The French presidential election is on Sunday. The candidates are, in order of least obnoxiousness: Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. (Accounts of obnoxiousness may vary). That’s it. Just the 2. Beauty and the Beast, without the Beauty. And the contest is close. Alarmingly close.

The French don’t generally do a lot of ‘re-electeds’. They’re such an ungrateful, dissatisfied nation that any president lasting his full term without a sex scandal or surrendering his nation to any would-be invaders would still be turfed out of the Elysee Palace to make room for the next hopeless case. Which would bode ill for Macron.

But France are currently suffering the same malaise as England. That of ‘no viable alternative’. Thus ‘the devil you know’ becomes, if not exactly desirable, then the lesser of evils. And in Le Pen’s case, true evil. She may call her party ‘National Rally’, like a movie with Terry Thomas in a vintage Rolls Royce running out of petrol outside the casino at Monte Carlo, but its not. The ‘national’ falls short of ‘nationalist’ because of implications towards all of France’s immigrant population. Most of whom she has offended and hated, all of whom she’d love to repatriate or just drown, with the remainder banned forever from wearing any traces of origins which may be not-French in any way. Her father was a nazi, her mother was (probably) a nazi, so apples, trees, etc, it doesn’t take Isaac Newton to guess. Not about gravity, the other ‘apples, trees’ thing.

And that’s why Macron is still in the race. Not because he’s any good, not because anyone likes him, not because he’s very tall, but just because he’s not Marine Le Pen. The smug little shit is electable just because the person standing against him simply isn’t. Or hopefully won’t be. Because although ‘populism’ is just another way of saying surge-to-the-far-right-ism and was big in ‘the Trump days’, she is basically stupid. Her brand of ‘populism’ involves ‘reducing the cost of living’ whilst lowering taxes and increasing public spending. The sort of numbers that only Diane Abbot could make agree. But no-one with any real understanding of… numbers.

Like in Britain where the Tories won’t oust Boris simply because there is no viable alternative within their own party, nor anyone else’s, France is in the same predicament. Another term of office for a worthless tosser with a Napoleon complex or the spiritual daughter of Adolph Hitler.

Happy Friday

A xxxx