France's Seismic Shift: Unpredictable Alliances Reshape the Political Landscape

Monday 08 July 2024 - 09:12

Nobody expected this. High drama was anticipated, but the shock that unfolded defied all predictions. When the graphics flashed across the major French channels, it was not the far-right of Marine Le Pen and her young prime minister-in-waiting, Jordan Bardella, who were on course for victory. Instead, it was the left that had clinched it, and Emmanuel Macron's centrists had staged an unexpected comeback, pushing the far-right National Rally (RN) into third place.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the veteran left-wing firebrand seen by his critics as an extremist, wasted no time in proclaiming victory. "The president must call on the New Popular Front to govern," he told supporters in Stalingrad square, insisting that Mr. Macron had to recognize that he and his coalition had lost.

Mélenchon's alliance, drawn up in a hurry for President Macron's surprise election, includes his own radical France Unbowed, along with Greens, Socialists, Communists, and even Trotskyists. However, their victory is nowhere near big enough to govern alone.

France is going to have a hung parliament. None of the three blocs can form an outright majority by themselves of 289 seats in the 577-seat parliament.

As soon as he had spoken, Mélenchon went off to a much bigger square, Place de la République, to celebrate his success with a crowd of 8,000 people, according to police numbers.

For the National Rally's supporters, the champagne was fast turning flat at their celebration gone wrong in the Bois de Vincennes forest to the southwest of Paris. Only a week ago, all the talk had been of a possible absolute majority, and Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella were still talking up their chances a couple of days before the vote.

Marine Le Pen put a brave face on it. "Two years ago, we had just seven MPs. Tonight RN is the first party in France in terms of MP numbers." In the last parliament, they had 88 MPs, and now more than 140, so she was right. And no other party has more than 100 MPs because the Macronists and the Popular Front are both coalitions.

Jordan Bardella complained that his party had been foiled by unnatural "alliances of dishonor" forged by a "single party" made up of the Macron camp and the left. He wasn't wrong about the unnatural alliance, but it is only a temporary one of convenience.

More than 200 candidates who saw themselves as part of a "republican front" pulled out of the second round so that a better-placed rival could stop the RN from winning.

Not even Marine Le Pen's younger sister, Marie-Caroline, was able to offer a glimmer of good news from her own election battle around Le Mans. Her bid to get into parliament failed by just 225 votes, defeated by Mélenchon's candidate, Elise Leboucher, after the Macron candidate dropped out.

Turnout, at 66.63%, was the highest in a parliamentary second round since 1997. Even if the RN's vote held up, this time it was having to contend with non-RN votes often being used tactically to create a "barrage" or block against them. All over France, the RN was losing run-offs it needed to win.

Some of their candidates were less than appealing. There was the woman who promised to stop making racist jokes if she was elected in Puy-de-Dôme, and then there was the ill-equipped young man in Haute-Savoie in the southeast who took part in a TV debate with his centrist rival and made barely any sense on anything. They both lost, but they reflected the RN's big advance in rural areas.

The RN scored 32% of the vote – 37% with their right-wing allies – and for more than 10 million voters, a taboo has been broken. In Meaux, east of Paris, the RN won but not by much. After casting her vote, Claudine said people she knew tended not to admit to voting for the RN unless they were with close friends.

Before the projected result at 8 pm, there was fevered speculation about whether President Macron would come out and speak. Word spread that he had gone into a meeting 90 minutes earlier. Gabriel Attal, his beleaguered prime minister, eventually appeared to give the government's response.

Four weeks ago, he had sat stony-faced and arms folded opposite the president as Macron revealed his election plan. Now he announced he would be handing his boss his resignation in the morning, but he would stay on as long as duty called. Attal is supposed to fly off on Tuesday evening to a NATO meeting in Washington. It's hard to imagine him being replaced just yet.

France has entered a period of political instability with no obvious way out. There had been talk of unrest on the streets, but only a handful of incidents were reported in Paris and cities including Nantes and Lyon.

All eyes are now on the president, who will have to navigate a way out of this deadlock. The new National Assembly is due to convene in 10 days, but the Paris Olympics start on July 26th, and France could do with a period of calm.

The left-leaning newspaper Libération summed up the whole night with the headline "C'est Ouf" – "It's crazy" in colloquial French, but for them, it's also a relief that voters brought the RN's bid for power to a halt.

In an extraordinary turn of events, France finds itself in uncharted waters, with unexpected alliances reshaping the political landscape. As the dust settles on this seismic shift, the nation holds its breath, awaiting the president's next move to navigate this unprecedented deadlock.