Polemic is a discourse of conflict, whose effect depends on a delicate balance between the requirements of truth and the enticements of anger, the duty to argue and the zest to inflame. Its rhetoric allows, even enforces, a certain figurative licence. Like epitaphs in Johnson’s adage, it is not under oath.

Perry Anderson

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v15/n20/perry-anderson/diary

Headline: Castaner confirmed as director of Macron’s party

Sub-headline: Unopposed appointment of government spokesman sparks resignations

Have the Jupertarian Politics of Macron reached another denouement in the French Neo-Liberal Melodrama? Is Macron’s insufferable arrogance, or should it be called dictatorial politics, a predictor of the future of La République en Marche? That old political saw of keeping your enemies closer, has transmogrified into alienating your own party members?

About 100 members of the fledgling centrist party have quit the movement in protest at Mr Castaner’s appointment.

Where will these 100 members find a new political home? Another tantalizing  question occurs, will they be the last?

Its been some time since the Financial Times  reported on their Neo-Liberal Champion, or have I missed something? Both Macri and Macron- are they the last gasp of the collapsed Neo-Liberal Project? Even @BretStephensNYT ,  one of the New York Times’ coven of Neo-Conservatives, celebrated the death of French Socialism, as one of the  pivotal moments in the history of the Free Market Swindle, when Macron was elected. Was Mr. Stephens expressing a premature triumphalism?

In the political world occupied by the Financial Times and its ‘reporters’ the spoiled ballots, abstentions etc., from the preliminary vote to final election, not to speak of the subsequent street demonstrations,  irrelevant to the praise it heaps on their Golden Boy? Who will deliver the French Nation into the Neo-Liberal fold! Not quite the ‘Speed and Shock’ of Thatcherite François Fillon?

Old Socialist

https://www.ft.com/content/ac7d4e26-cc5b-11e7-9dbb-291a884dd8c6