If I can work out a way of voting in the French presidential elections (for the first time, thanks to my new status as a dual citizen), I shall go faute de mieux for Emmanuel Macron, head and shoulders above the rest in terms of statesmanship and dependability if rather too right-wing for my own tastes. The impediment for me is that I am registered as a French voter in the UK but find myself in France. Proxy voting seems complicated to say the least. As this article for The National - thanks as ever to the editor for permitting its reproduction here - tries to explain, the far right polemicist Marine Le Pen is the main obstacle to what until recently seemed an easy canter to his second term.
Last night, I watched an absorbing France 3 documentary, slightly behind the 31st anniversary of his death, of the enfant terrible of French music, Serge Gainsbourg. There were some wonderful memories and insights from his daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg, Charlotte's mother Jane Birkin, Jane's dad, Francoise Hardy and others.
But there was also a chilling reminder of what far right can mean in France. Those attached to it, and who would if still alive vote either Le Pen or - worse - Eric Zemmour, would doubtless agree with the hoodlums who saw it as entirely normal to prevent Gainsbourg performing because he - a Jew! - had created a reggae version of the national anthem, La Marseillaise. Me, I love it and I could never vote for anyone who wanted to suppress it ...
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