Not much news to comment on at the moment so again just one piece of analysis + the weekly puzzle.
I’m not going to analyse Trump’s “remove all income tax and make up the revenue loss with tariffs” idea because it’s just a 0/10 idea with no redeeming points, which is exactly why it won’t happen (whereas lots of Trump’s other bad ideas absolutely could), but I do have to shout it out as one of the top five worst policies he has ever possibly devised. A masterclass in hyperinflation and destroying productivity, never mind the cost in international relations. The weirdest part is it doesn’t even feel like Trump is a Ross Perot with a particular historical fixation on the role of tariffs - he just has this strange attachment to them that exceeds by miles their actual value.
Emmanuel Macron’s roll of the dice the other week on a French parliamentary election feels both utterly bizarre and majestically inspired. You could just write this off as Jupiterian ego and a deeply misjudged perception from within the presidential palace - the polling numbers look even more damning than what the expectation was, which was that Macron’s party Renaissance, already lacking for a majority, would suffer and drop while the far right would rise. The left are doing surprisingly well at organising themselves, for the first time in a while, and there may yet be some hope that in the second round the threat of the far right will consolidate their vote…but that still won’t be a victory for Macron, just for the left and for anti-fascism.
However, one can craft a more convoluted theory for why Macron has done this. As things stood before the election was announced, the political situation was bad. Governments are collapsing around the world in deep unpopularity thanks to the post-COVID hangover and France’s is no exception: Macron is very unpopular and much of the resistance (notably, including a lot of young people) is uniting around the far right.
Perhaps a likely economic recovery would bring his government back from the brink, but after ten years, wouldn’t the public be shopping for a change in 2027, when France holds their next presidential election? Renaissance would be to blame for the years of inaction and misjudged policies in the interim. Whoever Macron’s designated successor might be would be up for a hell of a challenge to hold off Marine Le Pen, who would enjoy years of normalisation as the possible president-in-waiting.
On the other hand, an election now that likely delivers the country into the hands of the far right may be…just what Macron wants. No, he’s not secretly some fascist sympathiser - this may be, in his eyes, the best pathway to defeating the far right in the long term. If the far right cannot win a majority, they will have to endure the torture of coalition negotiations; and, whether they pull that off or they just win an outright majority, they will have to actually govern. If the far right are as bad as we all say they are, that will be a mess - and, in particular, expose the hollowness of their politics. Reactionary populists love to posture as the voice of common sense, but the truth rarely varies that their prescriptions are a load of weirdo hooey. Let them show that.
And, if they do a surprisingly decent job at governance, the other political movements of France need to see that and be able to take them seriously as a threat. They cannot keep dismissing them and waiting for the public to finally come to their senses, the same way there’s a deluded conception amongst many American liberals that the public will finally tune in and notice Donald Trump for who he is. They must suffer that shock to the system of “oh crap, the far right actually can win and hold power, we have to put aside our differences and achieve high turnout for an anti-fascist electoral coalition at the very next opportunity”.
Macron is playing with fire. The National Front with power would be terrible for French people, for migrants, and for Europe. There is still no clear game plan for the next few years or for keeping 2027 out of MLP’s hands. However, I do have a certain respect for his move, even if I’d never recommend it. As we saw in the 1930s, politicians with narrow-minded, short-term interests often sleepwalk into letting the far-right sneak into power. Macron has laid out cards on the table and accelerated the pace of confrontation. That probably wasn’t advisable versus running down the clock and praying on the chance that events interrupt the far-right’s rise, but it’s a relief to see at least someone in Europe isn’t sleepwalking at the wheel into the ultimate nightmare: a far-right consolidation of power over both the legislative and executive branches.
My media to enjoy recommendation of the week is the video game Sheepy: A Short Adventure. I’ve picked up a lot of free games over the years I haven’t got around to playing, and I’ve finally started making some progress since I got sick. There’s very little to say about this one: as the name suggests, it’s brief - I knocked it out in under two hours, and I dithered a fair bit - and it’s simple and unpunishing. And it’s cute!
The answer is Ireland! I was baffled as to why their exports look like this, but Google suggested an answer: Ireland’s status as a premier global tax haven means that nine of the ten largest pharmaceutical companies in the world headquarter out of Ireland. Presumably, much of their operations, and those of other medical companies based there for similar reasons, consists of exporting valuable medical goods which hugely inflate Ireland’s export value.
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