Macron's 'win'

There was an interesting edit made overnight to the BBC's main report on the French general election. Early versions said that President Macron's “centrist Ensemble coalition has won Sunday's parliamentary elections”. The BBC has now removed that statement.

Admiration, admiration, admiration

From this morning's paper review on The Andrew Marr Show...

ANDREW MARR: Let's turn to someone who probably won't be turned away by Immigration when he arrives. Donald Trump is coming to visit the country in July.  

LYSE DOUCET: Yes he will, and I think a lot of people in Britain are asking about that so-called 'special relationship', when they saw another relationship on show this week. "Bromance" was very much in the world headlines last week, and in The Observer they are showing what they're calling "dandruff diplomacy"... 

ANDREW MARR: Oh dear! 

LYSE DOUCET: ...as President Trump flicks away a speck of dandruff, and he says, "There now. You're perfect". And judging from the images coming out of Washington, all the pomp and circumstance, Emmanuel Macron wanted to shake hands with President Trump more than Melania Trump did! But there is serious intent to all this. Emmanuel Macron has really weaponised in diplomacy the bear hug because, after days of hugging and hand-holding, he went to Congress then and ripped into many of President Trump's signature policies. A great line, he said "There is no planet B". Now for those of you who still hold onto that special relationship - I'm not sure you still do - there is a letter in The Sun that "there is no greater alliance than you and us"..."you and the US" and "we need it even more" - the Ambassador looking ahead to the visit by Donald Trump. It's now been confirmed for July 13th.  And we already know from the property mogul, Donald Trump says "I'm not going to cut the ribbon at that embassy. It's in Nine Elms?! You should never have moved from Grosvenor Square. Location, location, location!".  

ANDREW MARR: Nine Elms is a little bit south of the river for the Donald. 

LYSE DOUCET: Even Donald Trump. He's a property man.  

ANDREW PIERCE: Did you see. There's a great cartoon in The Sunday Times again on Trump and M. Macron. There's Donald Trump saying to Mr. Macron, clutching their hand very tightly, "Boy, you're hot!" to which Mr Macron says "That'll be global warming", because he was out there of course to talk about ...get him to stick to the Paris climate change. 

ANDREW MARR: An interesting balance between really kind of cosying up to the Donald on the one hand and then hammering him on the policies. A very, very acute piece of diplomacy there. 

LYSE DOUCET: It's an interesting new tactic.  

ANDREW MARR: Nice in person, but... 

LYSE DOUCET: President Macron is called "the Trump whisperer". I think Theresa May wanted to have that kind of a role. Let's see...She held hands as well if you remember when she went to see President Trump. She was the first world leader to go and visit him.  

ANDREW PIERCE: And she's been criticised for it ever since, of course. 

Rock and a hard place

Contrary to what you might think, we at ITBB don’t take everything we read on websites at face value. Even the ones we generally respect and agree with. There’s always another side to an argument if you seek it out, and there’s always someone with another take on any issue.

I often link to articles on Gatestone Institute, and I’m going to do so again now. 

This interesting piece harshly criticises Emmanuel Macron, and given that the BBC is at this very moment delightedly reporting some violent demonstrations in France against “far right Marine Le Pen”, I’m linking to it ‘for balance.’  

Not that everyone who has deep concerns about Emmanuel Macron automatically supports Marine Le Pen. It boils down to a case of the lesser of two evils. But which one is the lesser?

Recent elections have posed a similar conundrum. Trump or Hillary? Which of the two was the least worst?

Brendan O’Neill has an interesting  piece in the Spectator.  It’s a scathing exposé of the rabid feminists who supported Hillary merely and solely because she was a woman, willingly disregarding her unimpressive political record. 

That being the case, he asks: ‘why don’t the feminists unconditionally support Marine Le Pen for exactly the same reason?’ Well, they just don’t.  O’Neill is not endorsing Le Pen. Far from it. He’s merely exposing the stupidity  and hypocrisy of the feminists. 

The Gatestone piece is damning, too, but about Macron. His economic policy is basically the failed policy of François Hollande, (the continuity politician, as the BBC likes to say) and his stance against the Islamisation which is evidently engulfing France at the moment appears to be non-existent. 

(Terrorism) “will be part of the daily life of the French in the years to come” he has said. For all that, the author, Guy Millière is less than enthusiastic about Le Pen. 

Now Macron has suddenly decided to exploit the “is she or isn’t she” question that hangs over Le Pen, which is her alleged antisemitism. Like father like daughter. Macron has pledged that he’s the one who will stand up against antisemitism. Hmm. That will be a difficult circle to square.  The French voter is between a rock and a hard place,

and some would say, so are we. 

Do people find Theresa’s strong and stable ‘rock’ as hard as Jeremy’s ‘all over the place’? We’ll have to wait and see.