Le Pen’s hard right looks set to dominate the French parliament
The French are heading to the polls, and into the dark. For the first time in the country’s post-war history, a final parliamentary vote on July 7th could still enable the hard right to enter government. But after tactical party arrangements following first-round voting on June 30th, its chances of securing a majority by itself have receded. Voters may instead give no political bloc control. Far from settling France’s political divisions, Emmanuel Macron’s surprise decision to call a snap election looks likely to usher in a period of deadlock, apprehension and instability.
One of the few certainties about this vote is that it is shaping up to be a disaster for Mr Macron’s centrist project. When he was first elected president in 2017 at the age of 39, on a wave of pro-European optimism, youthful energy and political renewal, Mr Macron vowed to “do everything” to ensure there was “no longer any reason to vote for the extremes”. Now, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) and friends are on course to become the biggest parliamentary bloc. After coming top in 297 out of 577 constituencies in first-round voting, the RN could triple its seats from 88. It may even come close to securing the 289 needed for a majority. Today, Mr Macron represents incumbency; youth is embodied by Jordan Bardella, Ms Le Pen’s 28-year-old candidate for prime minister.
The drift away from the centre is matched on the left. The New Popular Front (NFP), a four-party alliance made up of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unsubmissive France, Socialists, Greens and Communists, looks set to form the second-biggest bloc. An unholy alliance that reaches from anti-capitalists and Trotskyists on the left to moderate Socialists and Greens, it came top in 159 constituencies in first-round voting. With a promise to raise the minimum wage by 14%, restore the wealth tax and back the recognition of an independent Palestinian state, it got the youth vote, and did well in a broad belt around eastern Paris and its multicultural banlieues (suburbs).
Mr Macron’s centrist alliance, Ensemble, is bracing for calamity. It could lose around half of its 250 seats, having topped voting in just 70 constituencies. These were concentrated in the west of Paris and its smarter suburbs, as well as in western parts and Brittany. France, no stranger to revolution, seems now to be gripped by a form of regicide. Despite a strong record on job creation and business success, among other things, Mr Macron remains a remote figure, blamed for all ills. Voters glimpse a chance to punish him, and are seizing it. Young people, in particular, have deserted centrism en masse. Just 9% of 18- to 24-year-olds voted for Ensemble in the first round, next to 48% for the left-wing New Popular Front and 33% for the RN.
How did it come to this? The small town of Beaucaire, on the river Rhône inland from the Mediterranean, hints at an answer. Its medieval fort, fringed by pine trees, overlooks terracotta-tiled roofs and the cylinders of a sprawling cement factory. By the canal, a smart new hotel is due on part of the site of a bottling plant. Pots of bright petunias line one narrow street; on others, shops are boarded up. The poverty rate is twice the national average. The town hall, decked with three French tricolore flags and not one from the European Union, has for the past ten years been run by the RN, under its mayor, Julien Sanchez.
“He’s popular here,” says Bilal, a bus driver, who adds that the town is not crime-ridden like nearby big cities. A young assistant at a halal butcher credits the mayor with the bright street flowers. He thinks that the RN is doing well “because of Bardella” and his TikTok videos. A Franco-Malian says that he does not experience racism in the town, but would not like “to be Arab”. He likes the fact that the town hall organised “traditional” festivals, including a recent one featuring provençal dancers in lace shawls.
Mr Sanchez puts his longevity down to the “politics of proximity”. He is often on the streets “listening to people”, he says, “whatever their origins”. The mayor has smartened up the town’s little railway stop, and secured more frequent trains. There are afternoon dances for pensioners, and festivals in the summer for locals. Mr Sanchez mixes this with unapologetic identity politics. The mayor tried to stop schools serving an alternative to pork in the canteen, and at Christmas installs a nativity scene in the secular town hall. “French voters are angry because they feel that they are not taken into account and that their problems are not acknowledged,” says Mr Sanchez. Today, he argues, people vote for the RN “because they know we understand their problems.”
Across the surrounding département of Gard, the RN topped first-round voting, as it did along most of the south coast. The normalisation of Ms Le Pen’s party is patchy. It dropped a candidate this week after a photo emerged of her wearing a Nazi cap. But its town halls have given it some credibility. And its mix of identity politics and populist economics—a new wealth tax, early retirement, and lower VAT on energy bills—has broadened its base.
After 132 NFP qualifying candidates and 82 from Ensemble stood down in different constituencies between voting rounds, in order not to split the anti-RN vote, Ms Le Pen’s chances of securing a majority have narrowed. Even without one, though, Mr Macron will be politically obliged to invite the biggest bloc to try to form a government, says a presidential adviser. Ms Le Pen this week suggested that, if the party falls short of seats, she may still be able to lure away a few more from the right to make up the numbers.
Even if the RN’s efforts fail, France remains in uncharted territory. There is talk on the moderate left and centre about the idea of a “plural government” or “parliamentary coalition”. This would not be a formal coalition between the NFP and Ensemble; the two blocs hate each other, and centrists could not work with Mr Mélenchon’s crew. But if, as is possible, the NFP falls apart, some politicians hope to pull together a force that reaches from the Socialists and Greens on the left to the centre-right rump Republicans. Yaël Braun-Pivet, the centrist outgoing president of the lower house, says the initiative has to come from parliament. “We’ve got to get away from the framework of the NFP,” argues Carole Delga, Socialist president of the Occitanie region. “The party machines are no longer what the French want.”
The trouble is that the numbers will not add up without a big chunk of the hard left, and the politics would be complex in a country with a weak culture of political compromise. Voters who hope to see the Paris elite booted out may simply regard such a coalition as a betrayal. France is heading, it seems, at full speed and in apprehension, into the unknown. ■
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