🇫🇷Macron's Trumpian emergency

Emmanuel Macron calls emergency meeting on Trump, Russia and Ukraine; Jean-Luc Mélenchon attacks the Socialists (again), and Olivier Faure announces a leadership re-election bid

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This week

• 🇪🇺Macron calls emergency meeting on Trump, Russia, Ukraine

• 👊Mélenchon attacks the Socialists (again)

• 🌹Faure announces leadership re-election bid

🇪🇺Macron calls emergency meeting on Trump, Russia, Ukraine

Emmanuel Macron in 2022 (Photo by the European Parliament)

Following what has been a fractious and messy Munich Security Conference, filled with unwelcome news that many of us have been predicting / reacting to for weeks, months, years, decades, etc., it seems that French President Emmanuel Macron is stepping up to the plate once again.

With Donald Trump and his team having spent the week making overtures to the European far-right, actively sidelining the EU on global security matters, and worst of all, beginning negotiations with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on the future of Ukraine, we can safely say that shit has hit the fan.

This meeting is to decide on a response to Donald Trump’s effective bullying and abandonment of the European continent, with this new state of affairs provoking concern across the board, even for those who clung to the American relationship at the expense of their relationship with fellow Europeans

But is all as it seems?

Over the past few weeks, we've seen that the Trump administration has been brash, aggressive, and reckless in their behaviour, with many things backfiring with alarming regularity.

Between firing staff illegally and having to row it back, Trump having to rein in initiatives because the situation devolved and became too dramatic, Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth incorrectly stated that “the US isn’t prepared to face Russia, particularly at sea”, and regular fights internally as a four-year-old tells Trump that he’s not the president, things are looking very messy in freedom land.

And to compound the mess, Donald Trump’s policies are increasing the prices for Americans on everyday goods, reducing safety standards and eliminating key agencies, all while he and his owner, Elon Musk, actively pushes away every ally that America has ever had.

With the increasingly unstable and messy behaviour of the far-right president and his entourage, there’s a very good reason to believe that they simply do not understand the situation around them, or what exactly is happening, and are simply behaving from a position of what they think an American government should do in their minds.

And the problem with this is that, without any nuance, you piss away a lot of capital for no reason.

However, as Europeans, we have some hope here, with Donald Trump’s antics opening the door wide for a drive towards a stronger European Union, with Ursula von der Leyen having opened the door to activating the escape clause to unbind defence investments and allowing member states to substantially increase their defence spending.

“I will propose to activate the escape clause for defence investments … This will allow member states to substantially increase their defence expenditure … Now is the time to move mountains in the European Union … We need a surge in European defense spending.”

- Ursula von der Leyen speaking at Munich

But will any of this pass the Council? With Hungary and Slovakia firmly taking pro-Russian stances and insisting on keeping the Union weak, while others fear a potential growth of power of certain member states like France and Italy with their substantial defence industries, nobody can say how well this plan will work out.

However, with major European powers now renewing calls for a European army and renewed European power, from France to Poland to Ukraine, with Zelenskyy making it clear to Europeans that they had one single choice:

“If not Brussels, then Moscow”

“I really believe that the time has come that the armed forces of Europe must be created … let's be honest, now we can't rule out that America might say 'no' to Europe on issues that might threaten it.
Europe has everything it takes. Europe just needs to come together and start acting in a way that no one can say 'no' to Europe, boss it around, or treat it like a pushover,”

- Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelenskyy speaking in Munich

But at least someone is trying, and this in itself means Macron and Von der Leyen deserve respect.

👊Mélenchon attacks the Socialists (again)

Jean-Luc Mélenchon in 2022 (Photo by Thomas Bresson)

Plus ca change.

After almost nine months of the Nouveau Front Populaire, and the strong showing in the 2024 Legislative Elections, it seems that the alliance has reached the end of the road.

Covering a lot of the recent dramas in our last Weekly Dispatch, it seems that the far-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon has decided to kill the alliance once and for all, rather than deal with the personal attitudes and problems that has made the Parti Socialiste not want to work with him and his acolytes.

Interviewed by La Tribune Dimanche yesterday, Mélenchon called for La France Insoumise to “turn the page on a toxic alliance with the socialists” after they refused to censure the government over the French Budget.

“I was seriously wrong on one point: the Socialists never intended to be partners … We cannot have as allies people whose main activity is to shoot us in the back”

- Jean-Luc Mélenchon speaking to La Tribune Dimanche

Throughout this interview, it’s clear that he regrets his inability to take down Prime Minister François Bayrou and impeach President Emmanuel Macron, before effectively announcing that he was planning on running for the Presidency yet again in 2027.

A big part of his plan to achieve this, of course, revolves around decimating his left-wing competition, with his ire being particularly targeted at PS First Secretary Olivier Faure, and former President François Hollande.

He spent a good portion of the interview attacking the two of them, saying that “the battle between them gets us drunk. Neither of them has an ecological, social or national programme” before levying one particularly amusing accusation at President Hollande:

“[He has turned] the entire Socialist group upside down in one year. That's no small thing. [Hollande] is at the heart of the competition for the leadership of the centres.”

and all of this comes down to the chronic unpopularity of Mélenchon and his team.

Political confidence poll for Harris Interactive

Above you can see the relative confidence that French citizens have for Jean-Luc Mélenchon and both his current and former acolytes, which when compared with Francois Hollande (PS, 23%), Bernard Cazeneuve (PS, 27%), and Raphael Glucksmann (PP, 29%), isn’t in a great spot.

and it gets worse when you look at a recent poll by IFOP

Poll by IFOP

Taking into the account the four potential hypothetical candidates for the left, centre, and right, Jean-Luc Mélenchon struggles to advance his case in any way, and looks unlikely to penetrate to the second round in any scenario.

However, there’s one thing going for him: the stability of his vote.

He stays stable at 11/12%, and is ahead of the other left-wing candidates for the time being, with potential benefits coming from his constant media presence despite his lack of political action.

Meanwhile, the ongoing uncertainty about the future leadership for the Parti Socialiste, combined with the radicalisation of the left-win in France, is causing several headaches for those who want to push along the rebirth of the centre-left and reinforce the Parti Socialiste.

Luckily for them, they have another 2 years to do this.

🌹Faure announces leadership re-election bid

And to cap off more left-wing news, Olivier Faure has just announced a new Parti Socialiste congress in June, and said that he will be campaigning for re-election as First Secretary of the party.

He has said that his plan is to use the first half of the year to engage in the immediate work, before using the Congress to close this semester, and then use the second half of the year to build the new political line and work for the future.

It will be interesting to see whether any of the party heavyweights, such as Francois Hollande, will consider contesting his re-election.

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