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France’s Presidential Race Begins With The Selection of The Republican Candidate
France’s Presidential Race Begins With The Selection of The Republican Candidate
France’s Presidential Race Begins With The Selection of The Republican Candidate
by Brunello Rosa
6 December 2021
On Saturday, France’s Republican Party (Les Républicains) chose by way of a primary election its candidate for the presidential race that will take place in April 2022. The winner of the contest was Valérie Pécresse, president of the Île-de-France region since 2015 and former minister for higher education and the budget under Nicolas Sarkozy. She defeated some party heavyweights, such as Michel Barnier, who had been touted as the most credible candidate a serious potential contender against Macron in the general election.
The Republicans are the heirs of the glorious tradition of Gaullist presidents (such as Giscard D’Estaing and Jacques Chirac), but realized their worst ever result in 2017 when their candidate François Fillon was embroiled in an embezzlement scandal which prevented him from reaching the run-off stage of the election against Emmanuel Macron. Given the party’s historical tradition, as we discussed in our recent trip report, we would have not considered the presidential election to have started until the Republican candidate was chosen.
Valérie Pécresse is a moderate centrist within the party, who defeated right wingers such as Eric Ciotti. The party is clearly trying to win back their centrist voters who preferred Macron’s political offer in 2017. At the same time, it is the right flank of the political specturm that Pécresse should guard more closely against. Plenty of competition will come from Marine Le Pen, the leader of the Rassemblement National (formerly the Front National), who reached the run-off round of the election in 2017, and from Eric Zemmour, the former journalist and polemicist who is also running with a radical right-wing agenda, especially regarding immigration.
France’s Presidential Race Begins With The Selection of The Republican Candidate
France’s Presidential Race Begins With The Selection of The Republican Candidate
With current polls suggesting no more than 11% support for her candidacy, Pécresse will have to erode support from the right-wingers if she is to reach the run-off vote against (presumably) Macron. At the same time, her victory in the Republican primary may not make Macron’s life easier. With her modern anti-climate change agenda, Pécresse may also attract some moderate and even progressive voters of Macron’s.
Macron also faces the risk that Marine Le Pen does not reach the second, run-off round of the election. Macron believes that the unwritten “republican pact” that has existed in previous elections, which implies that all non-extremist voters will vote for anyone who is not the representative of the Front/Rassemblement National, will hold once again. But If Le Pen does not reach the second round, this pact may simply no longer apply.
As we discussed in previous analysis, the French presidential and subsequent parliamentary elections, together with the German general election of September 2021 and the Italian presidential election of January/February 2022, will represent the three key elections of the 2021-2022 period, which together may determine the future of Europe. The German election has now resulted in a three-party coalition (unheard of in Germany’s recent history), which still needs to prove its cohesiveness. The Italian presidential election may result in the choice of a strong pro-European president such as Mario Draghi, but could also lead to controversial political figures such as Silvio Berlusconi. The results of these three important votes will determine the shape and speed of the European integration process in coming years
LATEST RESEARCH
Travel Notes: France Getting Ready For The Presidential Race
by Brunello Rosa
26 November 2021
Flash Review: BOE Surprises The Market By Keeping Its Interest Rates Unchanged In November
by Brunello Rosa
4 November 2021
Flash Review: ECB To End PEPP in March, While Avoiding A Cliff Edge
by Brunello Rosa
28 October 2021
GLOBAL OUTLOOK UPDATE - MARKET VIEWS - Q4-2021 STRATEGIC ASSET ALLOCATION Economic Recovery On Track, But Volatility Rises
by Alessandro Magnoli Bocchi, Fawaz Sulaiman Al Mughrabi and Karmen Meneses
1 October 2021
Review: Fed To Begin QE Tapering in November, While Keeping Some Optionality On The Pace
by Brunello Rosa
3 November 2021
Kuwait: To Create Jobs For Nationals, Reduce Dependence On Public Sector Employment And Low-Wage Foreign Labor
by Alessandro Magnoli Bocchi, Fawaz Sulaiman Al Mughrabi, Carmen Pages Serra, Zafiris Tzannatos
13 October 2021
The Geopolitical Corner by John Hulsman
Travel Notes: Washington, DC Both The Democrats And The Republicans Have Fallen Into ‘The Hemingway
Travel Notes: Washington, DC Both The Democrats And The Republicans Have Fallen Into ‘The Hemingway
Travel Notes: Washington, DC Both The Democrats And The Republicans Have Fallen Into ‘The Hemingway
by John Hulsman
30 November 2021
Introduction: A Curious Pattern of Blindness
Tom Dardis, in The Thirsty Muse: Alcohol and the American Writer, points out the striking fact that the five Americans to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in the Twentieth Century (Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Faulkner, O’Neill, and Steinbeck) share only one trait in common in their otherwise disparate lives; they were all alcoholics.
Dardis illustrates how in their writings, these world-class authors laid bare the various symptoms of their common disease. For instance, while they were habitually and jointly burning Paris night spots to the ground, Ernest Hemingway kept meticulous track in his diary of what his close friend and rival, F. Scott Fitzgerald, was drinking every night. However, Hemingway’s analytical abilities dramatically fell off when looking at himself, a reality Dardis makes brutally clear.
While the author of the matchless Fiesta, The Snows of Kilimanjaro, and For Whom The Bell Tolls is forensic in his observation of his friend’s disease, he fails to record in his journal his own lifelong struggles with alcoholism. A typical entry mentions Fitzgerald has 17 drinks on an evening; Dardis, through first-class scholarship, adds to the journal entry in notes that at the very same time, Hemingway had consumed 14 drinks. In other words, Hemingway’s analytical observations tended to stop with himself. Worse, in focusing on his friend’s obvious problems, this one-sided analysis tended to let Hemingway off the hook, serving as a crutch not to take a much-needed look in the mirror.
Travel Notes: Washington, DC Both The Democrats And The Republicans Have Fallen Into ‘The Hemingway
Travel Notes: Washington, DC Both The Democrats And The Republicans Have Fallen Into ‘The Hemingway
So it is presently for the Democrats and Republicans in Washington. After a grueling weeks' worth of meetings with high-level practitioners in both camps, it became painfully clear to me that they have both fallen into the ‘Hemingway trap’ of long ago. Obsessed with the all-too-real problems crippling their rivals, they seem unable and unwilling to come to grips with their own equally obvious political handicaps, problems that will surely consume one or both parties over the next three fateful years. However, the time frame of their political peril is different. For the Democrats the problems are now; for the GOP more in the medium term.
[...]
(This is an excerpt of Dr. Hulsman's latest article, which you can read here)
Dr. John C. Hulsman is the widely-read Senior Columnist for City AM, the newspaper of the city of London. Dr. Hulsman is also a Life Member of the US Council on Foreign Relations. His most recent work, the best-selling, To Dare More Boldly; The Audacious Story of Political Risk, was published by Princeton University Press in April 2018 and is available for order on Amazon. He can be reached for corporate speaking and private briefings at https://www.chartwellspeakers.com. His original writing work can all be found at johnhulsman.substack.com.
Looking Ahead
The Week Ahead
The Quarter Ahead
The Quarter Ahead
Week: 6 - 12 December 2021
Inflation Pressures Remain High Globally
In the EZ, year-on-year economic growth for Q3 is expected to decelerate to 3.7% (p: 14.2%).
In China, in December inflation rate is expected to increase to 2.5% y-o-y (p: 1.5%).
In Germany, final data for HICP inflation is seen rising to 6.0% y-o-y (p: 4.6%).
In the US, CPI inflation rate is expected to increase to 6.7% (p: 6.2%), with core inflation reaching 4.9% y-o-y (p: 4.6%).
The Quarter Ahead
The Quarter Ahead
The Quarter Ahead
Fed Chair Jerome Powell argued for speeding up the bond-buying tapering amid higher inflation. Powell warned that the price gains could become long-lasting and he retired the use of “transitory” when speaking of inflation. Powell’s hawkish remarks weighed on global stocks.
OPEC+ agree to increase oil output by 400,000 bpd in January, despite concerns over the Omicron variant. The decision came in force following the pressure from the White House, calling for more supply to lower prices. Previously, Biden Administration announced the coordinated release of the strategic oil reservices between the U.S., China, India, South Korea, Japan and the U.K. to cool prices.
The Omicron strain is said to weigh on global economic recovery. First detected in South Africa, the new variant is more transmissible than the dominant Delta variant. As forecast by the European ECDC, the Omicron variant could account for half of EU cases within months. Importantly, experts argue that the risk of the emergence of new variants, such as the Omicron, is linked to vaccine inequality, as they originate mostly in regions with low vaccination rates.
Turkey’s central bank decided to intervene in the currency markets for the first since 2014, in order to halt “unhealthy price formations in exchange rates”. The central bank sold foreign currencies, including the U.S. dollar in an attempt to stabilize the lira, which reached a record low following President Erdogan’s call for cutting rates. After the announcement, the Turkish finance minister resigned.