Eric Zemmour is the Trump for the French - by Anne-Elizabeth Moutet for the Telegraph
- Ben Philips
- Dec 7, 2021
- 2 min read
Et tu Eric? Can the far-right maverick really 'do a Donald' and dislodge the Establishment incumbent in a repeat of the 2016 Presidential election campaign on this side of the Atlantic?
Both Republics were forged by revolution and both may be experiencing a similar upheaval now, as the old, discredited way of doing politics finally runs out of steam. Whether Zemmour himself emerges as the principal challenger, there is no question according to Anne-Elizabeth Moutet that he has determined the parameters of the current campaign:
"A “French Guantanamo” where terrorists would be detained even after completing their prison sentence. Expelling from France all foreign nationals who committed a crime. Charging criminals for prison residence. Holding popular referenda on controversial bills to avoid “allowing the Constitutional Council to weaken them and deprive the French people of the strong policies they truly want”. Barring all foreign relatives of French citizens from moving to France for a minimum of five years. Overruling European Court of Justice decisions when they impinge on French sovereignty. Bringing order and discipline into French schools.
On and on it goes. It’s hard not to flinch at maverick presidential candidate Eric Zemmour’s far-Right policy prospectus, wouldn’t you say?
Except that all those proposals were included in the platforms of the main candidates for the centre-Right Républicain nomination: Nice MP Eric Ciotti, Michel “You will pay for Brexit” Barnier, and even Valérie Pécresse, the supposedly middle-of-the-road Paris Region president who won in the runoff at last weekend’s party conference.
See here in pdf an article about Valérie Pécresse by John Lichfielld for UnHerd:
What they show is that, even before he gave a rousing speech on Sunday night after a couple of weeks of flagging poll numbers, Eric Zemmour has already changed the fundamentals of the 2022 French presidential race."
The full article can be read here with a link to the original beneath it:
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