French president Emmanuel Macron, whose center-left Ensemble grouping was soundly chastened in last week’s first round of parliamentary elections, managed to engineer a winning strategy for the second round that kept Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party from a widely predicted majority.
The catch? Macron’s strategy handed the most parliamentary seats to a far-left coalition of Communists, socialists, environmentalists, and pro-Islamists, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Le Pen’s National Rally emerged from the June 30 first-round election with 33% of the vote, putting it in the lead. Under France’s arcane electoral rules, only the top two finishers compete in the second-round runoff election, which happened Sunday. Macron worked out a deal with the far-left grouping, the New Popular Front (NFP), such that whichever party finished third in a given district — either Macron’s Ensemble or the NFP — would throw its support behind the other, ensuring a majority against National Rally.
The strategy worked; National Rally had been widely predicted to win a majority in the second round, but instead finished in third place with 143 seats, behind NFP’s 182 and Ensemble’s 168. The problem now, especially for France’s Jewish population, is that the violent, anti-Israel, pro-Islamist extreme left is in the driver’s seat. Macron’s Ensemble is happy to have salvaged a second-place finish, but it has clearly been humbled and will play second fiddle.
Marine Le Pen’s National Rally seems to still be saddled with fascist baggage; her father, party founder Jean-Marie Le Pen, was convicted in 1987 of downplaying the Holocaust, a crime in France. But lately, National Rally has emerged as Israel’s most robust defender on the French political scene, and it has taken the strongest stance against Islamic immigration into France. The party’s policies have drawn significant Jewish support.
To analyze this mini French revolution, we spoke with Mishpacha’s political analyst Jean-Yves Camus in Paris, who asserts that “the leaders of the Jewish community must urgently request a meeting with Macron” to clarify his stance following the elections.
What is your initial reaction to the election results?
I am surprised. It’s astonishing that the left came out on top in this election. Moreover, the president’s party did quite well. The traditional right received around 67 seats, which is promising, suggesting that the mainstream right has the potential to rebuild for future elections and become a real alternative.
However, the results also demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of the French electorate still fears the far-right National Rally, which performed quite poorly, far from the expected 280 seats. There will likely be internal discussions within the party to understand what went wrong.
What happens next?
President Macron will now try to build a majority with his party, the social democrats, the centrists, and perhaps some members of the conservative right. This is the only possibility. It’s impossible for Mélenchon and the far left to join the government due to significant differences, especially on fundamental foreign policy issues. It would be totally crazy to have Mélenchon and his party in the government. Their economic and foreign policies are absolutely opposed to what we would expect and are extremely divisive. The French do not want something so far left.
Remember, Labour succeeded in the British elections because Keir Starmer expelled the far-left members. So, actual democracy works well by bringing together conservatives, leftist centrists, and excluding the far left.
