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The past week has seen some pretty important changes in the political map:

1. Former Chancellor George Osborne has described Theresa May as a “dead woman walking”, after her humiliating performance against the pathetic Jermey Corbyn, which involved blowing a 20 point lead in just a few weeks, and also losing her majority in Parliament. (Thank God PCism is less extreme in the UK. In humorless America that would have been taken as an assassination threat, and Osborne would have been forced to apologize.)

2. Emmanuel Macron won a massive victory in the first round of the legislative elections, and is set to have a huge majority in the Assembly. This gives him a powerful mandate for change:

One key plank of Macron’s vision is the controversial labor-market overhaul that he has promised to deliver by mid-September. With the French economy lagging its peers, the president also wants to change tax rates and fix inequalities in the pension system. He’s already started to revamp French intelligence services after terrorists claimed more than 200 lives since the beginning of 2015. After campaigning on his plan to simplify France’s labor code, the president began a round of initial meetings with union leaders within 10 days of taking office on May 14. Those talks will get under way in earnest after the second-round vote as the government seeks common ground for reworking the country’s byzantine labor rules. Macron wants individual companies to negotiate wages rather than being bound by industry-wide agreements. He has argued that a more flexible labor market would help boost growth and win the trust of France’s European partners, above all Germany. Historic Opportunity For at least two decades, French unions have opposed such efforts, emphasizing job protection instead, but a week from now, Macron may find himself in a stronger position than any French president for a generation. With a majority in parliament and hundreds of lawmakers who are completely new to politics, the president would hold extensive control over the levers of government. “This victory will no doubt go down as one of the great electoral achievements in our country’s recent history,” said Bruno Cautres, a politics professor at Sciences Po who works with pollster BVA.

It remans to be seen how much he can accomplish—previous governments tended to back off after street protests.

Of course the Trump wing of American conservatism favored LePen, who promised to make France even more socialist. Yes, that’s how much they dislike dark-skinned people.

3. With Trump kissing up to dictators and insulting our traditional allies, and the UK Conservatives in disarray over Brexit, Merkel and Macron are the new leaders of the free world. At least until Trump leaves office, and America regains its dominant position.

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This entry was posted on June 12th, 2017 and is filed under Misc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.



