🇫🇷Weekly Dispatch - Electoral gambits
7 April 2024 - Bardella continues to storm forward, Government aims for new “taxe lapin”, and the Financial prosecutor targets Edouard Philippe
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This week
📊Bardella continues to storm forward
🐇Government aims for new “taxe lapin”
🚨Financial prosecutor targets Philippe
📊Bardella continues to storm forward
Let’s kick this week off with an election update. The Rassemblement National’s leader, Jordan Bardella, continues to run rampant despite doing everything he can to avoid scrutiny.
Despite having dodged two televised debates, including one in which he didn’t even warn the organisers and empty-chaired the event, his campaign is continuing to strengthen.
With Bardella appearing to focus on reinforcing his position in the northern territories rather than defending his work in the European Parliament, you would assume that he would be shooting himself in the foot.
And yet, the Rassemblement National campaign continues to go from strength to strength, as you can see from the below poll from the guys over at
.The Rassemblement National is currently at 30%, having gained +0.5% since the last Elabe poll. Meanwhile, the Macronist Besoin d'Europe campaign has fallen yet again to 16.5% (-0.5 %), while the Parti Socialiste / Place Publique campaign has risen to 12% (+3.5%), showing a further strengthening of the centre-left coalition.
Just behind them, you can see the Les Ecologistes campaign which has dropped down to 8.5% (-1%), but remains ahead of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left firebrands, La France Insoumise at 7.5% (-0%), who don’t seem to be going anywhere fast in any direction in any poll.
Finally, moving back to the right, Les Républicains are keeping stable at 7% (-0%), failing to make any real conquests in any direction, but more than likely remaining happy ahead of Eric Zemmour’s Reconquete, who at 5.5% (+1) have gained a little since the last set of elections, but are looking unlikely to really break through any major barriers.
What we’ve seen across polls for this election is that the far-right vote has not only stayed stable, but has increased, potentially due to a combination of a normalisation of the far-right’s platform but also due to the increased weakness within the centrist camp, their inability to make the public care about Bardella’s general disregard for his job in the European Parliament, and the general disaffection with politics in France today.
On the left, we’ve seen an interesting realignment as well, with the old PS/PP coalition, led by Raphaël Glucksmann, charging ahead and slowly beginning to catch up with Valérie Hayer’s Macronist campaign, which continues to struggle to penetrate into the discourse, and which appears to be continuing the tradition of any campaign not being led by Emmanuel Macron himself failing to succeed.
However, the really interesting thing is the continued weakness of Jean-Luc Melenchon’s La France Insoumise and the fact that it has fallen among the two other major parties of the NUPES coalition.
🐇Government aims for new “taxe lapin”
Okay, moving on to another interesting topic: the Attal government is currently pushing for a new law to combat people's non-attendance at doctor appointments.
Under a proposed new law, a new tax, or a no-show fee, will be imposed on those who either don’t show up to their appointments or who don’t give 24 hours' notice.
The Government is trying to find ways to free up the time that Doctors lose annually to improve the provision of healthcare across the country.
They are also hoping to use this as a lever to “responsibilise” French citizens,
To put it into context, the Order of Physicians and various unions have estimated that around 27 million consultations are lost every year.
“Every week 6% to 10% of patients do not show up at their appointment, which corresponds to a loss of consultation time of almost two hours per week for the doctor whatever the discipline and, by extrapolation, almost 27 million appointments not honoured per year.”
This information clearly highlights a major issue, but several people have called into question the statistical validity of this number, with there only having been surveys with limited participation.
Regardless, the government is intending to pursue this, and the goal is to start this financial penalty from 1 January 2025, accompanied by the hiring of 4,000 additional medical assistants.
There will also be efforts to push for more medical coverage on weekends and evenings, in order to overcome the issue of 5% of French territory not having any medical coverage at these times.
The government will initially consider financial incentives, but if doctors are resistant, it has said it’s open to more aggressive and restrictive measures.
As an added cultural/linguistic note: It’s called a “rabbit tax” because, in French, “poser un lapin” means to not show up or to stand someone up.
🚨Financial prosecutor targets Philippe
This week saw some big news hit the press, with Edouard Philippe and other elected officials of Le Havre being targeted in a raid on the Le Havre town hall this past Wednesday
With Philippe being one of the presumptive successors to French President Emmanuel Macron, it’s already damaging enough to have any kind of investigation into him taking place.
However, with the investigation targeting the illegal taking of interests, embezzlement of public funds, favouritism and moral harassment, things just keep looking worse.
This follows a complaint that was filed in September of last year against Philippe and two other team members, including Ms de Bazelaire from Le Havre French Tech, by an individual who had not had her fixed-term contract renewed.
The complaint focused on several points related to Ms de Bazelaire, including a multi-year objectives agreement from 2020 regarding the running of the Cité Numérique du Havre and the process behind this agreement.
Several alerts have also been raised over time-related to Ms de Bazelare’s jobs, the management of Le Havre French Tech, and the apparently problematic situation of its financial solvency and management.
With the ongoing jockeying within the Presidential Majority, as everybody tries to build up their coalitions to enable a potential run at the Elysee, a potential criminal case like this is exactly what Philippe would like to avoid at all costs.
And even if this may be a case of him getting caught up in someone else’s problems, the simple reality is that, right now, his brand is being damaged while Darmanin, Le Maire, Attal, and Hayer all wait in the wings, hoping for a chance to eliminate a rival.
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