Parliamentary stirrings in two countries: France and Israel
The first is France:
The left won a lot more seats. A new party, or really a new party coalition called “Nupes,” united the Socialists, Communists, hard left and greens, won somewhere between 149-200 seats, which is a lot more than the 60 seats the left held in total before the election.
LePen’s National Rally party previously held only eight seats, but now will hold between 60 and 102.
Macron attacked the left during the parliamentary election season and is unlikely to form a coalition with them. He’s extremely unlikely to form a coalition with LePen’s NR, which leaves only Les Republicains — the traditional center-right party, the party of Sarkozy — as his only dance partner. They will elect between 40 and 80 members of parliament.
Macron will have to strike a deal with LR for their support, moving to the “right” to appease them, maybe even picking a PM from their ranks.
More here:
The strong support for political extremes reflects a frustration with Macron’s leadership that first erupted in 2018 with the yellow vest movement against perceived economic injustice, and has periodically resurfaced among those who see him as too pro-business, arrogant or tone-deaf to everyday concerns.
The strong performance of both Le Pen’s National Rally and Mélenchon’s coalition — composed of his hard-left France Unbowed party as well as the Socialists, Greens and Communists — will make it harder for Macron to implement the agenda he was reelected on in May, including tax cuts and raising France’s retirement age from 62 to 65.
“Macron is a minority president now,” a beaming Le Pen declared Monday in Hénin-Beaumont, her stronghold in northern France. “His retirement reform plan is buried.”
The summary version is that Macron’s bloc and the left united in the presidential elections against Le Pen in order to give Macron victory, but that coalition fell apart when it came to parliamentary elections, to Macron’s detriment.
And then we have Israel, where a fragile coalition government is in big trouble and another parliamentary election looms:
Israel is heading to its fifth election in three and a half years, after Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Alternate Prime Minister Yair Lapid gave up Monday on their efforts to stabilize the coalition.
In a joint statement, Bennett and Lapid said they would bring a bill to dissolve the Knesset to a vote next Monday. There is a consensus in the coalition and opposition on an October 25 date for the election…
According to the coalition agreement, Lapid will become caretaker prime minister until the election and until the new government takes power. He is set to greet US President Joe Biden when he comes to Israel next month.
The meeting of the lame ducks.
More:
There is still a chance that Netanyahu will succeed in forming an alternate government within the current Knesset. This would happen if members of the coalition, from New Hope and Yamina, switch sides and join Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc.
Netanyahu took credit for the government’s downfall and called it the “worst government in the history of the State of Israel.”
He vowed he would form the next government and that it would be “nationalist and wide.”
Netanyahu the phoenix. The article doesn’t discuss it, but I wonder whether some of this resurgence has to do with the weakness of the evidence against him in a bogus bribery case.
Here’s a memory-refresher on how Bennett and Lapid formed the present government in the first place. It’s not a pretty story:
Once Netanyahu proved unable to form a government [after the election], Lapid cajoled Bennett to desert the right-wing bloc and offered him the seat of prime minister as part of a rotation arrangement. Unable to resist Lapid’s offer, Bennett agreed to become prime minister, despite winning only seven mandates in the previous election…
Bennett [had] repeatedly told voters on national news programs that it would be undemocratic for a Knesset member to become prime minister with less than 10 mandates. Bennett had seven. In a stunt, Bennett [had] also signed a piece of paper that he brought into an Israeli evening news program stating that he would not join any Lapid-led government “with a rotation or without a rotation” because “I am right-wing and [Lapid] is left-wing.” Many right-wing voters supported Bennett on the basis of those broken promises.
Great guys. Interesting times.
Every time I moan about how a parliamentary system would be better, I read about messes like Israel, or the instability that is, or was, at least (I don’t keep up), Italy.
But then, with the upcoming congressional elections, we may be in the same boat, with an executive without support in the legislature. And a “no confidence” vote wouldn’t get rid of him.
Netanyahu resembles Trump in many ways. The vendetta to take him out is only one example.
Interesting to see if the more nationalist elements survive the globalist onslaught once the seats start being allocated… especially given the military pre-emptive hits Israel has delivered to Iran of late.
Berlusconi was perhaps the first major test of lawfare, salvini was sidelined right before the pandemic hit, because he was a critic of mass immigration, but more importantly the concentration of chinese labor in the lombard region, that ended up being the vector for the epidemic, its possible a kindred spirit, meloni might be the next pm, working off the ghosts of mario draghi (fingers crossed)
Macron is stuck with a hung parliament. None of the principal political alignments are inclined to co-operate with his ministries and they’re dissimilar from each other.
A critic of Macron maintains his political party is a hollow shell and has no local organizations meeting in meatspace.
Every time I moan about how a parliamentary system would be better, I read about messes like Israel,
National list PR is a lousy way to do business.
This is very bad timing for Israel. The Biden Democrats are doing their damnedest to give Iran a nuclear weapon.
Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities are deep underground and the United States will not sell bunker buster bombs to the Israelis. That leaves their only option nuclear weapons. Steve Hayward of Powerline thinks a war is imminent. He thinks that Biden’s trip to the Middle East is to pressure Israel not to go to war against Iran. The SHTF soon I am afraid.
He thinks that Biden’s trip to the Middle East is to pressure Israel not to go to war against Iran.
Will Biden be accompanied by his daughter, his granddaughter, and a White House aide in an Easter Bunny costume?
Wouldn’t be surprised if the trip is canceled entirely.
“Biden” doesn’t have to come to Israel in order to strong-arm it.
The current political eructation would provide the perfect pretext.
The problem with Israel and Italy is not the parliamentary system.
The problem is a lack of election by district. Voters vote for a political party with a nation-wide list.
So it’s democracy – but not “representative”.
Nobody can “ring up *their* MP” and give him/her a piece of their mind. A politician’s career depends on the party apparatus, not any one group of voters.
IIRC This is also true of a certain number of seats in the German parliament.