2022-04-22 06:19:51
Sebastian Budgen - Shrewd Tortoise
It only lasted about an hour, but it was an exhilarating, fluttery, serotinous hour, when anything seemed possible, including an inebriating reversal of fortune that would leave all the overconfident pollsterati, sequacious, subrident and shiny journalists, jabbering, sententiary commentators and imperious editorialists with a thick, yellow slime oozing down their faces. It was 11:00pm; all the candidates had given their speeches, representatives of all the main parties had sidestepped their defeats or humble-bragged about their successes and laid down their markers for the second round of the election, and the France 2 special electoral programme was beginning to wind down, the presenters clearly keen to head back to their loft apartments. The scenario that had been prepared for months a head-to-head between the forces of light and darkness was in place and seemingly locked down. And, yet, gradually, mild panic began to afflict their faces, as fissures emerged in the edifice: the projected vote share of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, candidate of Union Populaire (the new electoral avatar of La France Insoumise) was rising again! As it edged forward, like an old nag that, instead of collapsing in exhaustion, picked up a leisurely trot in the last few metres before the finishing line, the vote seemed within touching distance – 0.88% at one heart-stopping point of overtaking the squamose Marine Le Pen. And the definitive results from the big cities such as Paris and Marseilles were still not in yet! Crowds of UP militants, especially the smoking, singing, adjuring youth, refused to abandon their stations outside the Cirque d’Hiver, where the radical left candidate had pitched his camp that night, as if, by continuing to occupy the space, they were protecting the flickering flame from being extinguished.
https://newleftreview.org/sidecar/posts/shrewd-tortoise
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