The idea is gaining ground. Some are talking about a “diverse majority.” Others say “multiple” or “plural.” Some think it should include all parties, except the far right. Others, that the radical left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI) should also be excluded. But among the centrist parties that make up the alliance supporting Emmanuel Macron, part of the right and the moderate left, the option of a grand parliamentary coalition is taking shape. It would be the way to stop a far-right government if the National Rally (RN), even if it wins, is left without an absolute majority in the second round of the legislative elections this Sunday.
The grand coalition project has gained strength after the centre and the left agreed to a cordon sanitaire against Marine Le Pen’s party after the first round on Sunday. More than 220 candidates have given up running in the second round in districts where three candidates had qualified and where the far right could win. By withdrawing, they avoid dispersing the vote and concentrate it on the candidate who can beat the RN candidate.
In a first poll since the withdrawals, the Harris Interactive institute reports that four in ten French people believe that no bloc will win an absolute majority. It has reduced its forecast for the number of seats for the RN to a maximum of 220 (the absolute majority is 289). The centrist bloc around President Emmanuel Macron, which would win between 110 and 135 seats, is holding up better than previously expected, while the left-wing alliance New Popular Front (NFP) is expected to win between 159 and 183.
While waiting to see what the French will finally say at the polls, called to vote not for someone, but against the RN, even if it means holding their nose to support a candidate they don’t like, the major parties are beginning to analyse scenarios for the day after.
The possibility, unprecedented in recent French history, of a grand parliamentary alliance on which a technical government could be based is beginning to be mentioned most by moderate parties. According to the outgoing Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, a “plural Assembly” alternative to the RN could bring together “several political groups from the right, left and centre who, project by project, work together in the service of the French people”. It would be a question, added François Bayrou, leader of the centrist MoDem, an ally of Macronism, of “finding unprecedented answers” to avoid an institutional blockage if none of the blocks obtains a sufficient majority to govern. This would be where the “republicans” and “democrats” who are willing to sit down to negotiate and “assume their responsibilities” would come into play.
Given that even the NFP, the second-strongest bloc after the RN in the first round, has no chance of achieving an absolute majority or even coming close to it, pragmatism is taking over. Socialists, ecologists and even communists are taking up the idea of a grand coalition. But they are demanding that their probable greater parliamentary weight than the Macronist centre be recognised in the future agreement. A prime minister for such a government should come from within their ranks, they say, although all agree on calling for caution four days before the next election.
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“The important thing is to vote to exclude the far right and to have as many left-wing deputies as possible in the National Assembly,” said former Socialist president and deputy candidate François Hollande on France Info radio. Once this scenario has been achieved, the possibility of a one-year provisional agreement could be discussed, until legislative elections can be called again, or even a three-year agreement, until the presidential elections in 2027. And, according to Hollande, it would be necessary to “decide which proposals each group considers essential” to govern with this common minimum programme.
Communist MP Sébastien Jumel shares the idea: “We could set simple objectives, we are not obliged to agree on everything.” The coalition, according to the communist, would cover “an arc from the Gaullism social to communists, passing through left-wing people of good will.”
The secretary general of the ecologists, Marine Tondelier, also says she is not closing the door on this possibility, given the “risk of the country becoming ungovernable”, which means that “we will certainly have to do things that no one has done before”. For example, a conservative prime minister, Édouard Philippe, Emmanuel Macron’s first head of government in 2017, will vote next Sunday for the communist candidate of his constituency to stop the RN candidate, as he revealed on Wednesday. However, the leader of the Horizons party, allied with Macronism, has also set, from the beginning of the campaign, the limit to the radical left under the principle of “neither-nor”: “Neither the RN, nor the LFI”.
The alternatives “are not just a majority of the RN or the blocking of the Assembly,” Xavier Bertrand, a heavyweight of the traditional right of the Republicans (LR), sister party of the Spanish PP, told France Inter. He added: “There is another solution: a provisional government that brings together in the Assembly men and women of good will capable of opening up to a concrete project.” LR, the traditional right-wing party, is experiencing a deep crisis following the decision of its still formal president, Éric Ciotti, to ally with the RN against the will of its barons, including Bertrand.
However, there are still huge reservations in all areas. Both LR and Macronism explicitly exclude Mélenchon’s rebels from a multi-party government agreement. “We will not govern with La France Insoumise,” stressed the president, Emmanuel Macron, during the last Council of Ministers before the elections, according to several media outlets, citing sources present at the meeting. “Fighting the RN today does not mean allying with LFI tomorrow,” explained the government spokesperson, Prisca Thevenot, after the meeting. “We cannot make LFI the alpha and omega of the left in France,” she added. Shortly afterwards, Attal also said on X: “There is not and there will never be an alliance with LFI.” For her part, the environmentalist Tondelier excludes, like other members of the NFP, that the prime minister of a possible government of this type could come from the ranks of Macron.
However, Mélenchon’s party refuses to join such an agreement. “The rebels will only govern to implement their programme,” said the national coordinator of LFI, Manuel Bompard. The daily The World highlights that, of the 81 withdrawals of Macronist candidates for the second round, only about twenty benefit a candidate unsubmissivewhile around fifty are voting for other candidates from the New Popular Front (socialists, ecologists and communists). This, the newspaper says, is calculated to “reduce the influence of Mélenchon’s party on the left” and thus allow the foundations to be laid for a possible coalition with the social democrats.
The RN is the clear favourite on Sunday, although it has not achieved the absolute majority that its candidate for prime minister, Jordan Bardella, is demanding to govern. The leader of the far-right party, Marine Le Pen, said after the first round that if it only obtains a relative majority of around 270 seats, she will seek an alliance to achieve an absolute majority with deputies from the right.
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