French farce is back with a bang as Paris descends into comic election mayhem

On Wednesday, seeking an electoral pact with the hard right and fearful of being marginalised or sacked, Ciotti (small, bald, looks a bit like Phil Collins without the sexual charisma – big Roderick Spode vibes), well, the bold Éric locked himself inside the party HQ of Les Républicains and wouldn’t let anyone in. Yes, seriously. Party workers had to call around looking for someone with spare keys. And it was all deliciously filmed by delighted TV crews. By Thursday, he ended up getting sacked anyway.

That is, until Friday, when there was a court hearing about the dismissal where Ciotti’s lawyer argued, among other things, that he should be allowed the freedom of the offices because he was only 5ft 2in and didn’t want to get thumped. I’m not making this up. End result? His sacking was cancelled and he was party leader again.

Okay, that actually IS pretty funny. This article is doing a good job emphasizing how comically ridiculous some of this is, this sounds like prime entertainment. Also glad it sounds like the left parties are uniting pretty well, hopefully the election goes well.

Speaking of the left side, a French user on my Discord server reported opening up Twitter to see kpop fans and artists "babygirlifying (by their own terms) the leftists parties union" with kpop edits showing up on the news? And that it's actually helping because people were asking about the union's platforms and such on Instagram and Tiktok. I was wondering if this article might be about that.

French politics just sounds wild for all sides now.