Tag Archives: horn of africa

To lose one prime minister is considered careless. To lose two is incompetence. Three is starting to look like a crisis of leadership. Five in two years is beyond comprehension.

Such is the sad tale of French president Emmanuel Macron as Sebastien Lecornu leaves the Hotel Matignon even before he has a chance to deliver his inaugural address to the National Assembly.

The root of Macron’s evils is, of course, money. But it is further complicated by the thirst for power by France’s far left and far right and the president’s inability to communicate the necessity of living within one’s means.

France desperately needs a budget which reduces its burgeoning debt burden. The country is Europe’s biggest spender relative to its economic output. Its debt burden is just behind the financial disasters that are Greece and Italy. The markets are so concerned about instability that they are increasing the interest which only pushes the debt burden higher.

Raising taxes to make ends meet appears to be out of the question as the tax burden at 45.6 percent of GDP is the highest in Europe.

A step towards balanced books was made in 2023 when Macron pushed through the National Assembly a gradual seven year rise in the pension age from 62 to 64. This, however, looks like it might have to be at least partially sacrificed in order to push through a total budget package by the end of the year deadline.

Meanwhile, Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally and a coalition of left-wing parties are refusing to allow ANY budget to pass. They smell the opportunity of forcing a snap election which could result in their winning more seats and possibly forcing Macron out of the Elysee Palace before the next scheduled presidential elections in 2027.

Macron is equally determined to avoid an election. The result of the snap election he called in 2024 was a disaster for the president’s Renaissance Party. The result is that Macron has become toxic within his own party.

His approval ratings are a dismal 14 percent and two of his previous prime ministers—Edouard Phippe and Gabriel Attal—have distanced themselves from their supposed leader.

Germany’s far-right AfD party has a dilemma. It is pro-Russian. It is also anti-Ukraine and anti the war in Ukraine.

At the same time it is pro-jobs because the eastern third of the country (the former East Germany) is starved of industry. That is why it has become a political stronghold for the populist party. Desperate people turn to desperate politics.

The centre-right government of Friedrich Merz has an answer: base a large portion of the new defense industries needed to provision the Ukrainians in the AfD strongholds in the East.

One is already being established in the town of Gorlitz in Saxony on the German-Polish border. The former Alsom plan manufactured railway carriages for 178 years. But over the past ten years it has been sliding into bankruptcy and threatening to further inflate the town’s 9.8 percent unemployment level.

A major proportion of the workforce at the railway manufacturers was skilled welders. Welding is a well-paid trade and welders are needed to make tanks. The result is that the former railway carriages factory is being converted into a tank production centre and jobs are being saved.

Other defense plants are being considered elsewhere in the East in Grobenhain, Thuringia and Brandenburg.

AfD politicians are reluctantly supporting the job creations while at the same time deploring the end product of the jobs created. They must also be concerned that satisfied workers will be less inclined to support extremist political solutions.

China’s Xi Jinping is preparing for his meeting with Donald Trump later this month by tightening export controls on rare earth mineral exports.