The New Popular Front, which came first in Sunday's second round of early legislative elections, does not have an absolute majority in the Assembly. France is right-wing, and Emmanuel Macron will have to take this into account when appointing the Prime Minister.
Has the Fifth Republic reached the end of its life? Under this system, the French head of state can preside over the country with the support of a majority of his or her camp in Parliament. Emmanuel Macron's centrist group already lacked an absolute majority (set at 289 seats) since 2022, and has now been relegated to second place since Sunday's second round. Contrary to what the polls were saying, it was not the Rassemblement National (RN), which came third, but the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), an alliance of leftists set up to block the RN, which won a relative majority with 178 seats. The presidential camp took 150 and the RN 142.
The first lesson to be drawn from this result is that the voting instructions given by the left and the Macronists worked so well that it was the NFP that came out on top, even though the RN had come out on top in the first round a week earlier, following its success in the European elections on June 9. This was the last straw for the presidential movement, which had been hammering home the message that there was no risk in voting for the left against an RN candidate, since Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his friends would never reach the gates of power. The speech by the radical left-wing leader, who was the first to speak on behalf of the left on Sunday evening, shows that he doesn't see things the same way.
A left illegitimate to govern
According to Mélenchon, it is up to the NFP to become Prime Minister and implement its program, without any concessions to other parties. A strange vision for the representative of a political force whose only interesting measure in its program is the transition to a Sixth Republic, with the introduction of proportional representation and effective decentralization of tasks. At a time when the system's current crisis calls for a Helvetian-style experiment in compromise, the populist tribune doesn't even bother to hide his love of a single power.
It's also an ironic vision, given that the NFP has certainly done better than the others, both in terms of absolute number of seats and additional seats compared to 2022, but only represents a minority compared to the forces on the right. And that's not even counting those from the center, which the Melenchonist left equates with the right. Remember that in 2022, it estimated that the presidential camp, down to 245 seats, did not have a sufficient relative majority to govern... And if we look at the details of the parties, Mélenchon's party (La France insoumise) even loses one seat compared to the 75 it held two years ago. The left he represents, closed to dialogue, is illegitimate to run for Prime Minister. The new government could, however, draw on the hundred or so socialists, ecologists and even communists who make up the majority of NFP elected representatives.
A sense of reality
Whether from the center, the center-right or the right, the person who succeeds Gabriel Attal will have the arduous task of taking into account the concerns of the French people who voted for the NFP, while not betraying the demands of the vast majority of the population. Of course, they want more purchasing power, but they also want greater security and less immigration. Opinion polls are clear on this. As we've seen, they're not all counting on the RN, which is too amateurish and unpredictable, to get the job done. However, if the rest of the political class fails to take into account the success of the Lepéniste formation, which nevertheless came first in terms of the number of votes cast, the wave that will arrive next time will be even bigger.
The French also want to feel less humiliated: it's Macron's vertical, arrogant style of presidency that federates anger even more than his record. In addition to his political profile, the Prime Minister will be well advised to adopt a unifying political style, and the occupant of the Elysée to let him govern. The new team will nevertheless need to have a sense of economic reality. By lying to the French, by postponing the reforms needed to make public services more efficient, free up the markets and reduce the debt instead of deepening it again and again, it will only propel voters towards the original demagoguery rather than the copy. And the latter will ultimately come at a high price.
Write to the author: jonas.follonier@leregardlibre.com
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