🇫🇷Papal and political intrigues
Contribute to The French Dispatch, Pope Francis’ funeral sees Trump-Zelenskyy negotiations, Jordan Bardella confirms he will be “Le Pen’s” candidate, Piolle becomes EELV spokesperson
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This week
✍️Contribute to The French Dispatch
✝️Pope Francis’ funeral sees Trump-Zelenskyy negotiations
🗳️Bardella confirms he will be “Le Pen’s” candidate
🌳Eric Piolle beats Tondelier candidate to become EELV spokesperson
✍️Contribute to The French Dispatch
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✝️Pope Francis’ funeral sees Trump-Zelenskyy negotiations
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To start the week off, let’s look at one of the more important events of the year: The death of Pope Francis on Monday 21 April 2025, passing away due to a stroke that led to cardiac arrest after a long period of illness, and the funeral that took place yesterday in the Vatican.
Firstly, for those of you curious about the whole papal process: the pope’s death triggers a papal interregnum and a nine-day period of mourning (the novemdiales), with a funeral following shortly after.
During this period, the cardinal-electors arrive in Rome for the congregation of cardinals, in order to decide on the date and time of the conclave to select the Pope’s successor from within the Sistine Chapel.
With the current process, it’s expected that this will take place sometime in May.
And for those wanting to know what happens during a conclave, you should watch the excellent film that came out recently which showcases the process, also called Conclave.
Seriously, it’s very good.
His funeral was the scene of several very interesting events, all surrounding the machinations of a meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The efforts to make this meeting happen appear to have been led by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, with Macron being seen doing a lot to guide the process as one of the two European leaders who has been working to reinforce European support for Ukraine.
With France and the UK being the states that are guiding the post-American process of strengthening European defence and ensuring that Europe continues to back Ukraine to the hilt, they have been going to great lengths to act as the primary coordinators for the ongoing effort to ensure Ukrainian survival in the face of the Russian invasion.
A big part of their efforts have been to lead the famous “coalition of the willing”, who would put boots on the ground in the event of a ceasefire, and contribute to concrete security guarantees for the Ukrainian people, without American help.
Which is probably why Donald Trump didn’t get one of Macron’s famous hand-busting handshakes this weekend.
Think this video also deserves a caption contest.
Regardless, there was a meeting between the Ukrainian and American Presidents, which appears to have led to some changes in thinking on the American side, helped in no small part by the fact that the American administration appears to understand that Russian President Vladimir Putin has no interest in negotiating.
The meeting was hailed as positive by the Ukrainian President, who tweeted the following:
“Good meeting. We discussed a lot one on one. Hoping for results on everything we covered. Protecting lives of our people. Full and unconditional ceasefire. Reliable and lasting peace that will prevent another war from breaking out. Very symbolic meeting that has potential to become historic, if we achieve joint results. Thank you @POTUS.”
Donald Trump made his own social media post over on his much-troubled “Truth” social platform, where it appears that the penny has dropped if you can make it through his confused ramblings against former president Barack Obama.
For the actually interesting part of this text:
“There was no reason for Putin to be shooting missiles into civilian areas, cities and towns, over the last few days. It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along, and has to be dealt with differently, through "Banking" or "Secondary Sanctions?" Too many people are dying!!!”
However, whether this meeting will actually change anything is anybody’s game.
It’s clear that Donald Trump is a very different interlocutor when he’s on his own, and he doesn’t have his whirlwind of poor behaviour and bad omens, JD Vance, or the boyfriend of long-term groupie Marjorie Taylor Greene, to yell at his diplomatic partners.
With Donald Trump having repeatedly made overtures to Vladimir Putin, who has repeatedly ignored him, made a fool out of of him by ignoring his proposals, forcing Americans to bend over backwards for his maximalist goals, and, until now, successfully attempting to isolate him on Ukraine, it’s no surprise that even Donald Trump will begin to realise his team’s strategy is faulty.
But will his team understand this? Or do they event want to?
This writer’s bet is on no, which if i’m correct, will mean we have more than a few months of problems ahead of us.
🗳️Bardella confirms he will be “Le Pen’s” candidate
Back to France, and to the surprise of nobody, Jordan Bardella has confirmed his presidential ambitions in an interview with Le Parisien this Saturday.
With Marine Le Pen currently appealing her five-year ban from political life, handed down due to her part in a massive embezzlement scheme as an MEP, there continue to be questions about whether she will be able to overturn the ruling and rescue her career.
However, regardless of this, her protégé and President of the Rassemblement National, Jordan Bardella, has made it clear that “If she is prevented, I will be Marine Le Pen's candidate”, but that he won’t go over her head.
Naturally, this is because the party continues to protest that “Marine Le Pen is innocent” and will therefore be the candidate in 2027. Apparently.
Unfortunately, this kind of strategy continues to ensure that Bardella remains in a subordinate role, effectively relegated to the second row behind Marine Le Pen, and it ensures that his presidential preparations have less and less time to be developed, which can be seen clearly in the campaign posters being spread by the party for their meetings:
However, that doesn’t mean that Jordan Bardella is sitting back and not attempting to manoeuvre himself forward in his presidential ambitions, with the likelihood of Marine Le Pen being absolved or remaining unpunished unlikely, due to this style of punishment having been handed down plenty of times across the political life.
“At the present moment, we have the imperative need to remain united and united. There is no ambiguity about the fact that Marine Le Pen is my candidate, and that if she were to be prevented tomorrow, I think I can tell you that I will be her candidate. I can't be clearer than that…Marine is presumed innocent and we will use all possible remedies ... continue to claim our innocence in this case”
- Jordan Bardella speaking to Le Parisien on Saturday 27 April
And he continues to walk the tight-rope, both highlighting his presidential ambitions and subduing them to Marine Le Pen’s, having to position himself in the background:
“I'm working and I'm preparing. What is expected of a potential Prime Minister as well as a candidate in the presidential election are qualities that are more or less quite similar. The function is different. But the ability to bring people together, to listen, to understand the French, these are missions that I have also been making mine for several months”
- Jordan Bardella speaking to Le Parisien on Saturday 27 April
and yet, he is still seen as being too green internally, with a close friend of his highlight that he has “never run a presidential campaign on his name, you are never well rehearsed in the first round.”
If you have a subscription to Le Parisien, the article is well worth the read.
🌳Eric Piolle beats Tondelier candidate to become EELV spokesperson
In more news linked to 2027, Eric Piolle has just won a small boost within Europe Ecologie Les Verts, beating the party leader’s preferred candidate, Guillaume Hédouin, with 2,607 votes against 2,306.
With Marine Tondelier having been re-elected as the party’s national secretary just over a week ago with 73% of the vote, she has been working to reinforce her power within the party, and had called for members to support Hédouin as the “most strategic vote”.
This was despite Tondelier having managed Piolle’s campaign during the ecologist presidential primary, where Yannick Jadot had been selected as the Presidential candidate against Sandrine Rousseau.
Unfortunately, they clearly disagree with her.
Holding no hard feelings, Piolle said that it was great news as “it means that we will be able to work together”, and that his would “try to bring my experience to, internally, try to advance political ecology.”
With the left attempting to figure out how they will prepare for the 2027 Presidential elections, with a major effort being made by Parti Socialiste First-Secretary, Olivier Faure, to exclude far-left Jean-Luc Mélenchon from a coalition, it will be curious to see how this new dynamic will develop.
Tondelier has been walking a tightrope since becoming national secretary of EELV, and has attempted to not be pulled to closely to either the centre-left or the far-right, and her balancing act may be in peril.
Piolle has repeatedly supported Jean-Luc Mélenchon, calling for voters to support him in 2017 “to encourage the rallying of the left."
“I will vote in favour of Jean-Luc Mélenchon to encourage the left, citizens and ecologists to come together. I am convinced that there is a cultural, civic, solidarity and ecological majority in France. It is even a powerful majority that carries within it a high idea of France and that does not recognize itself in the race for greed or in ultraliberalism.”
- Eric Piolle speaking to Le Monde on April 14 2017
And with Olivier Faure failing to see any major boost to his electoral fortunes in recent polling, which shows that he has an inferior score to potential presidential candidate, Raphael Glucksman, and would fall far behind Mélenchon, we shouldn’t be surprised if Piolle takes a similar decision
But polls should always be taken with a grain of salt.
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I have to say, as an atheist as well, that the last Pope had better values than many leading politicians