Parties from the extreme right-wing and left-wing struggle to appear different from each other; and of course there are major differences, on at least one point: their attitudes towards immigration. Yet, they have more and more common traits in both form and substance.
In form, because their neighboring names is not so innocent: Front National. Left Front. Next, because they are both intended to be governing parties. And they do everything to be worthy of respect and be respected. Marine Le Pen makes it abundantly clear that she will be the next President of the Republic and Jean Luc Melenchon that he will be the next Prime Minister. In substance also, because they both do not hesitate to use verbal excesses, in order to assert their differences with governing parties or what they call « the establishment » or the « notables », which are both made up of parties that have governed so far, senior officials, business leaders and most of the intellectuals.
In form, and even more so, because whatever they say, and no matter the possible sincerity of their democratic convictions, each of the programs, if indeed it is carried out, leads to an exit (voluntary for the National Front, suffered for the Left Front) from the euro; with the Banque de France being subjected to the supervision of the budget, to finance the public debt; leading to national protectionism, for want of getting this protectionism from the European Union; and a questioning of the public debt payment, that is to say the discontinuation of debt financing by international lenders, and thus turning toward French savers, who should be asked for a forced loan, new name of the tax. Sovereignty thus is joining socialism, in a project inevitably leading to an isolation of the country and to its economic, social and democratic collapse. So, contrary to what they think if they come to govern, the National Front should increase taxes a lot. And the Left Front should prohibit immigration. In both cases without resolving the major problem, that of unemployment.
This farce would not be a problem, and it would not require three lines, if there was not a great risk that today’s so called « governing » parties, panicked by what the polls show, and by their meetings with voters, be tempted to use some of these ideas as a format, and tell the same thing not to be outflanked, one by the left, the other by the right. The extreme right slips into the UMP; the extreme left into the Socialist Party. Both no longer hide, they insult together, march together, vote together.
At the end of this fool’s bargain, the entire French political class would be aligned on one and the same program, both national and socialist. By dint of trying to reach their extreme right for one, and their extreme left for the other, it can be seen that they all advocate the same ideas and defend the same program, obviously undemocratic, obviously ineffective, obviously shameful.
Does the entire French political class want France to be one day like North Korea? Obviously not. The time to act is now. And see that, from the right and the left alike, governing parties put together long-term programs compatible with our international commitments and with democracy, and maintain the courage to defend them. It is high time, if we do not want to see the next elections, local and European, turn into a red and brown disaster.