In a calculated move, President Emmanuel Macron has prevented the far-right from seizing power in France. (Photo: Reuters)
France’s parliamentary elections have produced one of the biggest upsets in recent history, pitting the ruling and opposition parties against each other, contrary to all opinion polls and expert opinion.
As the polls for the second round closed around 8pm local time on Sunday, the exit polls were broadcast on French news channels and the images flashed on screens stunned people of all walks of life: the far-right National Rally (RN) had been relegated to third place in an election that had seemed a sure bet from the start.
Against all expectations, the New Popular Front (NPF), a newly formed coalition of left-wing parties, came in first, with President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition coming in second. The final results showed the NPF winning 182 seats out of 577, President Macron’s coalition winning 163, and the RN and its partners reduced to 143 seats.
Macron has had the last laugh for now
At a time when RN leader Marine Le Pen and her prodigy Jordan Bardella should have been basking in the glory, it was Macron who was the center of attention. For a month he had been derided as a political gambler and accused of handing France over to the far right. As Firstpost reported on election day, Macron was not gambling, he was making a calculated move, aiming to kill three birds with one stone.
Behind the far-right lies Macron’s cunning tactics and realpolitik that few understood until the exit polls were released.
By calling the election, Macron was trying to curb the rise of the far-right, protect himself from a backlash from his opponents and avoid “coexistence” with far-right forces that could undermine his presidency, said Swasti Rao, a Europe researcher at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA).
“The idea that Macron took a gamble and lost is very simplistic and false. He is a very experienced leader and it is hard to imagine that he would be so out of touch with reality to make such a losing bet,” Rao told Firstpost in an interview before the results were announced, adding that calling for early elections was probably a calculated move.
In an interview after the results, Rao said Macron’s decision was a truly calculated move and showed his cunning.
“Macron was convinced he could neither stop the far right nor contain the anti-government forces. To address these concerns, he called general elections immediately after the European election results. This gave him a kind of moral high ground to claim to be the voice of the people, and also a maneuver to hide his true intentions. In October, Macron’s centrist party was destined to lose the budget vote and would have lost its majority anyway. By calling general elections, Macron avoided that embarrassment as well,” said Rao, associate researcher at MP-IDSA’s Europe and Eurasia Centre.
From now on, we will have a left-wing government, sharing the burden of opposition to the current government and avoiding coexistence with the far right, where the president and prime minister come from opposing parties. Macron, a maverick in French politics who refuses to go quietly into the night, is killing two birds with one stone.
But how did this happen? Wasn’t it certain that the far right would win the French election? Were the opinion polls and expert predictions all wrong? With Macron’s centrist party suffering a crushing defeat and Le Pen’s RN looking set to win by a landslide at the end of the first round, what changed between the first and second rounds to turn the tide? Yes, Macron showed up.
The 48 hours that changed the course of the French election
At the end of the first round on June 30, the far-right RN party won 33% of the vote, the left-wing coalition 28%, and Macron’s centrist party about 21%.
In the French electoral system, a candidate must receive at least 50% of the votes to win in the first round. If no candidate meets the threshold, all candidates with at least 12.5% of the votes proceed to a second round, where the candidate with the most votes wins. In the first round, the RN won 39 of the 76 seats won by candidates with at least 50% of the votes. Thus, the RN was expected to win the election.
Then, over the next 48 hours, the tide of the election changed, but few people understood what was happening. Firstpost reported what happened: Over 200 centrist and left-leaning candidates withdrew their candidacy between July 1st and 2nd.
The aim of the withdrawal was to rally non-right-wing voters behind a single candidate and prevent the fragmentation of the non-right-wing vote. Before the results were announced, articles pointed to the withdrawal as the first sign that Macron’s calculated move was working. To prevent the far-right from winning, center-right and left-wing parties had formed a temporary alliance at Macron’s urging.
The ad hoc alliance, with the sole objective of beating the RN, worked as seen in yesterday’s results.
“Macron relied on the fact that both the centre-right and left-wing parties hated the chaos of a left-wing government and had a common enemy in the National Rally. After the first round of voting made it clear that they could not defeat the far-right, they combined all the non-right and anti-right votes and it was this strategic voting that Macron wanted from the beginning that brought him yesterday’s results,” said Rao, a Europe expert at MP-IDSA.
Macron protects presidency and prevents political chaos
Mr Macron realised that the centrists were certain to lose their parliamentary majority in the budget vote in October and would end up in a coexistence relationship anyway, so he decided to seize control ahead of elections.
Macron put into motion a plan to ensure coexistence not with the far right, but with a much more manageable left-wing coalition, as detailed above.
“Contrary to comments on social media, the NPF coalition is not extremist. It is made up of four major parties, of which only one far-left party has little electoral presence. This coalition is much more moderate than the Rally National, so it will be much easier for Macron to coexist with it rather than with a far-right party,” Rao said.
If Macron had stayed with the RN, the next three years would have been chaotic, since the RN had few substantive proposals beyond excessive spending proposals and rhetoric on immigration. A fight between the prime minister and the president could have undermined Macron’s policies. Now that the moderate NPF is in power, Macron will have a relatively smooth term.
“If the prime minister and the president remain deadlocked, it will not be just Macron who faces opposition; the left-wing prime minister and his government will face it too. Moreover, if the fight gets too intense, the president has many tools at his disposal. In the most extreme case, he can call elections. So it is in the NPF’s interest to build a working relationship with Macron so that both parties can get their jobs done without too much difficulty,” Rao said.
Macron tried to secure the presidency for the remaining three years by installing a left-wing coalition as prime minister. In three years, Le Pen will run again for the presidency, but that will be three years from now, and it will be a battle for another day. For now, Macron is winning.
What do the French election results mean for Europe?
Europe breathed a sigh of relief that a far-right leader had been installed as prime minister and that Macron would remain in power, ensuring France’s leadership in supporting Ukraine and strengthening the European security architecture.
Rao said Europe had nothing to worry about until a far-left prime minister was installed, adding that both far-left and far-right leaders were skeptical of the European Union, which is why the prospect of Bardella becoming prime minister was making some in Europe uneasy.
Macron is the number one supporter of Ukraine in France and an advocate of European independence in terms of security. As the EU’s main military power and one of the pillars of European security along with the UK, Germany and Poland, what the EU needs from France is stability and moderate leadership rooted in EU values. That looks set to be the case for at least the next three years.
In France, there is broad agreement among the right, left and centre about widespread support for Ukraine and the perception of the danger from Russia, Rao said.
Moreover, with security and foreign policy still the province of the French president, Macron will have ample room to implement European policy.
Rao added that it is only far-left and far-right leaders who are stoking fears, while the moderate right and moderate left are fine.
“Scepticism towards Europe and NATO, and a lack of vision for European security, are characteristics of extremism at both ends, which is why EU leaders are worried wherever the far-left and far-right emerge,” Rao said.
Find us on YouTube
subscribe
