France's Macron names Republican Philippe as PM

[Mr. Sparkle]

Source: BBC

President Emmanuel Macron has chosen centre-right mayor Edouard Philippe as France's new prime minister.

Mr Philippe, 46, is not from the president's new centrist party but from the centre-right Republicans. The choice is seen as an attempt to draw in key figures from both the right and left of French politics.

The announcement forms part of a busy first day for the president - he travels to Germany shortly to meet Chancellor Angela Merkel. The naming of a new prime minister, Mr Macron's first big appointment, came after hours of fevered speculation in France. Already tipped as favourite for the job, Edouard Philippe, mayor of the northern port city of Le Havre, has long been close to Alain Juppé, who was runner-up in the race for the Republican presidential nomination in November 2016.

Read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/39923510

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. More from The Guardian:

As a student, Philippe was briefly an activist for the social-democrat line within the French Socialist party before leaving the party to join the right. He has been a member of parliament for Normandy, where he abstained during the vote to legalise same-sex marriage in France in 2013. He has never held a government post.

Philippe comes from the same university background as Macron – he studied at Paris’s prestigious political science institute Sciences Po, then attended the exclusive Ecole Nationale de l’Administration, the civil service graduate school seen as production line for the French elite. The son of two teachers, he spent part of his childhood in Bonn in Germany where his father was for a time headteacher of the French lycée.
...
Without a majority, Macron would struggle to push through his planned changes to labour laws, pensions, education and the system of unemployment benefits.

The choice of a mayor from the right means some figures from the Les Républicains may now jump ship and stand for the parliamentary election under Macron’s banner. This would worsen the divisions inside the fractured French right.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/15/emmanuel-macron-names-edouard-philippe-as-french-prime-minister

[Txbluedog]

2. A good centrist needs to make inroads to both the left and the right....

I say this is a very good start.

[LenaBaby61]

3. "A good centrist needs to make inroads to both the left and the right...."

This move may be right for Emmanuel Macron, but Pres. Obama made one of the worst mistakes of his presidency I feel by hiring James Comey, a rethug, to fill the FBI post for his administration. When Pres. Obama did that, I got one of the worst feelings a person could ever get when he appointed Comey, I truly did, and we see what happened as a result of going outside of the party to fill a KEY cabinet piston with a thuglican. tRumputin's going to fill his illegally gained FBI position with one of the worst pieces of filth loyal to him that he can find of course, because he CAN.

Finally, IF a Dem ever takes over the White House again, they SHOULD appoint a fellow Dem over key positions of HIS or HER cabinet. I still admire Pres. Obama, and we as Dems know that he's a decent and fair man who got so many raw deals from thuglicans as POTUS his whole term. But all that continued reaching across the isle for 8 years to thuglicans got him was his hand whacked off at the wrist by the likes of slime ball Mitch McConnell IE: Stalling for 1 year and laughing about not even giving a straight up or down vote to a Supreme Court appointee in Merrick Garland to Pres. Obama. thuglicans stole[ that seat , and to think that tRumputin put Gorsucks up there as young as he is, and whatever thuglican replaces him as POTUS if he gets impeached could possibly get 2 and maybe even 3 picks (Kennedy's rumored to be stepping down as early as this Summer and Ruth Bader Ginsberg's 84 years old) to make that Supreme Court over in the complete likeness of that racist/sexist Jabba the Hut Scalia for generations to come is frightening.