This Thursday night, the French left overcame their divisions on issues such as Ukraine, the Middle East and European construction, and agreed on a common program and single candidates for the legislative elections on June 30 and July 7. The agreement, baptized as the “new popular front” in honor of the progressive union of the 1930s against fascism, complicates President Emmanuel Macron’s objective of attracting social democrats and environmentalists dissatisfied with Jean-Luc’s radicals and eurosceptics to his movement. Melenchon.
If one of Macron’s objectives, by unexpectedly bringing forward the elections on Sunday, was to complete the remodeling of the political landscape that began in 2017 by jibarizing the socialists and the moderate right, the success is partial. The right comes out shaken this week, the left resists and the extreme right starts as a favorite, according to the first published polls.
From socialists to communists, including environmentalists and Mélenchon rebels, they celebrated the success after four days of negotiations. The left, whose main parties attended the European elections separately, aspires at least to be the first opposition force to a hypothetical government of the extreme right.
After reaching an agreement in principle to present single candidacies and distribute the majority of constituencies (299 for Mélenchon’s La Francia Insumisa, 175 for the Socialist Party, 92 for the ecologists, 50 for the communists), it was necessary to draft the common program and agree on the rest of the candidates. The details should be known on Friday, and it is still unknown who will be the candidate for prime minister.
The agreement was not easy. The socialists led by Raphaël Glucksmann had a better result in the European elections than Mélenchon’s list. And many were reluctant to join the coalition unless the Melenchonistas committed to increasing military aid to Ukraine or supported the European construction project. The radical sector’s positions on Israel and Hamas posed problems for the moderates.
It is significant that former president François Hollande, a moderate socialist and repeatedly vilified by the Melenchonistas, approved the agreement: “The essential thing is that the union could be made. I have the known divergences, but there is a moment when we go beyond the divergences, we go to the essentials.”
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The advance of the legislative elections has precipitated the agreement of the left and, in parallel, is dynamiting the right, while opening a huge question about the future of Macronism. These days we are seeing scenes that no one would have ever imagined. Two examples. A president, Macron, bringing forward elections and thus risking his own party being left out of the Government and the rivals he promised to weaken throughout his term taking power. Restlessness among his people, and the feeling that the leader is pushing them into the abyss, or to be left without a seat.
More scenes, typical of a vaudeville. The head of a historic party, which has produced presidents of the Republic such as Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, quartered in his office and in rebellion. His lieutenants have dismissed him for wanting to make a pact with the extreme right. Eric Ciotti, president (or no longer) of Los Republicanos (LR), looks out the window and assures journalists from there: “I’m working.”
The only party that truly feels strong is Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN), triumphant on Sunday and which polls place in first position in the legislative elections. It is the only party that attracts personalities from the others. Ciotti is one. Another is Marion Maréchal, Le Pen’s niece. She headed the European list of Reconquista, the party of ultra talk show host Éric Zemmour. Now Maréchal has declared that he supports the RN in the legislative elections, along with four other MEPs elected from Reconquista. “It is the world record of betrayal,” Zemmour was outraged.
Everything changes, and fast. Today there are two parties with the name of Los Republicanos (LR), the formation of the traditional right twinned with the Spanish PP. One is the one that Ciotti says he still presides over. The other LR is that of the barons, the senators and the deputies (except Ciotti and another parliamentarian), and these republicans They expelled the leader on Wednesday. The two LRs, the ciottista and the others fight over the story on social networks. X’s account was in the hands of the anti-Ciotti for a few hours; that of Facebook, of the pro-Ciotti.
End of cycle
And the (still) presidential majority? There is an air of the end of the cycle. This majority is made up of the three parties that support Macron: his own, Renaissance, the centrist MoDem and the moderate conservative Horizons. Although they make up the first group in the National Assembly, they do not reach the absolute majority, and this is where part of the problems that led the president to end the legislature come from.
Since Sunday night, when Macron addressed the French to call for the polls, the majority seems paralyzed. Long faces, like those seen in the official black and white photos of Macron announcing the early election to his ministers on Sunday. Deputies who are beginning to distance themselves from Macron and think that he is no longer an asset, but a burden. Confusion even in the highest ranks of the State. “There was another way,” lamented the president of the National Assembly, the Macronist Yaël Braun-Pivet.
There is, therefore, a presidential majority, but it could disappear after the second round, on July 7. And once this has happened, and with a weakened president and in cohabitation with an opposition prime minister, what will remain of Macronism?
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