Frank Furedi

Simon Veazey7min

Speaker 1

00:15

Hello, Hi, Professor. It's Owen here from the Epoch Times John said you might be talking to how you doing? Yeah, good. Thanks. Just trying to make sense of France's political situation. It seems pretty serious from people that I've spoken to, but John said you might have some some opinions about what you think this means for kind of France looking ahead, and I'll be really interested to hear what you might want to say.

Speaker 2

00:46

Yeah, well, I think that there are a number of scenarios that are possible. One of them is just kind of the imposition of a kind of rule back dikta by the President. I think there are, there are constitutional precedents for this and and that could happen. But the really important thing to remember here is that the way that the crisis is represented is that there are these three groups in Parliament, all of them roughly of the same strength. That's not really true, because you have to remember that in the elections, the interest for the left all ganged up against the rally mom national, yeah, and they and they tried to basically minimize their electoral success. And I think what's, what's happening is that that, by that one, as a result of this, there is not a possibility that, you know, sort of the situation, political situation, will get more polarized. I think Le Pen was, did the right thing is calling for a confidence war, because otherwise they would have become captured by the centrist political forces and forced to pay the consequences for that. What I see happening there is whatever happens, whatever the arrangement, the polarization of France is intensify and conflict between those societies will continue. And the question then becomes, what extent the key question becomes, to what extent Macron is able to remain President in this very unclear situation,

Speaker 1

02:44

some rumors that he might stand down tonight, but it's just rumors in in for now. Is that something you you expect to happen, or do you think you'll just have to

Unknown Speaker

03:01

macro standing there? Or, yeah, Macron,

Speaker 1

03:03

standard Macron. He's got an 8pm address to the nation tonight. Some people say it's unlikely. Some people think it's in a minute.

Unknown Speaker

03:14

To be honest, I don't know. I don't think that he will stand because the stakes are really very, very high if he stands down. And a lot of people will think that that might play into the hands of the of the RN,

Speaker 2

03:33

there are some national and I think that under those circumstances, but that would have a fairly good crack at even winning the election, to be honest. So, I mean, don't quote me on this. I think that what Macron statement will be much more like an attempt at a statement like indicating that because of the crisis situation, they don't have to do something quite unprecedented. I don't know what that will be, whether it will be rule much more under a presidential decree. I think I cannot imagine. I mean, I think it's pretty alright. I'm not always right on these things, but if we don't stand down the he will unleash a degree of uncertainty which would be quite unprecedented.

Speaker 1

04:35

Could I just, could I maybe say that, that, you know, yeah. Could I just say, you know, if we say, professor said that, you know, we don't know, there's been kind of course, that you may stand down, but the degree, you will emit, a degree of uncertainty, which is quite impressive. I think that's a yeah, just the last thing is also professor. And then I don't want to take too much, I really appreciate it is that I COVID a couple of weeks ago. Germany at this crossroads, it's got this political crisis as well. Look, the these two countries essentially have to lift Greece out of crisis just over 10 years ago. I mean, what do you think it means to have these two core powerhouse countries in such kind of political crisis? What do you think that means, kind of for the euro project, the European project?

Speaker 2

05:33

Well, I think it exposes the internal weakness of this project, because actually the EU and its project looks much stronger than it really is. I think that if you look at the three largest members of the EU and Germany, but also Italy, they are all living on borrowing money and facing major crisis, economic crisis, which is a particular problem in Germany, because Germany has been the economic engine so far. Now what we've got is this sort of, basically what is a kind of real necessity of rethinking the balance of power is going to be within the European Union because Germany is itself less able to kind of dominate the Euro zone in the way that it's been able to do that in the past. And I think that sort of all bets are off now, because the existing customs, the way that the EU has been run, the kind of assumption, but its economic affairs is the budget, that it's kind of brought about, all these things left to face reality, The reality of the market, but also the reality of political unraveling, because in all these places, the mainstream political elite are very much on the defensive. They've been wrong footed.

Speaker 1

07:16

Interesting they we live in interesting times. Professor, I think is the is the term, isn't it the curse or the term? I've got such a lot from me there, Perez, I always appreciate your call.

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