Should the regular reader of this newspaper be surprised at this paragraph in this ‘news story’ about Le Pen?

Headline: Marine Le Pen purrs as President Macron’s attack dog scampers round to the right

…

It is Macron himself who is likely to be squaring off against the leader of the National Rally in April 2022 in a rerun of the duel he won so decisively in 2017. Yet it was Darmanin, 38 — whose views on immigration and religious separatism are not far from Le Pen’s own — who was chosen as the attack dog to take on the cat lover.

…

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/marine-le-pen-purrs-as-president-macrons-attack-dog-scampers-round-to-the-right-9p6fnpgcq

This CNN report on the 2017 French election, has escaped the attention of the Times’ reporter, in Paris, Peter Conradi? That details the election results of 2017.

Headline: A record number of French voters cast their ballots for nobody

Emmanuel Macron’s triumph over Marine Le Pen in the French presidential election has been hailed as a landslide victory for the centrist candidate and a widespread rejection of his rival’s far-right platform.

But Macron’s mandate may not be as overwhelming as it seems. A record number of French voters were so dismayed by their options that they either skipped the election or cast their ballots for no one at all.

The so-called “ballot blanc,” or white ballot, has a long history as a protest vote in France, going all the way back to the French Revolution. This time around, nearly 9% of voters cast blank or spoiled ballots – the highest ever since the Fifth Republic was founded in 1958.

For now, the votes, which are counted towards the turnout, are largely symbolic. But there is a movement underway for the blank ballots to count as a share of the overall election vote. According to a recent Ifop poll, 40% of French voters said they would cast a blank vote if it were recognized under French law.

…

https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/08/europe/french-voters-spoiled-ballots-abstained/index.html

The statistics from 2017:

Macron: 20,257,167

Le Pen: 10,584,454

Abstentions: 11,416,454

White or Spoiled ballots: 4,054,395

More Abstentions that those who cast Le Pen. 832, 000

The total of Abstentions and White or Spoiled Ballots: 15, 461,849

Abstentions and White & Spoiled ballots out number the votes cast for Le Pen by 4,877,440

These statistics demonstrate that Macron’s ‘victory’ was about an electorate deeply divided: 26,046,307 ‘voted against Macron’ , to put it more self-serving terms. The Times just follows the Corporate Party Line on Macron.His ‘Jupertarian Politics’ has been abandoned, in favor of hard-line and unapologetic Neo-Liberalism. In sum he has become Francois Fillon. To see what is actually going on in France, all the reader need do is go to twitter and enter the words ‘gilets jaunes’ !

Old Socialist