Unleashed Campfire-for-all + A new leader for France

An open call for all our subscribers....campfire of the mind with special guest, Dennis Redmont, half century as a foreign correspondent ... Live from Lisbon....And Macron names his Prime Minister !

What's next for Andelman Unleashed?

What's next for us is an exciting experiment. For the first (and perhaps only) time, we are opening up our Friday Zoom conversations to all our subscribers (with priority of course to our paid).

To get your link, which will be sent Friday morning to all who sign up … just email us at:  daandelman@substack.com

TIME: 1 pm US/EDT … 7 pm EUROPE/CET … 10 pm US/PDT …

10:35 pm INDIA/IST … 6 am SYDNEY/AEST

AND we even have a very special guest !!

Dennis Redmont, veteran Rome, Lisbon and Brazil bureau chief for the Associated Press has reported from over 80 countries, covered guerrilla warfare and dictatorships in Latin America, Middle East crises, traveling the world with three popes, Pulitzer Prize finalist for his Vatican coverage, eventually working as a Rome based executive for the AP for the Mediterranean area, handling news, photos, television and multimedia coverage and distribution for over 25 years. Fluent in six languages, he will join us from his home in Lisbon. Which is also a perfect perch to monitor the shape and trajectory of global reaction to America’s own elections now heading into the home stretch! And to assess the new leader of France’s government named just this morning.

Agenda:

• America’s election being heard round the world

• The stakes and the debate (next Tuesday)

• Europe’s own travails and the surge of the far right

  • Macron names his new prime minister…what’s next??

• The crises

  • Ukraine

  • Israel - Palestine

  • China resurgent

• What’s on your mind …. what’s on your plate wherever you are !

Finally, of course, if you are moved to jump to a (lightly!) paid subscription, you’ll have a seat at every campfire, every Friday going forward !!

And now … Macron finds a leader

The announcement came at lunch time in Paris…and as usual, Emmanuel Macron may just have pulled a rabbit out of his increasingly leaky hat. Michael Barnier, a leading figure of the center-right Les Républicains party, but especially known across Europe as the consummate negotiator who, for the European Union, managed Britain’s fraught and complex exit from the EU known as Brexit.

Now the President of France has asked him to undertake perhaps the single most delicate and complex task in his 73 years on earth—assembling a government that will not immediately go down in flames at the hands of a National Assembly divided three ways but in fact deeply fractured, perhaps irreparably.

As the French daily Le Monde promptly described him:

Little known in France, the former Brexit negotiator became Prime Minister at the age of 73, in the midst of a political crisis. Michel Barnier has held a number of positions: elected the youngest general councillor in France at the age of 22, in 1973; youngest member of parliament; youngest president of the Savoie departmental council; four times minister (environment, in 1993; European affairs, in 1995; foreign affairs, in 2004; agriculture, in 2007); twice European commissioner; and, finally, Brexit negotiator. Not forgetting his first feat of arms, to which he still likes to refer thirty years later: the organisation of the Albertville Olympic Games in Savoie, in 1992.

The oldest Prime Minister of the Fifth Republic [and a quarter century older than the President who appointed him] succeeds Gabriel Attal, 35, who was the youngest, appointed only eight months ago and resigned 51 days ago. He will have to try to form a government capable of surviving a parliamentary censure, to end the most serious political crisis since 1958. In the meantime, the resigning ministers [of the Attal government] will remain in office to continue to manage current affairs during the negotiations.

Michel Barnier, who will [also] have to reassure Brussels, as France has been targeted since June by a procedure for excessive public deficit, is respected on the European scene, which he crisscrossed for fifteen years, until the Brexit agreement, obtained after a hard fight in December 2020.

And the first reactions were not uniformly discouraging. Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right National Rally (RN) party, as Le Monde reported:

The RN will not immediately censor Michel Barnier, according to its leaders

Michel Barnier "seems to meet at least the first criterion that we had requested, that is to say a man who is respectful of the different political forces and capable of addressing the National Rally, which is the first group in the National Assembly, in the same way as the other groups," declared Marine Le Pen on LCI.

"We are waiting to see what Mr Barnier's general policy speech is and how he makes the compromises that will be necessary on the upcoming budget ," she added, also recalling his demand for a "change in the voting method" to introduce proportional representation.

Others were not as encouraging, not unexpectedly from the left. Again, Le Monde:

Olivier Faure (Socialist Party): “We are entering a regime crisis”

"Democratic denial at its peak: a prime minister from the party that came in fourth place and who did not even participate in the Republican front. We are entering a crisis of the regime," denounced on X the first secretary of the Socialist Party, Olivier Faure.

For Jean-Luc Mélenchon [France Unbowed Party / far-left], "the election was stolen"

It is not the New Popular Front, which came out on top in the [legislative] election, which will have the prime minister and the responsibility of presenting itself to the deputies," reacted the leader of La France Insoumise, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, on Thursday, on his YouTube channel, after the announcement of the nomination of Michel Barnier as prime minister. "The election was therefore stolen," he added.

"While the second round of the legislative election was entirely focused on defeating [the] National Rally. It is the personality closest to its positions who is designated," he said again.

Very much a developing story, though, as we see just who the new Prime Minister will embrace as members of his new cabinet and how he threads his way through this toxic thicket that is French politics today.

So, stand by.