Oh, Snap! Elections À Gogo In France
After a beatdown by the far-right in the European elections, President Macron dissolved the National Assembly and scheduled an early legislative election on June 30. Mayhem ensued.
What would summer in France be without an existential election threatening to bring the extreme right to the gates of power? It’s hard to believe that just a few days ago I was worried that there might be nothing to entertain us in the weeks before the barbarian tourist hoards descend on Paris for the Olympics except for an apocalyptic Netflix movie about a shark in the Seine River.
Instead, thanks to the shocking results of the European elections in France that saw big gains for the far right, Prez Emmanuel Macron decided to gamble his entire legacy by dissolving the National Assembly and calling snap legislative elections for June 30. Since then, the nation has been experiencing a political tragicomedy that offers a new twist by the minute.
Take your pick of comparisons to any of TV’s greatest fictional depictions of power struggles. Game Of Thrones. House of Cards. The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills. Since Macron's announcement, France has seen more political maneuvering and betrayal than an entire season of those classics.
With conventional wisdom and alliances being made and shattered at a relentless pace, it already feels like the nation has lived through an entire generation of politics in 11 days. A scorecard may not even be enough to keep up, but let’s at least try to understand where things stand as of June 20, 2024.
Ohgodohgodohgodohgodohgod…
Let’s set the Wayback Machine to June 9 when the French went to the polls to vote for their members of the European Parliament. The European Parliament is a very Big Thing that is also a Non-Thing. Members meet 4 days each month for 11 months in a cavernous building erected in Strasbourg specifically for them but which sits mostly empty for about 90% of the year. Nice work, if you can get it.
Yes, the European Parliament has some responsibility and the election results matter, kinda sorta. But, it is also the perfect place to register a protest vote, if one is so inclined. And the French are so inclined. They already poked Macron in the eye by re-electing him in 2022 and then denying his En Marche party an outright majority in the subsequent legislative elections. Despite a large list of positive economic indicators, his method of bulldozing reforms into law and his strategy of trying to undercut the rising far right by moving his formerly centrist party further to the right have managed to alienate just about everyone across the political spectrum.
As the European elections approached, Macron’s team staged a lackluster campaign as the far-right Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) was clicking with a growing slice of the populace thanks to a new telegenic face.
A Kinder, Gentler Nationalism
Jordan Bardella, 28, grew up in public housing and was the descendant of immigrants, which of course makes him the perfect choice to lead the RN’s anti-immigrant crusade. He dropped out of college and was still wearing his political diapers when he began to rocket up the ranks of the RN, becoming the second-youngest MP in history elected to the European Parliament in 2019, and then President of the RN in 2022.
Bardella is a smooth operator, able to talk to The Youth as well as the Forgotten People of the Banlieues and Country Folk. He gives good TV and dresses sharp. He looks like he might have been the guest for the pilot episode of Queer Eye For The Fascist Guy.
The rightwing media Boulevard Voltaire wondered if he had become the “idol of the young” after he made an appearance in January in front of a roomful of swooning young RN voters.
Whatever the reasons, Macron’s party (dubbed Renaissance for the election) crashed and burned on election night. Bardella’s RN won 30 seats, followed by 14 for Renaissance. On the left, the Socialist Party had 13 seats, the further left La France Insoumise (LFI) had 8, and the Greens had 5, but alas could not agree on a common ticket. On the right, the center-right Republicans had 6 seats, and the further right lunatic fringe Reconquete — started by TV commentator Éric Zemmour but now led by Le Pen’s niece Marion Maréchal — had 5 seats.
As the returns were still being finalized, Macron stunned the nation — and many of his advisors — by dissolving the Assembly and calling for a new election.
I Triple Dog Dare You!
Macron is trying to call the nation’s bluff. He believes the Right’s success in the European election was a protest vote, but when faced with the prospect of actually giving them some power, voters will come to their senses. And when they do, the result will give him enough momentum for the final three years of his term.
"The rise of the nationalists and demagogues is a threat not only to our nation but also to Europe and to France's place in Europe and in the world,” he said in a national address on election night. "The extreme right is both the impoverishment of the French people and the downfall of our country. So at the end of this day, I can't pretend that nothing has happened.”
He said a new vote would be a moment of “clarification” and that the French will Do The Right Thing.
"I have confidence in you, my dear compatriots, in the ability of the French people to make the right choice for themselves and for future generations,” Macron said. “Confidence in our democracy, in giving a voice to our sovereign people, nothing is more republican.”
If he’s right, Macron will be remembered as a political genius. If he’s wrong, if Le Pen’s party emerges in a position to form a government, Macron could be forced into accepting someone such as Bardella to be Prime Minister. And in that case, Macron will be remembered for clearing a path for a party founded by Nazi sympathizers to reach the heights of political power.
The initial conventional wisdom was that Macron had lost his mind. But then the sun rose the next day. And the ensuing scramble by the other political parties to take advantage turned into the Theater of the Absurd. Everyone rushed to strike alliances with other parties to present larger coalitions, though this only revealed the deep divisions on both the left and right.
One could write an entire book recounting the political events of the past 10 days in France. But let us content ourselves by viewing the highlight reel.
Clowns To The Left Of Me
Initially, the left seemed to rally to the occasion when the 4 main left-leaning parties — La France Insoumise (LFI), the center-left Socialist Party, the Green Party, and the Communist Party — announced an agreement to form the New Popular Front Kids On The Block.
But then, Raphael Glucksmann, the dude who was the lead candidate of the Socialist Party for the EU elections, tried to torpedo the alliance by announcing a list of conditions for joining it, a list of demands that every human proceeded to ignore. And so, Mr. Glucksmann became France’s new Mr. Irrelevant.
Ah, but there was trouble afoot in the NPF. La France Insoumise leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon — an inspiring figure for some on the left for reviving the left, and despised by others for being a demagogue — reportedly began using the candidate selection process to purge LFI critics and dissidents, French journalist Cole Stangler reported. Green Party leaders decried the attempted purge and called for support of left-leaning incumbents. An LFI deputy accused Mélenchon of being an “idiot,” particularly for supporting Adrien Quatennens — who had previously been accused of beating his wife — as a candidate. Socialist Party star Carole Delga said she would support the Popular Front, but that the presence of Quatennens would “damage the union” of the left.
Finally, former President François Hollande emerged from obscurity and delivered another surprise by announcing he would be a candidate for the Assembly under the New Popular Front banner. Macron was Hollande’s Economic Minister but ditched his boss to start his own party in 2017. Meanwhile, Hollande was so immensely unpopular — with an approval rating of 8% at one point — he did not run for a second term in 2017.
Jokers To The Right
The tensions tearing at the left turned out to be nothing compared to the Gonzo response on the right. The circus started when Éric Ciotti, the president of Les Républicains, announced an alliance with Le Pen’s party — effectively shattering the tradition of a Republican Front uniting to always stop the far right.
Except, it turned out the other Republican leaders were Not Down To Clown with Le Pen’s Posse. Thus began a backlash as other Republicans said Ciotti did not speak for them and should resign. Ciotti responded by barricading himself in party offices until other party officials finally found keys to get in. The party announced that Ciotti had been fired, and Ciotti said that he had not been fired, and the two sides went to court to sort things out.
Things got so out of hand that Twitter briefly suspended the party’s account because it was unclear who was in control. Eventually, Ciotti claimed that 62 candidates allied with him and supporting the RN were on the ballot.
Whatever the breakdown, it’s clear that the far-right damn has been breached. The elections happen in 2 rounds, with top candidates advancing and setting off another scramble to vote strategically in case there is not a choice you like. If there is a Far Right candidate in Round 2, this is typically when people call for the Republican Front by voting for anyone but the extreme candidate.
But, the leader of the Republican’s European Parliament members said he would vote for the RN candidate, adding: "With Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella, we share 90-95% of the same ideas."
Meanwhile, on the Right Side of the RN, Le Pen’s niece Marion Maréchal announced that her Reconquete party would consider an alliance with Aunty and open talks with Bardella. She revealed this during a live press conference with Reconquete founder Eric Zemmour standing on stage and giving her a Whatcha talkin’ 'bout Willis look because clearly it was the first time he was hearing this.
Zemmour, who founded Reconquête, went on TV to declare that Maréchal had set "the world record of betrayals" and said the Le Pens had always been out to get him.
Stuck In The Middle With You
This brings us back to Macron, whose strategy has been mainly to point to the left and point to the right and say they are two types of extremes and must be stopped. His followers have tried to label the Popular Front as antisemitic because many of its members have been supporters of Palestine.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who is leading the campaign for Macron’s party, said in a radio interview: "There's the alliance led by (hard-left) LFI, there's the alliance led by the (far-right) RN -- extremes that would be a disaster for the country.” Macron’s tourism minister emphasized this non-choice by declaring she would vote not for either a left or right candidate in a 2nd round matchup.
Though he didn’t explicitly endorse a party, French Soccer MegaStar Kylian Mbappe said he was "against extremes and divisive ideas," adding: "Today we can all see that extremists are very close to winning power and we have the opportunity to choose the future of our country. I hope I will still be proud to wear this shirt after July 7."
An even more unexpected proclamation came from French Super YouTuber Squeezie — normally an a-political figure — who called on his 19 million subscribers to vote against the RN.
Bardella responded to Squeezie on Instagram (as one does these days), criticizing "multimillionaires responding to the very noble profession of influencer engage 'apolitically' against millions of French people, by copying/pasting the arguments as crude as they are mendacious from La France Insoumise." He also suggested that Squeezie was bitter about being surpassed as France’s Top YouTuber by “Tibo InShape.” (who has not endorsed anyone.)
Poll Positions
The campaign has already claimed its first casualties: Pollsters. “Some pollsters have had to reimburse staff for canceled or delayed holidays to cope with the extra workload,” a source told the AFP.
The unusual nature of the election and the blurry nature of alliances is making polling difficult. (French pollsters are historically quite accurate.) However, one early poll gave the RN the lead in voting intentions with 30%, the Popular Front in second with 25%, and Macron’s party in third with 20%.
A Financial Times poll suggested that in the first found voting for 577 seats, the Far-Right leads in 362 seats, the Popular Front leads in 211, and Macron’s party leads in JUST 3 SEATS! (None in mainland France.) In the second round, the poll projects that the Left and Right candidates would face off for 536 seats, with Macron’s party only left to compete in 41 races.
Bardella has said he would only accept the role of prime minister if his party wins a clear majority of seats. The left has not named a prime minister candidate should it be in a position to form a government.
In 2017, Macron’s insurgent party won a historic legislative majority with 350 seats. By creating a new Centrist party, it appeared he had smashed the remains of the traditional left and right parties. Seven years later, it looks like they are set to return the favor.
Chris O’Brien
Le Pecq
This is so well-written and informative, yet very funny too. I love the Stealers Wheel reference!
You had me at "Queer Eye for the Fascist Guy." Great column, Chris. Crazy times for France!