| Why the Fillon-Copé truce may solve nothing | | By Jocelyn Evans | | 21 December 2012 | Parties | | | Party leadership clashes outre-Manche have always seemed noisier affairs than their British counterparts. Quiet treachery has characterised the dispatch of Tory party leaders, even the Iron Lady. All Tory leaders live with the whisper of imminent challenge – currently, David Cameron with the telegenic idiosyncracy of London Mayor Boris Johnson. ... Read More... |
| Support for the French FN at forty | | By Jocelyn Evans | | 03 October 2012 | Parties | | In the 40 years since its launch, the Front national (FN) has moved from a motley assortment of neo-fascist malcontents, former Poujadist populists, Royalists and Algérie française nostalgics to the established third party of the French political landscape.
A party whose grandees promoted Jean-Marie Le Pen as the reasonable ...Read More... |
| The French Front National at 40: New Party, Old Ideas? | | By Gilles Ivaldi | | 02 October 2012 | Parties | | Much has been written about the ‘new’ Front national since Marine Le Pen took over the party in 2011. Her leadership campaign was associated with a claim of strategic and programmatic modernization embedded in the now notorious concept of ‘de-demonization’ (dédiabolisation).
As part of this strategy Marine Le Pen ...Read More... |
| Taking the helm in the economic storm: the end of France’s normal presidency? | | By Jocelyn Evans, Gilles Ivaldi | | 11 September 2012 | General | | For such an eagerly anticipated election victory returning the Left to full executive power for the first time since 1993, some French Socialists may already find themselves ruing their success, a handful of weeks into office.
Whilst any newly elected president or government must inevitably expect the demands of ...Read More... |
| French presidentials, round 2: a personal view | | By Jocelyn Evans | | 07 May 2012 | General | | Over the course of the past four months or so, Dr Ivaldi and I have provided what (we hope) are in-depth analyses of the progress of the campaign and electoral prospects of the 10 candidates on the 22 April ballot paper.
As a blogging novice, one of the things ...Read More... |
| The French right and the spectre of the ‘schwarz-blau’ coalition | | By Jocelyn Evans, Gilles Ivaldi | | 27 April 2012 | Parties | | | Much has been made of Marine Le Pen’s result in the first round of the presidentials. She placed third with 17.9 per cent of the vote, well behind the two leading candidates, but notably ahead of the left-wing candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who according to most opinion polls was threatening to ... Read More... |
| Another April surprise? A quick assessment of polls | | By Jocelyn Evans, Gilles Ivaldi | | 23 April 2012 | Polls & Forecasts | | Now that the official results of the first round are known, it is time to reflect on how accurate voting intention polls have been — both in an absolute sense and as compared with their performances in 2007.
Did pollsters do better or worse than in 2007?
Five ...Read More... |
| The surprise of 22 April 2012 was ... there were no (real) surprises | | By Jocelyn Evans, Gilles Ivaldi | | 23 April 2012 | General | | The results of the first round of the French presidential elections conformed entirely to expectations. There were no surprises, only minor adjustments. We would therefore fully expect François Hollande to enter the Elysée in a fortnight’s time.
These seem like shocking claims given the coverage of the results. According ...Read More... |
| A Marine Le Pen forecast for 2012 | | By Jocelyn Evans, Gilles Ivaldi | | 28 March 2012 | Polls & Forecasts | | | Six months ago, French political commentators began talking of an electoral ‘blue wave’ – Marine Le Pen’s high polling figures, in some cases in excess of 20% voting intentions, suggested that the new leader of the Front national (FN) was likely to outperform even her father’s best score of almost ... Read More... |
| Sarkozy counter-attacks Hollande’s lacklustre gambit | | By Jocelyn Evans, Gilles Ivaldi | | 27 March 2012 | Candidates | | The Dutch Defence is one of black’s more aggressive and unconventional replies on the chessboard. It thus serves admirably as a metaphor for Sarkozy’s fight to rescue his incumbency from a seemingly inevitable, ignominious end under a Hollande landslide.
Last week, for the first time in the campaign, Sarkozy ...Read More... |
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“I cannot prevent the French from being French.” - Charles de Gaulle
