When politics is a mess the French will do their best to put ‘mess’ into perspective. Yesterday’s Lower House General Election has created a kind of chaos that is both unique to France and the inevitable last hurrah of the establishment status quo, killing itself in order to prevent its biggest fears from becoming reality. France is now going to be in the grip of something that it considers the lesser of two evils, and yet as we will show, this will only strengthen the cause of what it fears; the triumph of the right.
For clarity; the term ‘far-right’ just doesn’t mean anything. Similarly, the ‘radical left’ also has no meaning. The National Rally will be noted as a ‘nation-state’ party (due to its rightist policies on culture and leftist policies on the economy) and the ‘France Unbound’ Party will be noted as the ‘extreme left’ (for its extreme social, economic and cultural policies all located on the left).
French politics is synonymous with contradictions. It’s system is bi-sovereign (equal sovereignty of the President and the Prime Minister) as it shares similarities with both the American and British system. It’s electoral system is designed to both provide and eliminate plurality with its first and second round system and its politics is pretty contradictory in its arguments (no matter how much things change they always stay the same). It is on to its 5th Republic and even that looks set to end with the era of the current centrist dogma on the wane with the eventual fall of Emmanuel Macron. To understand French politics is really to understand factionalism, the bi-partisan nature of French politics and the disconnect between Paris and the rest of France, North versus South, East versus west, urban versus rural. All factions are powerful.
In France protests, especially violent protests, are normal. The rejection of something or another leads to the most almighty protests. It means that the French Gendarme (armed police) are far more militant and aggressive than even the American militarised police. They will take down protests with extreme prejudice. This has not stopped the French from protesting at all. The police cannot police every street corner and this has meant that France has seen the rise of co-habitation of communities that are vastly different from each other. If you have ever been to Los Angeles you will know what we mean; completely different communities living side-by-side, and the crime rates are nuts. There are literal no-go areas in many cities in France as segregated communities (self-segregated) are etched out in terms of borders and fronts. France is a deeply fractured country.
This, in the main, is where the origin of the National Rally comes from. Born as the National Front, it has been seen as having too many roots in the collaboration-ists of the Second World War. It’s ideological father, John-Marie Le Pen, was in so many ways an extreme-right politician, immensely unpopular with France and even his own daughter, Marine Le Pen. With roots in Fascism, its place in French politics was always on the fringes, but it was always alive because of the albeit minority rejection of the rise of America-backed Globalism to the extreme (the rejection of American capital) from 1945 onwards. Anti-American sentiment was actually rife in France and this led France to temporarily leave NATO in the 1970s. This did not validate the National Front but it did show that French skepticism of those outside of the borders of France was more mainstream than in most other countries.
Fast forward to today and the arguments against Globalisation in France have more than intensified. No-go-zones in cities because of the dangers growing due to mass immigration have forced French citizens to think differently about the supposed benefits of Globalisation. At the heart of a Globalist project that is the European Union, France was supposed to be the main beneficiary of the growth of the free movement of goods, capital and people, so much so that the EU put this into law at the behest of France and the French ideological father of the EU (John Monet), especially at the expense of democracy and domestic concerns. The French economy, devalued this year due to the staggering sovereign debt and inability to reform French economic policy (especially on the much-contested retirement age). The Globalist lurch to Net Zero has always been a massive put-off for France’s militant farmers, making up a huge percentage of the French population (French agriculture is a huge percentage of the French economy), as well as those actively questioning the cost of ‘saving the planet’. The National Rally, renamed after the negative association with the National Front name needed to be remove, suddenly found a larger and larger pool of potential voters wishing to push back against external influence, something that has been ever-present in French politics as already described here.
Perhaps most striking of all is France’s struggle with radical Islam. In the last year over 30 serious terrorist incidents was thwarted by the French interior services, but it has a strong memory of massacres at the hands of radical Islamists from the Bataclan massacre to Charlie Hebdo. France has had to deal with Islamic terror as a normality which we just don’t see in the media. France has a real problem with this and the more incidents occur the more people ask the question of what the role of Islam is within French society. France seems to be, in a large cross-section of the population, sympathetic to the anti-Islam rhetoric of Dutch firebrand Gert Wilders (whose Freedom Party won the Dutch elections over 6 months ago). Similar sentiment is by no means universal but only one party realistically captures these voters (Eric Zemmour’s ‘Reconquest’ party (to the right of the National Rally) is too small to be an electoral relevance at the moment).
The National Rally used to be irrelevant in French central politics. It had 8 seats in the French assembly just 20 years ago. It then rose to 81, and now it has something like 170 seats in the lower Assembly. In 2007 it had 0.08% of the vote, now it has 37%. It’s leader, Marine Le Pen, has come closer and closer to winning the Presidency and is tipped to win the presidency in 2027.
It was projected to win a majority in the French lower house in the snap 2024 Asssmbly elections following its massive success in the European Elections, winning all but a handful of regional votes, painting France in a sea of dark blue in all but Paris. After the first round of voting the Sunday before last the party was projected to have an absolute majority in the Lower House. It came first with 32% of the vote in the first round. But it has always had a big adversary; the desire of ALL of the other political parties to block the National FrontRally (often called the ‘Cordone Sanitaire’). After the drastic fall of Macron’s party and the flirting of the Republicans (centre-right) party with Le Pen’s party, it seemed as if the ‘Cordone Sanitaire’ alliance was about to break. The Leftist parties rallied around and created their own Leftist bloc represented by John-Luc Melonchon (Leader of the extreme-left ‘France Unbound’ Party) in a bid to coordinate resistance to the National Rally. The ‘New Popular Front’ as it is called, was an unlikely alliance between so many different parties on the left with very little in common (Economic Socialists allied to extreme-left cultural ideologies allied to communists) and there was a huge doubt over the viability of this Leftist alliance. France Unbound is the biggest faction within that group but it by no means calls the shorts exclusively.
The New Popular Front held despite the odds for one more week after the first round of voting and it therefore captured the ‘anyone but the National Rally’ vote, which ended up being far more than people thought. But this wasn’t easy. It needed the support of Macron’s centrist coalition through the desire to stand down candidates in a bid to not split the anti-National Rally vote. The New Popular Front agreed to stand down candidates too. In all, over 200 candidates wilfully stood down in order to prevent the National Rally from winning, and so it transpired. Despite the National Rally pretty much doubling its seat-share it came third in the campaign. The coalition of coalitions managed to prevent one party from getting close to winning the vote.
But, to be fair, the National Rally won the popular vote:
National Rally: 10m+ votes - 142 seats
New Popular Front: 7m votes - 180 seats
Centrist bloc: 6.7m votes - 159 seats
As you can see, the problems of a non-proportional electoral system bites again like in the UK.
But, what was the price of this coalition of coalitions? The answer is pretty much chaos. Macron’s centrist coalition has been obliterated. The incumbent Prime Minister Gabriel Attall, ally of Macron that has allowed the President to actually govern, has resigned. Macron has completely lost the ability to govern with the destruction of his working coalition and the extreme left is now most likely to form a coalition government. Not only that, but the New Popular Front coalition has not enough seats to govern as a coalition in its own right. It must work with individuals from the centre in order to form a government. The New Popular Front will have to coalesce around a centrist candidate as John-Luc Melonchon is far too radical to be Prime Minister. There is talk of Christine Lagarde (ex-head of the IMF) perhaps leading a coalition but she is from the centre-right. What is certain is the Macron’s deal to head off the right is to let in the left. A coalition with the strongest wing wanting to implement a huge wealth tax, to ban petrol cars from all of France (whether new or not) by 2040, to pull out of NATO and to go further than the ex-Socialist and all-round disaster of a president that was Francois Hollande. Anti-Semitism, a mainstay of the extreme left, is rampant within Melonchon’s party and their desire to boycott any nation or organisations supporting Israel would be the boldest anti-Israel response of any western nation to date. They are also dead against Nuclear energy and will introduce referendums on it, despite France being incredibly heavily reliant on Nuclear energy, as well as other nations buying energy from France, including the UK. Their supporting the maintenance of mass immigration will be interesting. Also, as an aside, John-Luc Melonchon is just as euro-skeptic as Marine Le Pen. The EU will not be pleased.
France is going to move to the left as the right has been ascendant in the country, but this is because of the legacy of France able to absorb or co-exist with both as the centre is able to play both against each other. Macron in his last few months before the mess of the European Elections for his party, introduced both leftist and rightist policies in a bid to head off both. This has been the plan in centrist French politics and Macron genuinely believed this was working. The European Elections shattered this and Macron’s centrists chose the left as its way of surviving or pushing back against the right (in a bid to redress a balance). Macron has failed in a bid to keep his group strong, as they have come second in the elections. Macron is a lame duck president now as the extreme-left lick their lips at the prospect of introducing domestic reforms that will see France see some of the most leftist policies final enter French society.
The international media are celebrating this as a win, which is odd. But whilst the National Rally are thwarted in their bid for the Assembly, they may still get the last laugh. For the next 2 and a half years the radical left alliance will be put to the test, and it is unlikely that they will succeed in providing some kind of stability let alone a majority in the French Assembly. The French left are now exposed, both in their ability to bring stability and their ability to govern. France has run out of money as their declining credit rating has suggested. The New Popular Front was hastily built to head off Marine Le Pen. It was not organised to govern. It cannot even govern on its own. France is now in chaos, and that will serve Le Pen perfectly. Not only will Macron not be able to stand, and the centrists have been widely discredited for their maintenance of French managed decline on an economic and social level, but the left alliance will be exposed for their inability to govern, be coherent or bring stability on any level. They are also anti-the concerns that the National Rally campaign on; it will only entrench the National Rally more and bring wavering voters to their cause as the New Popular Front do nothing to address concerns they find an anathema to their cause. All that Marine Le Pen has to do is sit back and watch the potential chaos unfold. We cannot see how it can go well, you cannot build a coalition on top of a coalition with the sorts of bed-fellows involved with views so different and so contradictory. Rather than having to prove National Rally’s worth in office, as Macron might have hoped a National Rally domestic programme might show the inability of the party to govern, scuppering Le Pen’s Presidential Election chances, National Rally sits back and maintains its position as the party against the status quo and the ensuring mess will be easier to fix as Le Pen positions herself as a genuine, radical, alternative.
The 2024 election makes Le Pen MORE likely to become President, not less. The contradictory nature of French politics allows this. French politics works in a far mor chaotic sequence of events. If anything this makes a more radical National Rally programme following a possible election of Marine Le Pen as president more likely. Macron’s gamble has not paid off. He is now powerless to change things from within. The left is powerless to change things as it cannot agree on a programme of governance or a Prime Minister and will more than struggle to fix the main issues of the day. Nothing will happen and the French public is less and less accommodating to issues as much as they have been before.
Expect more support for the National Rally, less support for the ‘Cordone Sanitaire’ and more support for something extremely different. The left have rolled the anti-National Rally dice with too many strings attached to be effective. They could have held their nose for 2027 but the threat of the National Rally was too strong for them to handle. The short term was always theirs especially with support from the centre. In the long term, The National Rally will only do what they’ve done for the last 20 years; grow in support from outside. What could genuinely stop them? An upturn in French fortunes based on a coalition of a coalition of those who can’t agree with each other against systemic economic and cultural problems embedded in the negative aspects of Globalization and bureacratic unreformable supranational institutions?
Ne me fais pas rire!
This article first appeared on the TDL Times. For more information, articles and more please visit www.thetdltimes.com.
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