In France’s Snap Elections, Can a “Popular Front” Hold Off the Far Right?

That’s a lot of “woulds.” Even by this president’s standards, dissolution was a brash move—the political equivalent of hurling an elephant into a porcelain shop. Key members of the president’s party, including his prime minister, Gabriel Attal, and the president of the National Assembly, Yaël Braun-Pivet, were blindsided by a decision made within a restricted inner circle. Even Macron’s European partners are said to be up in arms over the French president’s latest gambit, which opens the way for a protracted period of instability—to say nothing of a possible far-right government—in a pillar of the European Union. “Everyone is trying to save their skin,” says outgoing Macronist MP Christopher Weiss of the mood in the party, little under a month before Paris hosts the 2024 Olympics.

As the left finalizes the terms of its alliance, another obstacle to the president’s plan emerged on Tuesday: A wing of the old conservative establishment appeared to be moving toward an alliance with the National Rally. In a major shift, Eric Ciotti, president of the center-right Républicains (LR) announced yesterday that he would seek a pact with the National Rally. Ciotti’s move was just as soon lambasted as a treacherous betrayal by leading figures among the Républicains—namely, mayors, senators, and regional presidents not facing reelection—in what rapidly devolved into an intraparty war. The details of that “deal” were unclear, but Bardella said on Tuesday evening that “dozens” of LR candidates could be spared from confronting a National Rally competitor if they agreed to work together once in power. In one apparent concession—and a wink to the financial markets—Bardella has announced that a potential hard-right government would not seek to unwind Macron’s retirement reform forced through the National Assembly by decree thanks to the tacit support of the Républicains. By Wednesday evening, after Ciotti quite literally barricaded himself in the LR headquarters, the party’s brass announced that the rogue leader had been formally expelled.

In the face of a growing fiasco, Macron and his allies are still trying to project an air of confidence. Yet the president’s long-winded press conference on June 11 sounded less like a self-assured campaign launch than a last-ditch plea for a vacillating centrist offering that many French voters and politicians seem committed to bury. Again peddling the pernicious lie that Mélenchon and France Insoumise are a threat on par with Le Pen, Macron called on Glucksmann supporters or conservatives dismayed by Ciotti to rally to the center.  He’s spinning this forced election as a salutary chance for “clarification,” one that throws down the gauntlet for a decisive battle between the “extremes” (always in the plural) and the republican forces (himself). But a critical mass of people just don’t seem to buy it any more.

A Long War

If it survives the coming negotiations, there’s no way around the fact that France’s left-wing alliance faces a steep uphill battle. Had the left combined forces in the European elections, it would have edged out the National Rally by a few decimal points, assuming that the parties’ respective voters supported the unity ticket. Yet the National Rally can also claim a reservoir of additional voters, namely from other formations on the right. The hope of an electoral alliance on the left is that it can provide a much-needed boon of electability and enthusiasm, bringing in abstentionists by piercing the illusion—carefully constructed since 2017—that the only choice before French voters is between Macron and the National Rally.

What polling exists must be taken lightly, but it paints a picture of the coming fight as difficult. One June 11 poll predicts that 35 percent of first-round voters will support the National Rally—with another 13 percent supporting other right-wing forces. In the event of a divided left-wing ticket, Macron’s coalition is in a far-off second at 16 percent. If the left unites, the left will snatch the second-place spot thanks to the support of 25 percent of first-round voters. The far right was evidently the most prepared force for these snap elections: It had a sealed and ready “Matignon Plan”—a reference to the name of the prime minister’s sumptuous Parisian palace. Le Monde is reporting that the polling studies consulted by the presidential cell that concocted the dissolution plan showed that the National Rally would win between 250 and 300 seats in the event of snap elections—a boom from the 88 seats the party holds in the ousted National Assembly. It takes 289 seats to hold an absolute majority.

What this makes abundantly clear is that there’s very little time to finalize a coherent program and rally behind a candidate for prime minister, one who can make the case for “rupture” while appealing beyond the left’s usual base. For France Insoumise loyalists, that means a figure from their top leadership, ideally Mélenchon. This is likely a nonstarter for the leadership of each of the other left-wing parties, however. While the left’s actual party leaders were doing the difficult work of coalition building on Monday evening, the ever-presumptuous Glucksmann took to television to lay out his five conditions for unity. As a possible PM candidate, he suggested Laurent Berger, former leader of the center-left CFDT union—who probably would prove too cautious a choice for the France Insoumise apparatus and its supporters. An LFI deputy on the party’s more moderate wing, François Ruffin, was the first to call for a “popular front” on Sunday night and appears to others, including some in the Socialist Party, as a natural unity candidate.

If the “popular front” holds, the next few weeks are also going to need a truly massive groundswell of organizing. One France Insoumise activist in Paris’s 19th arrondissement said the party was “drowning” in sign-ups, as a torrent of people reached out to join campaign organizing in just the last 72 hours. But if France’s left has any hope of turning the tide, that energy is going to need to extend beyond the traditional centers of left-wing power—major cities, like Paris, Marseille, Lyon, and Lille and their surrounding suburbs—and into the rural districts where Le Pen has made such decisive inroads in recent years. Le Monde’s map of the European results shows France drowning in the dark brown of fascism, as the National Rally soared to first place in almost all electoral districts beyond the urban hubs.

Three weeks is barely a skirmish. What the left really needs is the time for a long war, one that can unwind the painstaking normalization of the far right as a credible solution to France’s problems. Macron has twisted the Fifth Republic to its limits and opened a wide door for the National Rally. It’s probably their election to lose.