Just goes to show how out of touch the political elites are.

What a ridiculous thing to say that there is “no good outcome for France”. Le Pen winning and getting rid of Macron would be incredible!!!!

Describing the Conservative Party as "the right" is laughable.

Populist is just a word Neil likes to use for the working class.

Macron seems a total fool.

"It's time to punish the unvaccinated" - Andrew Neil Never forgive. Never forget.

france is simply protecting borders. markets will love it.

Labour better build those millions of houses, reservoirs, power plants and train those GP’s. They can’t afford to be catastrophic failures like the previous Tory and Labour Governments. Rent slaves with no house, no family, no hope and no health care, will vote in ways that Starmer and the Establishment won’t like.

Hopefully Marine Le Pen will make big head way in the elections

The arrogant guy who said he wanted to make life hell for the unvaccinated might get kicked to the curb and humiliated? I call it Karma!

There was a lot of fearmongering over Georgia Meloni, how did that work out?

It's okay, Andrew - you'll still be allowed to get to your chateau in the South of France. 😉

His gamble made 0 sense to begin with, there was no evidence they would win.

What a ladylike presenter. Not allowable on BBC, where we need DEI scruff mispronouncing Walkin, Talkin and Votin.

😂😂😂 the Centrist Global Uniparty Hegemony is smashed 😂😂😂

Anne-Elisabeth Moutet is rather good isn't she.

So what exactly is the populist right ? Perhaps we should have a little less intellectual speculation , and a lttle more direct action.

The managerial class are being given a bloody nose, and they're being reminded that power lies with the people. Whether they listen, or double down on their insanity, remains to be seen.

Truss was naive. Andrew Bailey in conjunction with Treasury civil Servants screwed her on behalf of the Establishment. Hopefully Le Pen was watching.

Wake up msm. The DAVOS group is collapsing! Yeah! 🤣🤣

Neil (a dubious character indeed) talking on behalf of Est. to the Est. for the Est.. Well, change is afoot.. One race is run, and another is about to start!

Vote Reform. Save Britain.

@11:04. "All the major cities are labor ..." Were they not so for the past 200 years? The factories came up in towns and cities. Any villages they came up in did not remain villages. That's what the Industrial Revolution did. The communist manifesto was not meant for an agrarian economy. Not much labor in the countryside to pay for labor unions .

Viva Le Pen

We need Reform in the UK. Vote Reform Uk this coming Thursday

VOTE REFORM 🗳️🇬🇧

This lady's English is a touch old fashioned and very charming. 'His name is mud' and 'wishy washy'.

How in the hell is Keir Starmer a Centrist???

At what stage does a political party changed from trying to get as many votes as possible by appealing to as many voters as possible become populist?

Labour will have only one disastrous term in the UK

Ha..ha.. Bye Bye Marcon. The COUNTRY needs Li Pen for Saving COUNTRY and Generatoin.

The portrait of Andrew Neil is very Alan Partridgesque - and especially fitting given the damage he has done to his media career.

God Save the King and let’s f’ing go Nigel!!! 🇬🇧 🇬🇧 🇬🇧

Just maybe the saviour of Labour very well could be Le Penn! By that I mean IF Lepenn ends up taking over and actually cracks down on illigal immigrants in France this could very well help Labour as all those illigal immigrants sitting on the channel waiting for a small boat to England will no longer be there! We can just hope can’t we!

Amusing to hear AFN harrumphing off camera after being out talked by AEM. She's a card. He's a francophile and always good value. A great discussion. Bring these two on again Freddy.

so you're saying is that La France was having some "mostly peaceful protests"

When did center left become far right?

France have a Rigging-system that could be bent in favour of establishment in time of emergency like last week RN 33.14% win, on 5th July 2nd round this Rigging-system would be activated in favour of Macron

netzero, high immigration are not center positions...they're far left. The center have gone far left. They can bugger off as far as I'm concerned

The WEF will find a way of keeping their guy in place....let's hope not .

nah all the other parties will gang up on Le Penn

Marine Le Penn does speak English !!!

Absolutely fantastic news... VOTE REFORM

Anne-Elisabeth Moutet is wonderful… lifts my heart :)

This lady is wrong claiming National Rally doesn’t speak English. I’ve just listened to an interview with Talk TV with a French NR guy speaking better English than I speak French.

Andrew looks like he enjoyed himself too much last night.

Lose Neil (he's starting to do a Biden) and keep Moutet.

How you can possibly blame this on America instead of the Islamic influence, or the French is wild. Ya know what. You get what you deserve for not calling it what it is.

when the squishy center is to scared to try to stop the worst aspects of the left, people search for those that will

As has happened before, the centre and left will unite and use tactics to reduce the Le Pen’s vote share in the second round to ensure no majority is obtained.

Mr Neil and Ms Moutet two of the best political commentators around...always fascinating.

The lady saying the far-left of France got racialism from America, as if racialism doesn’t pop up anywhere there’s rapid change in racial makeup, which has occurred in France and the whole of the west of course. That rapid change also explains why cities are leftists and racialized, but rural areas aren’t that.

I didn't think the UKs FPtP system could be topped, but the french system is even worse than ours!

Anne-Elisabeth's accent is totally fantastic

I think he's being a man of his word. Want someone else? Have at it. I'll just retire with untold riches and laugh when the idiots burn it down.

National Rally people not very clubbable! LOL

Your lady guest, in addition to being terribly attractive, is very, very knowledgeable about French politics. Great and informative blog.

As an impartial point: the two round system seems very inefficient and ineffective. Australia's preferential voting system is much more efficient and it prevents people from feeling like they wasted their vote.

Screw Macron ... what about Joe. Who will be the demo candidate in the 11 th hour. Remember the 1972 Olympics? Anybody?

Makes no difference as there is not a politician on the planet at present who's not a puppet.

Neil must be delighted!

Saying zionist is same thing as jewish is insult to jewish people.

An introduction to French elections. Elections are in two "tours" the first is open to any parties or independents. To win outright in the first tour a party must gain 51% of all the votes cast "and" 25% of the entire electorate. This prevents someone profiting from a low turnout. In the second tour, only the top two are allowed to present in each constituency. There can be a certain amount of coalitions formed and parties joined. The winning candidates can then if they have a majority take power or lesser parties can again form a coalition. Bare in mind that this has no effect on the President, he remains until the end of his tenier. The President then choses ministers of state including Prime Minister. It is entirely normal for people to make protest votes in the first tour, and obviously supporters of minority groups will gravitate to their closest candidate ideologically in the second tour. Paradoxically a good result in the first tour ça be detrimental to that party in the second. Imagine a second Brexit vote after people had been startled by the initial result.... Et maintenant, on verra !!!

Macron must now truly understand that negative emotion is more powerful than positive emotion

All my life time (over eighty years) France has been a third right, a third middle and a third left. Le Pens party got 33.2 per cent of the vote! The left is very wide and split. The middle is very varied but moderate. The political system the French have allowed them to keep a 'balance for decades. It seems this is continuing!! If the right get real 'profile' they will soon get push back. e.g. They want to reduce fuel duty from 20 percent to five? Will that work??? ....David in France.

😅 macaroon is done!

"Macron's gamble has backfired..." He didn't have a mandate after he EU elections so I understand why he called an election. It is not about clinging to power when the public has moved on from you.

Thank you.

France and Russia cozy up, Germany and the Low Countries get nervous, Britain looks to play both sides against the middle. I think I saw this movie before?

Orban must be looking at France and laughing his head off.

This is a development straight from Giuseppe Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo. Much is being changed so that nothing is changed. Le Pen would never have won otherwise.

geeeee doesn't she talk

weird thing i've noticed that no one else will care about, is the French refer to Macron as Jupiter, where in the UK we wouldn't refer to someone as Zeus, but we would more likely use the Greek form of a God than the Roman form, weird hey

It's Edward Heath all over again. I want to determine who's in charge - and the answer was, not you matey. Honestly Macron had another three years in charge - albeit it with a weaker government than in the last parliament. And now ? .......

Not sure about a much touted rural urban divide. Liberal Party of Canada just lost one of its core urban ridings - the one they held for the last 30 years none the less, in Toronto to their conservative rivals. the reality is that urban dwellers by and large care about those same bread and butter issues that are a primary focus of residents in less urbanized locales.

FIRST!! HOORAY FOR MOI!

Metropolitan areas are centre left left leaning for a reason. When those areas are the habitual destination of non natives and the political blob in their bubbles, that is what you get. And I believe it is a misrepresentation to argue that small towns and rural areas are faaar right merely because they are traditional patriots.

Id love to see Andrew Neils garden there behind him. Looks fabulous 😊

Ever thought Macron just got sick of it all?

don,t forget the IrishhMEPs

Wait till the second round. The mass of French will dive for the centre. They always do.

When your opponent is on a roll, gaining momentum, you call timeout to disrupt them. Macron did the opposite thing. The far right had the momentum, fresh off their victory in the EU election. Macron gave them a chance to enhance their momentum.

Le Pen is mightier than the Sword.

Awesome episode. Keep up the good work!

I remember communists would go to Moscow for training, not NY/LA

Mr Neil is correct in saying that the EU is not the place we left. However not because of probably relatively marginal and reversible gains by the right , but because Brussels has greatly increased the degree and depth of its power at the expense of the national states, The French lady was interesting in that she was able to speak with authority about the possible cat fight that will erupt over the standing down process between the French liberals and what in many ways is the far left . A left that is far more interested staging violent demonstrations that in administration. She speculates what effect this might have on basically conservative voters who until now have not supported M. Le Pen. What is this issue about urban v suburban/ rural ? Urban areas have always generally elected lefties on the whole, but there are swings. In 2019 in particular the Tories took inner city areas.

We are tired of the lefts shit. If that makes me a “populist”, then so be it

Les Republicains died with Sarkozy and Fillon.

There was a book about it many years ago i read, called "Metro and Retro".

Good go back to your old job at the glue factory

Excellent analysis

Thank God France is awakening from its slumber. FRANCE FOR THE FRENCH!!

Well, Neill appears to have recovered just fine after some appalling comments through the Covid debacle, so I don't see why he can be so cynical about Macron's future

If Starmer fails? That is a racing certainty

It was indeed a failed gamble. And a vain self-overestimation too. He must have known how wrong it would turn out. He did what he did instead of letting go for the sake of the common good. Although not equally evil like the butcher of khan younis, he still rivals him in terms of psychopathic personality traits. Proud beyond all limitations, he’s incapable of true empathy. He did not try to save his government nor France. He sacrificed her on the slaughtering block because he couldn’t have her for himself. She will now walk into the darkness, so will the European Union, and what little light is left shining, Ukraine, Russia, Gaza, China and India will blow it out. Global warming will wash the remainders into the sea. The last human will stand on the shore, looking out to her. Won’t be me. Dun’t matter. Peace on earth.

Describing the current Tory party under Sunak as right wing is laughable.

This lady is articulate and does a glass very well

Starmer, Macron, Trudeau… what’s the difference? Hint: none.

Andrew Neil needs to get out more, if he thinks rural areas tend to be more conservative than our cities. Britons are inherently conservative (especially the Working Class); but they are far from being on the 'right' of politics. We live in rural Somerset, where agriculture is the main industry, locally. But one only needs to travel to Taunton to realise that most of those who work for Government (Teachers, Police, Local Government officials, etc) are on the Far Left; if not outright Communists. The intolerance is all from those on the Far Left. I would oprefer to say that those of us who still live in rural areas are simply more 'ENGLISH' than our fellow-citizens in towns and cities.

Looks, it's not right for Andrew to throw aspersions on Starmer's level of geopolitical experience - I mean Starmer may be a buffoon in that respect, but Labour have in their ranks a towering geopolitical giant in... Lammy. So credit where credit's due - Lammy only has to walk into any negotiating room and the world leaders all around will feel instantly cowed by the sheer weight of his personality and agree to almost everything he says, just for the reflected glory.