Going into the second round of the elections for the French National Assembly, the right wing National Rally (RN) party led by Marine Le Pen was anticipating coming in first and even gaining an absolute majority of at least 289 seats in the 577-seat body. This was based on their showing in the first round last week when they obtained the most votes and won 38 seats of the 78 that were won outright.

The second round was for the remaining 499 seats in which no candidate obtained the required 50%. But there was a hastily cobbled together agreement between the left wing coalition of the New Popular Front (NFP), consisting of the France Unbowed (LFI) party, the Greens and the Socialists, and the center-right Ensemble coalition led by president Emmanuel Macron, where one of their candidates agree to drop out in three- or more-way races in order to not split the anti-NR vote. That strategy seems to have worked. The final results have the NR and its allies pushed into third place with just 143 seats while the NFP came out on top with 182 and Ensemble came second with 163. Other parties got 89.

There will have to be some kind of coalition to get to 289 seats but Macron is in a bind. While there was a pre-election alliance between the NFP and Ensemble, forming a coalition between two coalitions is going to be hard because despite uniting against the NR, the two coalitions have little in common and outgoing prime minister Gabriel Attal, who is a member of Macron’s coalition, has already said that he will not serve under the premiership of Jean-Luc Melenchon, the head of LFI, the largest party in the NPF.
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As predicted in the polling, the Labour Party won a sweeping victory in the general elections. They got 412 seats, a gain of 211 from its previous 201 in the 650-member parliament. Conservatives got just 121, dropping by a whopping 251 seats from its previous 372, even worse than exit polls had predicted. The Liberal Democrats, who after they joined the Conservatives in David Cameron’s government in 2010 as a junior partner, got hammered in 2015 (going from 56 seats to just 8) also had a good day, winning 71 seats, a gain of 63. The Scottish National Party lost badly, getting just 9 seats, down by 39. I am not sure what that implies for the Scottish independence movement. Sinn Fein won seven seats in Northern Ireland, making them the largest party there. The implications for leaving the UK and uniting with Ireland are not clear.

In this clip, made just before the election, Jonathan Pie provides a brutal analysis of how bad the 14 years of Conservative rule have been.

Many of the front-bench Conservatives and cabinet members, including the ministers of defense, veterans, justice, education, culture, transport, and chief whip have lost. Leader of the Commons Penny Mordaunt, seen as a potential replacement to Sunak as party leader, has also lost her seat. Sadly, the awful Suella Braverman, Priti Patel, and Kemi Badenoch were not swept away by the tide and have retained their seats. Mordaunt’s departure have improved their chances of becoming party leader. The infamous Liz Truss did lose her seat, one that had been considered quite safe since she last won it by a huge majority and it had been held by conservatives since 1964, ruling out any fantasy that she might have had about making a comeback as party leader.

Turnout is one of the lowest in post-war history, suggesting that there was not that much excitement about the race. Labour really did not offer an inspiring platform and indeed implied that they would not make any major changes.. Their main message was that the Conservatives should be thrown out and although voters seemed willing to oblige, it was hardly an inspiring message. Even in his victory speech, Keir Starmer promised ‘stability and moderation’, hardly the stuff that fires up supporters.
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The first round of elections for all 577 seats in the French National Assembly have been held and, as expected, the National Rally party led by Marine Le Pen captured the most votes nationally with 33% of the vote. In second place with 28% was the New Popular Front, an alliance of center-left Socialists, greens and far-left parties. President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance placed third with 21%.

In the French system, a candidate who gets more than 50% of the vote in the first round gets elected to the seat. Failing that, anyone who gets the support of 12.5% of registered voters in the first round qualifies for the second. Hence the second round can have two, three, or possibly even four candidates competing in an electorate compete.

In the first round, 78 seats were won outright, including 38 by the National Rally, leaving 499 to be decided in the second round.

So now there is serious negotiating among the second, third, and fourth place finishers to drop out so as to give the remaining candidate a better chance of defeating the NR candidate. The deadline for dropping out was 6:00pm (Paris time) today.
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The general election in the UK to be held on July 4th has been sidetracked by the election betting brouhaha that has revealed how widespread betting is in that country, as more and more members of parliament are found to have bet on the date of the election. At a time when he should be putting out the final message to voters as to why the Conservatives deserve to continue to govern, the prime minister Rishi Sunak has had to bat down allegations that people close to him have taken advantage of that proximity to place wagers on inside information about the date of the election.

Apart from the question of whether any of them had such information, news reports have also discussed how honors (colloquially referred to as ‘gongs’) seem to be handed out. The UK has an intricate set of honors that are awarded to individuals, ranging from knighthoods to lesser ones like the OBE, MBE, and CBE, and who knows what else (where the labels show their imperial history), as well as peerages of various kinds.

A knighthood is an honour awarded by the British monarch for exceptional national service.
The female equivalent, a damehood, holds the same official title: Grand Cross of the British Empire (GBE).

Among the levels of Honours, there are also CBE, or Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, OBE, or Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire, and MBE, or Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.

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The debate played out pretty much as I expected.

Joe Biden tried to give wonky answers to policy questions while serial sex abuser and convicted felon Donald Trump (SSACFT) lied and lied repeatedly and avoided answering questions, pivoting almost immediately to complaining about the borders, and how everything was great when he was president and has gone to hell under Biden. It was basically the stuff that he says at his rallies.

His shtick was to largely claim that the US is weak and despised around the world because Biden has allowed open borders that allow millions of criminals and insane people into the country who are murdering people. He kept saying that over and over again. The moderators did not do any fact checking at all. The only thing they did was to repeat the question when SSACFT did not answer but then SSACFT would largely ignore it again.

While Biden tried to combat this with data, his presentation was not forceful enough.

On the optics, Biden seemed hesitant and soft-spoken and stumbled occasionally, while SSACFT portrayed confidence even as he flat-out lied. And in the US, since optics tends to win over substance, Biden would not have inspired his supporters with confidence.