in the 80s are now mainstream political agenda from both "left" and "right" [0].
[0] Actually all the candidates presented by TV are authoritarian right-wing (capitalist). But some claim to be left-wing despite proposing/enacting exactly the same politics. Mélenchon who is presented as extreme left is, in standards from a few decades ago, a centrist or maybe a moderate center-left; only with NPA and LO we start to see some left wing talking points (abolition of managers/ownership, equal sharing of resources for all..) but these are not the people the media give voice to
This is effectively how China is governed. Except the elections are only done by party members and the “term” of the monarch is indefinite.
- There was a "Sacred King selected by God" for the kingdoms aspect totally missing in the empires, while the emperors where, supposedly, "selected by the people"
- the two chambers system, was first used by the consulate, a pre-imperial temporary regime (it was a fake triumvirate where Bonaparte was the only real ruler). This two chamber system was inspired by the UK system to appease monarchists and keep by the various regimes since then (except Vichy France).
- the first empire have used a lot (of rigged) referendum where all adult male, where allowed to vote.
- The first "suffrage universel" to elect a president was established by the second republic, and then abused by the new president, and future second emperor (all men, no women, no clergy and no algerians where allowed to vote)
- The constitutions of the second empire include a referendum, called "plebiscite",as a way to either to approve the emperor or to change the law over the parliament. This was inspired by the first empire, and this is also the fact in the actual constitution. (Recently there was a change in the actual constitution to allow a referendum launched by member of the parliament. It was written in a way to render it unusable.)
The way the institution are organised, the constitutions of the second empire (1862) and the actual constitution are father and daughter...
The real big difference is than the actual constitution include at the start the "Déclaration des Droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen" from 1789.
Also, De Gaule had lost a referendum in 1969! This was a big change, the idea was to allow the president to force a change of the constitution by referendum, but this time this a become a tool against him because he had say before "if i lost i quit", so the question was more "did we keep De Gaule as president or not ?"
The same in 2005, there was another lost one, and a very big one, because France had say no to an European treaty (and also Netherlands) Since then the government/presidents do not use this tool any more they prefer to change the constitution using the parliament because it's less risky... (and using this way the two "No" where changed to "Yes" later)
The history of Napoleon III becoming an emperor after being an elected president by the people was one of the main reason of the opposition of the parliament against De Gaulle for the change of the constitution. De Gaule had reply at the time than he was too old to become a dictator but Napoleon III had said before something like "In a democratic government, only the leader must have the power to govern".
I am not betting too much on it though, cause the past decade of discourse and policies proposition on the french Historical Right have made me go away from them quickly... They are quite detached from reality at this point.
It is not particularly good, it is produced industrially with pasteurized milk (real Camembert use raw milk) but it is commercially successful.