Readings 2027 · Campaign books, read from the abstainer's side

Sarah Knafo's Le Casse du siècle: what the book says, and what it doesn't say to the 13 million

A member of the European Parliament publishes a programme-book seven months before the French presidential election. This site has no candidate and gives no instruction: it documents reasons for not voting. So this is a reading note, not a review — the thesis, the figures with their sources, the measures made public, and the one question that belongs to this site: what does this book say to someone who has decided not to vote?

Written on 2 September 2026, publication day, from the author's interview in the JDD (30 August), the publisher's presentation and the public index of the book's 109 “proofs”. The full text has not yet been read; this note will be completed, and any contested figure corrected or removed, under the charter. Report an error: [email protected].

The book

The thesis in one page

The back cover sets the tone: “They stole everything from you. They destroyed everything. And they hold the whole system. They pulled off the heist of the century.” The “heist” is not a conspiracy — the author says so — but “forty years of renunciations” that “produced exactly the result of an organised heist, without any judge ever having anyone to judge”.

The crime scene is a payslip. The book follows “Nicolas”, a median earner: €2,079 net a month, €3,922 paid by his employer. “Between the two, half has disappeared.” Over a full career the book puts what he hands to the administration at more than a million euros, before VAT and local taxes.

The case is about spending, not revenue: France would be spending “€234 billion more than in 2020”, the year of “whatever it costs”, with no pandemic. The “usual suspects” — billionaires, pensioners, Europe, immigration, globalisation — take the stand; the author says she clears several. The culprits named are “bureaucracy, ideology, waste”, costed item by item. The method fits in one repeated sentence, “spend less to tax less”, and one calendar: a referendum “within the first six months”, and 70 senior officials appointed “at the first cabinet meeting, with a costed mission letter”.

The measures made public

The book announces fifteen resolutions. Only those described in published extracts and interviews as of 2 September are listed here.

• Abolish the CSG on earned income — presented as “10% more net pay for everyone in work, without a cent of extra labour cost”, “nearly €250 a month for Nicolas”. The financing is said to be in the book; it is not in the published extracts.
• Abolish inheritance tax — a moral argument (“nothing nobler than wanting to get rich to pass it on”) and a historical one (created in 1791, top marginal rate “up to 45%” today, “brought back to 15% in 1959”). Framed as “the middle-class tax, levied on the family home”.
• Reduce public headcount — from the claim of “4.6 million public agents in 1997, 5.9 million today” against a population up 15%. Field professions are said to be spared. We have not verified the exact reduction figure and timetable in the text, so they are not given here.
• €130 billion of savings a year, “line by line” — the central promise: a published, sourced table rather than “an audit once elected”. Checking it is the work that remains, and this note will link to such checks as they appear.
• A referendum within six months, 70 appointments at the first cabinet meeting — method rather than measure. Note for what follows: the book therefore asks the reader to vote twice.

The figures, and where they come from

The book claims a footnote for every statement and publishes an online index of 109 “proofs”. That is more than most campaign books, and it deserves saying. It also deserves close reading: not all sources are equal.

• Over a million euros per career — the author's own calculation on a model payslip, monthly deductions frozen over 42 years and 9 months. She calls it “conservative”. To check: the share that comes back to the employee as pension and healthcare, which the verb “hands over” does not distinguish.
• €234 billion more than 2020 — a nominal comparison. To check: the part played by 2021–2024 inflation, and the perimeter (central State or all public administrations).
• 4.6 → 5.9 million public agents — source given: Fipeco, a site run by a former Court of Auditors magistrate from public data. To check: perimeter (all three civil services, contract staff included) and the split between hospital, local and State.
• “The Treasury cannot say how many taxes France has” — source given: a ministerial answer to the Senate, 15 October 2015. Official and accurately quoted. The accompanying count of 438 levies, however, comes from the Ifrap foundation, a liberal think tank that itself calls it “probably a low estimate”. It is not an official count; there is none.
• 465 tax breaks, about €85 billion a year — source given: the “Voies et moyens” annex, volume II, to the 2026 finance bill. Official.
• Inheritance tax “up to 45%”, “the middle-class tax” — sources given: DGFiP 2024 and the Court of Auditors' September 2024 report. The same report, as summarised on the proofs page, also finds that “the advantage from derogatory schemes grows with the size of the estate”. Both readings rest on one document. Read the document.
• Sources that are not sources — the index also cites “Parents vigilants, an initiative launched by Reconquête”, and press op-eds. Those are positions, not measurements. A reader who “leaves as a judge” should know which exhibits are findings and which are pleadings.

This site cannot redo these calculations today. It applies its rule: a figure comes with its source or is not given. The figures above are the book's, attributed as such.

Where is abstention in this book?

Nowhere, in what has been published. The word appears neither in the publisher's presentation, nor in the JDD interview, nor in the titles of the 109 proofs. The book's “you” is a taxpayer — never a registered voter who stays home.

That is not a reproach: almost no campaign book speaks to abstainers, which is exactly the hole this site documents. But it is a useful fact. In 2022, 12.8 million registered voters did not vote in the first round, more than any candidate received. A book promising “the largest collective rise in purchasing power of the Fifth Republic” without a line for them is making a bet: that the offer is enough, and that silence is indifference. Set against the reasons declared here:

• “Voting changes nothing” — the reason the book answers most directly, without naming it. A €130 billion table “line by line” is a checkable claim. For once, someone who thinks nothing changes has a precise document to test rather than a slogan.
• “No candidate represents me” — the book does not say who will carry it. Until there is a name on a ballot, it changes nothing for this reason.
• “I no longer trust them” — here the book makes a rare move: it publishes its sources and invites checking. The move is worth what the sources are worth; hence the section above. Trust is not decreed by an index; it is earned when the checks hold.
• “I withdraw my consent from the system” — the book leaves the rules untouched: same electoral method, same Constitution, one referendum added. It proposes to change what the State does, not how it is chosen. To those who refuse the system itself, it does not answer — it asks them to vote, then vote again.

Two honest readings, side by side

What this site keeps is the question left open between the two: is a programme, even a costed one, an answer to those who no longer vote, or only to those who still do? The book does not ask it. The declarations collected here answer it every day, one reason at a time.

Sources

Declare my reason

You vote, and this book convinced you — or the opposite? This site does not need to know. It needs the reasons of those who don't vote to be as documented as this programme is. The objections, taken seriously →