By Dr Alain Gabon 

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In this issue

Macron’s dissolution of the National Assembly
Why a reckless dissolution?
A transformed political landscape
How the snap legislative election provided even more surprises
Explanations of the results
How the National Rally was re-demonised
All winners, all losers
The New Popular Front faces a very uncertain future
A Macronist democratic coup?
For the far-right, a momentary setback
For Muslims, the worst was avoided
A break in Islamophobia?
Consensual calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza
Conclusion

Issue 02, Vol 4, July 2024, The Cordoba foundation

A nation torn apart between the left and the Far-Right, enters uncharted territories

President Emmanuel Macron’s surprise dissolution of the National Assembly following his spectacular defeat at the 9^th June European election, which for the French was very much a referendum on his governance, keeps producing shockwaves and unexpected ripple effects across the entire French political landscape. All of this has provoked dismay and grave concerns among financial markets, international investors, foreign media, and Macron’s French and European allies, including his own Ensemble centre-right coalition.

Macron’s dissolution of the National Assembly

The decision to activate “the nuclear option”, which he had contemplated and prepared for months, was received as a reckless one that risked aggravating France’s already severe political, economic, financial, and cultural crises while also weakening the EU itself. To this day, most French people have a hard time understanding that decision, while Macron’s own MPs and party members, many of whom lost their seats, remain infuriated against him.

Indeed, if Macron wanted to respond to the strong message of rejection the French sent him at the Euro elections, he had other options including a change of Prime Minister and government, the adoption of different policies, or postponing the dissolution until after the Olympic Games while trying to enlarge his electoral popular base through alliances with the centre-left and the centre-right – as he had successfully done in the 2017 Presidential election.

There was, in any case, no hurry. Yet Macron deliberately took that dramatic decision at the worst possible moment for both himself (rarely has a French President been so hated and despised), his centre-right coalition (which had all but lost its initial 2017 momentum and was forced, unprepared into a new campaign while at its weakest, right after a major electoral defeat), and his own country, which has since been in disarray.

Regarding the EU, given that the French far-right’s support for Ukraine is at best recent, uncertain, partial, and insincere for a traditionally pro-Russian party, it is the whole European pro-Ukrainian front, one that he himself champions, that Macron risked undermining but also much of the rest of his own European policies on the environment, a new strategic European defence architecture, or a joint reindustrialisation policy.

On all these crucial issues and more, France’s far-right Rassemblement National, which unlike Macron’s own centre-right coalition Ensemble, enjoys a spectacular momentum, could not be more opposed to Macron’s policies, who thus seemed to have shot himself in the foot.

In so many respects, his gamble has been a suicidal Russian roulette in reverse, with five bullets in the six-shot barrel instead of one. There is no doubt he has hurt his own political group and himself. On the international scene, he cannot take any decision until the new government is formed and he is thus a lame-duck President as made obvious by the recent NATO summit.

At a time when there has never been so many threats and challenges of all sorts, economic, environmental, industrial, military, and more, furthermore shortly before the Olympic Games when the terrorist threat has once again re-emerged, Macron could not have chosen a worst moment to throw his country into chaos.

Why a reckless dissolution?

There are several ways to understand Macron’s decision, the most charitable being that it is a truly democratic one: Macron had heard the message of the French at the European election where he suffered a scathing defeat, and he chose to give them the possibility to end his own domestic government at home too and have another one, should they choose to. Read this way, this would be a true Gaullist gesture that put his own national fate in the hands of the voters.

Macron had also for several years complained that France’s political system was not democratic enough because the people did not have mid-term elections, now that the presidential and legislative elections take place essentially at the same time and a mere few weeks apart with the latter merely validating the former, which was not the case before when they took place years apart.

The dissolution can thus be read as a pragmatic decision. Stripped of a parliamentary majority following the 2022 legislative election, France had become hard, if not impossible to govern and there was an urgent need to provide a new opportunity for a stable ruling majority, especially since the whole French political, legislative, and governmental system has been designed to produce and guarantee strong majorities for effective governance. Macron seemed to believe he could win those legislatives and had often expressed how tired he was of governing without a solid, strong and stable legislative majority, as is the norm under the Fifth Republic.

A third explanation has to do with Macron’s personality: isolated in his bubble, largely cut off from realities especially the extent and depth of the resentment he has generated in the population after seven years of power, unaware of how degraded his image had become — that of an arrogant, privileged, out-of-touch elite, a “former banker” and “President of the Rich”, a man both clueless about the daily hardships of common people and contemptuous of the popular classes. Despite this widespread popular rejection and resentment, Macron nonetheless continued to believe, against all evidence, that he may win the June-July legislative elections. Macron claimed he wanted to be a “Jupiterian” president when he was first elected in 2017, may have been the victim of his own megalomaniac egotistic belief in his miraculous intelligence and strategic skills.

An Alpha male type of ”winner” who hates defeat and never gives up, he also loves challenges, risks, and bold moves, like a player of bluff poker, an analogy often used by commentators. His message to the French seemed to be: “You people have been tempted for years to elect the far-right? Well now you can. I dare you to put them in charge, but the trick is you must decide right now, within two weeks, not in 2027. So, what are you going to do now?.”

Fourth, there may have been even more cynical electoral calculations in this daring move.

Instead of waiting for a vote of no confidence that was bound to happen soon at the next budget proposal, Macron, being his usual self, preferred to anticipate, strip the opposition of that opportunity, and remain the “Master of the Clocks” and main game player while precipitating his opponents in a state of panic and crisis. Moreover, forcing totally unexpected, rushed elections down the people’s throats without enough time for them to prepare adequately. Which incidentally, unlike the first explanation, is profoundly undemocratic.

Most cynically, he may  have secretly preferred to yield legislative and executive power to the far-right of Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella for the next three years (they were at the time the probable winners) in exchange for a better chance to have his chosen heir, current Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, win the 2027 presidential election. The Machiavellian calculation of this tacit Faustian pact would be that with its lack of experience and reputation of incompetence, Marine le Pen’s National Rally would discredit itself as a capable and viable ruling party once in government. After three years of failed governance, even their own voters would be disappointed and cease to believe they offer a credible alternative.

By essentially giving power to the far-right, Macron would thus have helped discredit them at the cost of inflicting three years of abject policies and extremist right-wing government on his own country and people. In that line of thinking, even if he lost in July 2024, Gabriel Attal, a sort of pale Macron II, would win in 2027.

A transformed political landscape

Whatever Macron’s secret calculations may have been, the fragmentation bomb of the dissolution and the rushed legislative campaign have already restructured the French political landscape and rendered the next three years till the 2027 presidential election quasi-impossible to predict.

There are now three deeply antagonistic blocs at the National Assembly, none of which has a majority, not even close, none of which can govern on its own. This may lead to political paralysis and deadlock.

Besides the dissolution itself that took everyone by surprise, the most surprising plot twist ahead of the French legislative election, a second one nobody, including Macron, expected either, has been the overnight reunification into the “New Popular Front” of the four main opposition parties of the left: the Socialists (nearly 14% at the European election), La France Insoumise/France Unbowed (nearly 10% of the Euro vote), the Greens (5.5%), and the Communists (2%).

The New Popular Front (a reference to the short-lived but mythic Popular Front of the 1930s against the rise of fascism in Europe) was soon joined by a broad coalition of civil sector forces including trade unions and associations, then within three days it had successfully negotiated a substantial and coherent 24-page electoral program which could then be presented to the French ahead of the first round of the legislatives.

The relationships between the leaders of France’s two main leftist parties had also become so heinous and detestable that Macron was betting on the continuation of this political fragmentation to defeat his left opposition.

The European election had been marked by severe fractures between the Socialist Party (centre-left social-democrats not too different from Tony Blair’s New Labour) and the “hard left” of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed on major issues like Ukraine-Russia, antisemitism, and Gaza. The relationships between the leaders of France’s two main leftist parties had also become so heinous and detestable that Macron was betting on the continuation of this political fragmentation to defeat his left opposition. Cynically hoping for their continuing political, programmatic, and personal disunity, Macron actually accidentally gave them the miraculous historical opportunity to silence their dissensions, mend their fractures, and accomplish the union of the leftist forces at a time when no one, not even those parties, thought that possible.

This too shows Macron’s poor strategic skills and his inability to read his social and political terrain, confirming that even on political matters, he is out-of-touch.

In particular, he did not understand a major factor which the left itself understood immediately: that given the electoral maths that had emerged in France from the results of the European election, there were only two options for the left ahead of this next and unexpected national legislative campaign Macron was forcing upon them. The options were a) either unite and get a chance at both winning and defeating the far-right (their main historical arch enemy) as well as the Macronists themselves, or b) remain divided and perish at the ballot box.

All the various forces of the left were quick to understand and seize the moment. Within three days, profoundly different and often divergent parties and leaders who often hated each other and had spent much of the European campaign slandering each other, reunited and presented a common front and program for the legislatives.

Macron’s repeat of his successful 2017 strategy of fragmenting his double opposition (on his left and on his right sides) was far more successful with the conservatives. Forced with the same dilemma as the left of either uniting (for them, with the far-right of Marine le Pen / Jordan Bardella’s National Rally) or disappearing, the main conservative government party (LR, The Republicans, 7.25% at the Euro vote) fractured internally and split in two between those who pushed for an alliance with the far-right and those who resolutely refused.

By fracturing internally this way, the already electorally weakened heirs to former Presidents Charles de Gaulle and Jacques Chirac probably sealed their fate for years to come of what used to be France’s main ruling party in the post-war era.

How the snap legislative election provided even more surprises

The French 2024 legislative election has been the most dramatically eventful of the whole post-war 5th Republic, with the latest plot twist of the 7 July second round of the vote the most surprising and unexpected of all.

One possible short version is that unlike Hungary, Italy, or the United States, the French ultimately refused to put the far-right in charge shortly after bringing it themselves to that threshold at the first round of this national election.

On 7 July, taking everybody by surprise including themselves, the French reversed the vote they had cast a week earlier at the 30 June first round.

Defeating all polls, which had been consistent until the last minute and predicted a victory for the far-right, they actually did the opposite and put the New Popular Front leftist coalition ahead at the National Assembly (180 seats out of the total 577) while relegating the far-right, which had come first on 30 June and was the predicted winner, to a sorry third position (143 seats).

Not only did the party of Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella lose to their arch-enemy of the left, which no one thought could possibly win, but they even fell behind the centre-right Macronist coalition Ensemble (163 seats), which everybody had (prematurely) announced dead following two severe consecutive defeats at the European election and the first legislative round. The Macron bloc fared much better than expected thanks to the withdrawal of many candidates from the left at the second round and the vote switch from the New Popular Front to the Macronist Ensemble coalition between the two rounds.

This was a triple surprise. While everybody expected the far-right in power in July with Jordan Bardella as Prime Minister and the troops of le Pen having already packed their boxes to move to Matignon (the headquarters of the Prime Minister and his or her cabinet), France should now logically have the exact opposite: a left government in the next several weeks, though most likely after the Olympic Games, possibly even later.

Explanations of the results

So, what happened?

The main reason for this radical vote inversion between the two rounds and the unexpected reversal of fortune for all three blocs (the leftist New Popular Front, the centre-right Macronist Ensemble, and the far-right of Marine le Pen), is actually simple: round one was largely an anti-Macron vote while round two was an anti-le Pen/Bardella vote.

In between the two rounds, the perceived danger, the existential threat to the nation (the Republic, its institutions, its civil liberties, etc.), and the main enemy changed for the vast majority of the French. For the left voters it was no longer Macron and his already severely weakened centre-right bloc Ensemble, and for the Macronists themselves, it was no longer the “extreme” left incarnated by the now thoroughly demonised figure of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and his “extremist”  France Unbowed “party-of-antisemitic-Hamas-lovers-and-supporters-of-Palestinian-Jew-killers.”

After years spent equating the “extreme left” with the “extreme right” as equally evil – a false symmetry that has become common in mainstream media too – the far-right became again the clear and present danger for the Macronist coalition itself and the mainstream media. Especially since after the first round, no one thought the New Popular Front could win and it was then Jordan Bardella not Jean-Luc Mélenchon who was at the door of power.

On the evening of 30 June after the announcements of the results of round one, both Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, so far sworn enemies, clearly designated the National Rally as their main common enemy.

In a repeat of what is now a French political tradition, the barrage or Front Républicain (Republican Dam or Republican Front, a code term designating the tactical electoral alliance of all “legitimate Republican parties” from the left to the right to prevent the far-right from reaching power) was miraculously recreated in yet another surprise, after being so often declared dead given the steady advances and spectacular electoral successes of Marine le Pen.

France’s “Republican Front” was thus reactivated overnight, and the mutual accords de désistements between the Macronist Ensemble and the New Popular Front coalitions, by which parties strike deals to withdraw their candidates at the second round and give the remaining one a better chance to defeat those from the far-right in the logic of the lesser of two evils, worked their magic. Marine le Pen’s National Rally was once again successfully squeezed out by this double hammer as it had been many times in the past twenty years.

How the National Rally was re-demonised

At least three other factors explain this defeat of the far-right, yet another huge surprise (the fourth of this electoral sequence) since after the first round which had put the Lepenist party ahead and until the very end, it was unanimously given by all as the winner. No one thought the French would or could so radically invert their vote in only one week between the two rounds.

First factor, the well-known glass ceiling of Marine le Pen’s National Rally (the former National Front created by her father, the racist antisemite Jean-Marie le Pen) that has so far prevented it from reaching a majority. This is due to the major electoral weakness of this party: its political isolation and difficulty to find allies to form coalitions and thus expand its electoral base. This was  a crucial necessity in the strongly majoritarian French political system where the imperative at the second round of presidential and legislative elections is to aggregate voters and parties. Unlike all the other parties big and small, the National Rally/National Front was never able to do that, and this latest election confirmed that.

Though it is a strong, large, and expanding party, it remains isolated in France’s political landscape, stripped of allies, at least enough of them to reach a majority.

The second factor is correlated to the first. The dé-diabolisation (“de-demonisation”) strategy of Marine le Pen to transform what used to be a taboo fringe party into a respectable mass party by stripping it of its ugliest elements and dimensions (its origins in the Vichy Regime and French colonial Algeria, its fascist and racist ideological DNA, her own father, etc.), abruptly reached its limits right after their victory of the 30 June first vote.

It’s so far highly effective banalisation (normalisation) stopped abruptly just when it was about to reach power. Faced with that now real possibility, the French recoiled once they saw it could indeed happen. Instead, behind the charming, youthful, smiling face of the charismatic Jordan “Perfect-Son-in-Law” Bardella, the old, ugly, violent, and racist National Front of Marine’s father, Jean-Marie le Pen, reappeared.

Besides the traditional barrage (dam) of the Front Républicain already cited, two things happened.

First, the excellent investigative reporting conducted by the French mainstream media during the crucial week between the two rounds showed quite clearly that despite their sanitisation operation to offer the public a respectable, acceptable, even moderate face, so many of the National Rally candidates had remained the same as those the National Front was under during the time of its founder Jean-Marie le Pen, Marine’s father.

Day after day, the French press excavated countless stories of racism, antisemitism, Nazism, homophobia, physical violence, corruption, and more involving National Rally officials. Literally dozens of Lepenist candidates were outed every single day while many more deleted their social network accounts in panic in order to hide what was there.

This devastating reporting pulverised Marine le Pen’s decade-long effort to reconstruct and present her party in a favourable light as a regular parti Républicain. Within a week, the National Rally of the daughter was effectively re-demonised into the old ugly National Front of the father, which consolidated further the “Republican dam” between the other two Macronist and New Popular Front blocs.

Even the smooth, highly polished and civil PR image Jordan Bardella had carefully crafted with his media coaches to render his party respectable melted under close scrutiny, and an altogether different man, both vacuous, unaccomplished, radicalised, and dangerous for the nation, appeared.

Second, the National Rally contributed to its own defeat through its radical approach. Its electoral programme, especially the measures Bardella kept putting forward (the suppression of the right of the soil, the stigmatisation of binational French citizens as potential traitors, the reduction of immigration to a mere 10,000 per year, a sheer impossibility, the differences made not just between foreigners and citizens but among French citizens themselves) was so un-French, extreme, divisive, and clearly xenophobic, they reeked so much of the Vichy Regime that many voters who would otherwise have abstained decided that France could not be governed by this. For most voters, a good two thirds, the National Rally had once again become its own scarecrow.

The intense campaign week between the two votes thus became an anti-National Rally mobilisation. Parties and voters were largely joined by the mainstream media, both print, radio, and television in their rejection of the National Rally and the now very real possibility of having it in charge a week later. The far-right’s preceding two consecutive victories at the European election and the first legislative round ended up functioning as shock therapy during the last week, shaking many out of their apathy, taking them in a panic to the polling stations to avoid waking up in a France led by Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella, while uniting rival parties and leaders against this common enemy.

This generated a very strong national mobilisation against them and pushed voter participation to its highest level (70%) since the 1997 legislative elections.

Third, and last reason for this surprising result, Jordan Bardella’s week-long campaign was impossibly messy, disorganised, amateurish and confused, scaring voters further. For example, no one was able to understand what their plan was on major issues like the retirement age. Worse, Bardella himself slashed entire chunks of his own electoral program including major promises like ending income tax for people under 30 years old, in an attempt to appear responsible and reassure certain segments of the population like the management and business owners. But those constant, daily U-turns that rendered even their own voters dizzy only seemed to confirm the reputation of incompetence as a governing party that has stuck to the National Rally/National Front since its beginning. Its lack of credible experienced personalities to govern a nation like France or even form a government also became obvious.

All winners, all losers

It can be said that all three blocs are both winners and losers.

The New Popular Front left coalition comes first. . The Macronist “central” bloc avoids another predicted disaster and will instead retain a pivotal, even essential role in whatever future coalition majority may emerge. Though defeated three consecutive times in a month, the electoral arithmetic of the new legislature renders it indispensable: in a fractured tri-partite Assembly that looks like an unsolvable puzzle, an impossible Rubik’s cube, or a broken mirror, there can simply be no majority, and therefore no real governance without the Macronist Ensemble coalition. In a very real sense, despite three severe defeats and popular rejection, what is left of the Macronists keeps the upper hand.

Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella’s far-right National Rally continues to make progress. It maintains its dynamic and loses nothing of the spectacular and steady momentum it has shown in the past three decades, essentially by capitalising on popular discontent and the economic hardship, frustrations, fears, anger, and suffering of the French — its main fuel and the main reason for its success.

A few telling figures: the National Rally had no MP in 2007, two in 2012, eight in 2017, 89 in 2022 (with its few allies from other parties), and now it has 126 all by itself, 143 in its bloc counting the conservatives who joined them.

It is both the largest party of France, the largest at the National Assembly, and the one who got the most votes (32% versus about 25% each for the left and Macronist blocs). All the studies done on its electorate as well as the empirical evidence one can have when one lives in France have shown it has in the past few years made spectacular progress throughout the whole country and all its regions. It is now growing roots just about everywhere. For the first round of 30 June, it simply came first in 93% of the French communes, producing a stunningly monochromatic electoral map of France that only regained colours at the second round. It is also advancing rapidly in all social classes from the rich to the poor and in between, in all ages from the young to the retirees, and among both men and women.

However, in glaring contrast with the quasi systematic pattern of elections under France’s Fifth Republic and its majoritarian system, none of the parties and even none of the three coalitions obtained a majority (a required 289 seats out of the total 577), not even close. It  can therefore also be said that they all lost or that there is no real winner, as Macron wrote in his Letter to the French. Given that each of the three blocs has roughly two thirds of the electorate who did not choose them and each of them has thus been rejected by the vast majority of the voters, the message of the French was clear: “We do not want to be governed by any of you, we do not want any of you in power, at least not solely.”

The far-right of Jordan Bardella-Marine le Pen has once again broken its head against their 30%-35% glass ceiling and its teeth against the recreated barrage Républicain and the popular vote itself. It also looks more isolated than ever. Despite its spectacular progress since Jean-Marie le Pen, power seems more than ever out of reach short of miracles that would give them the extra 15%-20% needed to reach the majority but that they seem unable to find.

The New Popular Front is the real winner, but it now faces several major challenges and a very uncertain future.

The New Popular Front faces a very uncertain future

First, the coalition parties of the left must select a Prime Minister who satisfies its four parties. Given that two  weeks after their victory as these lines are being written they still have not agreed on a name, this clearly is not an easy task, due to the real political and ideological differences in a makeshift coalition torn apart between its pale pink, centre-left, “Macron-compatible” social-democratic pole (the Socialists) and its deep red, hard left (France Unbowed and other fringe parties like the New Anticapitalist Party). Then that candidate must be approved by President Macron.  Once those two hurdles are navigated, it will need to keep together this shaky coalition with profound internal divergences that was assembled overnight, not so much to win, but to prevent the far-right from reaching power and was as such not really meant to last past 7 July. It is also chock- full of strong personalities and aspiring leaders with their clashes of ego that further tear it apart.

They also have to prevent a vote of no-confidence that would topple a left government the Macronists would find unacceptable and too “radical.” Concretely, this means they must secure the good will of at least 100 other MPs to prevent a vote of no-confidence from at least 289 of them (the majority of the 577-seat Assembly). Not to mention the possibility of another parliamentary dissolution and legislative election in one year should Macron decide it, and as the Constitution allows.

The New Popular Front must crucially and substantially expand its parliamentary base and find allies to first avoid being toppled if it forms a government and then get a voting majority. Getting the extra 100 MPs from other groups, especially from Macron’s centre-right bloc Ensemble, to vote with them if it wants to pass any law and implement any part of its programme will not be easy.

There is little to nothing in the current electoral program of the New Popular Front that could attract enough votes from any other bloc. In that respect, Jean-Luc Melenchon’s promise after their victory that they must form a government to “implement our programme, all our programme, and only our programme” is totally unrealistic and mathematically impossible given the arithmetic of the new legislative Assembly. Which incidentally, creates another rift within the left coalition between those who refuse to compromise with the Macronist central bloc and those who recognise they will have no other choice given the New Popular Front, though number one, is still so far from a voting majority and thus unable to govern all by itself.

The risk is therefore a legislative and political deadlock, due to the Fifth Republic being a political system and culture designed for two major dominant political forces (parties or coalitions, one from the right one from the left with regular alternance between the two as has been mostly the case so far) but not for three blocs, and even less three blocs with more or less equal strengths. This is however the case now, and for the French, this is quite a new situation they don’t know to handle.

It means that provided the New Popular Front gets to form the next government or at least be a substantial part of it, at a strict minimum since they constitute at most a third of the Assembly, they will have to seriously edulcorate their programme and put water in their wine. A lot of water. Maybe so much their voters would no longer taste the promised wine, recognise their electoral program, and will end up considering they have been once again betrayed by the left, with severe consequences for the 2027 presidential election.

Above all, the New Popular Front will not only have to pass in less than three years before 2027 enough of its measures, even in moderated forms, to prove it is a viable and trustworthy governing force, or it will alienate its own voters who may then abandon them. But with that 2027 Damocles Sword above its head, it must significantly, concretely, and rapidly improve the daily lives of the French, who struggle economically so much, with most of them now unable or barely able make ends meet. For this, it certainly cannot count on Macron, the Macronists, or the far-right for support or good will, as their adversaries have every interest in seeing this new left coalition fail if it manages to form a government approved by the President. A success on their part would indeed mean they will probably win the Presidency too in 2027.

If the New Popular Front is in government and fails, it will be primarily the far-right of Marine le Pen-Jordan Bardella, who thrives on popular discontent, hardship, political disillusion and disappointment, who will benefit the most from their debacle. Marine le Pen is already in an ambush position for 2027.

A Macronist democratic coup?

Since the second round of 7 July, Macron and his camp have been relentlessly manoeuvring to ignore, change and even cancel the vote of the French through cynical deals between party apparatuses that aim to outplay and marginalise the New Popular Front, if not to completely exclude it from government despite the fact it came first and is the largest bloc.

The French very clearly rejected Macron and his policies at the ballot box, they did so three consecutive times in a month, so the message is clear. For their second and final legislative vote, they put the left first and it is now the largest of the three blocs. As the tradition of the Fifth Republic requires and as has always been the case, the new Prime Minister and the next government must come from the largest force at the National Assembly, therefore the left.

Yet, not only has Macron not called, written, talked to, or met with any of the New Popular Front leaders to approach them as potential Prime Ministers, as he should, but he and his political allies  have been meeting with leaders from the right including Marine le Pen herself. Shockingly, they now talk openly of selecting a Prime Minister from the conservative right (which only got a mere 66 seats and 8% of the vote while the left coalition has 180 seats and received 26% of the vote) then form a government of the centre-right.

Since their defeat, the Macronists have actually tried to build an alternative coalition with the conservatives of the Droite Républicaine/Republican Right party to prevent the left from governing and exclude them from the game. Macron himself and the centrist and conservative leaders are also trying to fracture and dismember the New Popular Front through wedge politics, declaring everywhere that Jean-Luc Melenchon’s France Unbowed cannot be included in any future government, that one cannot work with or talk to them because they are “anti-Republican”, “extremist”, “antisemitic”, and even “insurrectionist.” Those are all laughable and slanderous accusations, yet in France they have acquired the force of truth, even among many of France Unbowed’s own allies within the New Popular Front.

The strategy here is to detach France Unbowed (the largest party of the New Popular Front, the one with the most MPs, and the most leftist) from the other three parties of the coalition which the Macronists and conservatives call legitimate and respectable (the Socialists, the Greens, and the Communists).

Lately, all the leaders of the Macronist bloc and the conservative right have been openly blackmailing the New Popular Front and Macron himself (who must approve the new Prime Minister) by threatening to immediately topple any future government by a vote of no confidence if the Prime Minister comes from France Unbowed or even if a left government includes a single minister from that party. Macron himself is playing that game by delineating the contours of the “legitimate” parties he will accept in what he calls “the Republican camp” or the “Republican arc” as going from the social-democrats (essentially the Socialists and the Greens) to the conservative right. Thus, excluding from any future government not just the far-right National Rally (though with 126 MPs out of 577 it is actually the largest party by far) but also France Unbowed, itself the largest party of the left. He recently declared he will not govern with them either.

Here, the goal is clear: to split and weaken numerically the left coalition by severing it of its largest party so what is left of the New Popular Front will be, first, even more dependent on the Macronist bloc to pass any law, second, separated from their more leftist component (France Unbowed), and third, forced to abandon their programme or at least dilute their electoral measures to the point where they will be unrecognisable.

This is starting to look like a coup de force, if not a “democratic coup d’état” on the part of the Macronist and conservative parties who try to stay in power after being squarely defeated and rejected at the ballot box three times in a month.

At a minimum, all this manoeuvring, blackmailing, and setting of conditions on the part of those who lost constitutes a clear attempt to deny the vote of the French by deliberately ignoring the fact that it is the left who came first and therefore, in the tradition the Fifth Republic, must be the ones to select the next Prime Minister and form the government.

Yet lately, this is not where things are going.

For the far-right, a momentary setback

Despite the disappointing outcome of the second round, the National Rally and its le Pen-Bardella dynamic duo is actually in a comfortable position. It preserves its main card: that of the “only-real-opposition-to- ‘the-system’”, the “only alternative”, and the sole party that will still not have been tested in power when the time comes for the 2027 presidential election.

Le Pen-Bardella may simply have suffered a momentary setback, taking a step backward for an even bigger leap forward in 2027.

The far-right will thus not suffer but, on the contrary, benefit from the mess, political chaos, and possible institutional deadlocks, popular disappointment, or policy failures of those who govern.

Le Pen-Bardella may simply have suffered a momentary setback, taking a step backward for an even bigger leap forward in 2027, or as the French say, reculer pour mieux sauter. It is actually better for them not to be in power now, especially in such a chaotic situation and with a restricted window of opportunity until 2027 to prove their worth as rulers of a nation. The experience of power may have been fatal to them and they probably feel relieved that they will not have to manage a country in such a bad political, cultural, economic, and financial situation, under close surveillance from the increasingly concerned EU, financial markets, investors, and credit rating agencies. Staying in the opposition and blaming, pointing, and accusing is so much easier, especially when you know their loss will be your gains.

For Muslims, the worst was avoided

Regarding France’s Muslims and other racialised minorities, at the very least they have avoided the worst.

Needless to say, on all issues regarding Islam, Muslims, national identity, culture, integration, immigration, the program of the National Rally, largely borrowed from Marine le Pen’s 2022 Presidential program, was a most hostile one promising only further hardship and exclusion. Their right-wing allies at the National Assembly such as Eric Zemmour’s Reconquest are even more extreme in their heinous and racist targeting of foreigners, immigrants from the South, Muslims, and Islam, cloaked as is now routine as a “fight-against-Islamism-for-the-defense-of-Republican-values-especially-laicity.”

Despite their vociferous denial, the far-right’s real ambition seems to be the creation of a nativist, all-white or mostly white homogenous society of citizens purged of its ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity.

Besides the predictable “end to population settlement [read: immigration] and family reunion laws,”  the promotion of “national preference”, and a slew of tough-on-crime, law-and-order measures that are always the trademarks and main priorities of the far-right everywhere, the National Rally even includes such radical and ironically truly anti-French proposals such as ending the right of the soil (which has existed since the 16^th century for children born of foreign parents) in order to stop “the migratory invasion”, and the suppression of most forms of state assistance to foreigners including emergency medical aid.

Most alarmingly for Muslims, Marine le Pen and Jordan Bardella also planned to  “close all radical mosques,” “dissolve all associations from the ultra-left [read: all those they will deem “Islamist”] and from the ultra-right,” ban hijabs (and most likely other “Islamic” outfits) everywhere including universities and the street, “ban Islamist ideologies”, and more in the same vein [read: suppress anyone and anything that just looks too visibly Islamic to them].

The far-right’s real ambition seems to be the creation of a nativist, all-white or mostly white homogenous society of citizens purged of its ethnic, religious, and cultural diversity

Worse, given they would have quickly been forced into economic realism since France is essentially broke (a threat now looming over the New Popular Front and severely limiting its future) — as evidence of that Jordan Bardella had already given up or postponed to an undetermined future most of his major socio-economic promises for helping the popular classes — a National Rally in power would have been tempted to give priorities to the cultural and identarian portions of their programs such as laicity (the falsified and weaponised type), “Islamism,” “separatism,” “integration,” and immigration, as diversion from their inability to fulfil their economic promises and mark their difference with the rest.

A break in Islamophobia?

With the recentring to the left of the political landscape thanks to the largest bloc that includes the most genuinely anti-Islamophobic and anti-racist political force of France (France Unbowed) and other genuinely anti-Islamophobic parties like the Greens, not to mention many sincerely anti-racist and authentically humanist and universalist leaders, Muslims and other minorities should see a pause in the slew of Islamophobic laws and initiatives that has sadly characterised the Macron years.

Since its creation in 2017, France Unbowed, which at 74 MPs is the largest party of the left including within the New Popular Front (180 seats total) has also been by far the strongest – actually the only – French political voice against Islamophobia in France and one of the strongest in Europe. The others, including from the left, have been at best silent and utterly passive about it, when they were not purely and simply refusing to use the word “Islamophobia” arguing it was coined by the Iranian regime to vilify the West, split their societies, or prevent the criticism of Islam.

In the French landscape, it is also the only party who dares talk about and denounce systemic and state racism – in a country where the mere use of those terms can cause you to be sued for incitement to violence against France – and the only one to have inscribed in its program the abrogation of the infamous “laws against Islamist separatism,” a major part of Macron’s “Systemic Obstruction Policy.”

Given the new political arithmetic and the dilemmas explained above, the risk is now that even France Unbowed will tone down their strong anti-Islamophobia rhetoric, moderate or silence their much-needed positions, or be forced into compromises out of fear of introducing dissent within the New Popular Front.

Consensual calls for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza

Nonetheless, on issues like Palestine-Israel and Gaza, besides the consensual calls for an immediate cease-fire, the program of the New Popular Front somewhat surprisingly includes many of France Unbowed’s own proposals, including “ending the French government’s support to the right-wing Supremacist government of Netanyahu”, “the liberation of the Palestinian political prisoners”, an “embargo on weapons sales to Israel” (among other sanctions), the “immediate recognition of the Palestinian State within its UN 1967 borders,” and “the organisation of free Palestinian elections under international supervision.” All things absent from the programs of the other parties.

The program of the New Popular Front somewhat surprisingly include[s]… “ending the French government’s support to… [Netanyahu’s] Supremacist government, “the liberation of the Palestinian political prisoners”, [and] an “embargo on weapons sales to Israel”.

It also proposes to abrogate many of the recent and most xenophobic laws targeting populations from the Global South (especially Muslims) such as the Migration & Asylum Pact, while facilitating access to French nationality.

All those strong and principled measures show the influence of France Unbowed within the New Popular Front. Whether they will be able to maintain that influence or lose their relative domination over the French left to the advantage of the far more moderate, centre-left/social-liberal, Macron-compatible, rose pale (pale pink) Socialists is another story. We may want to remember here that Macron was after all Socialist President François Hollande’s Minister of the Economy, and with Hollande back to politics as newly elected MP, the future centre of gravity of French political life may well be a Parliamentary alliance between the Socialist party and the Macronist Ensemble coalition, which would marginalise France Unbowed.

The next three years may finally give a break to Muslims and other racialised minorities, who may be able to breathe better in a less toxic, less racist and Islamophobic atmosphere.

In any case, the stigmatising debates and false problems around Islamic outfits, laicité, “Islamism”, and more will for sure continue to be used as diversion and scapegoats. The hard conservatives of Les Républicains, the far-right, and/or the Macronist centre may be tempted to propose new repressive measures to capitalise as they have done for years on the strong French anti-immigration and anti-Islam sentiments. But with the New Popular Front as the largest coalition and itself an indispensable player, unless the “centrist” Macronist bloc sides with the far-right to get a majority on this or that text, it will be hard for any party or coalition to pass new laws like the burqa ban or the “anti-separatism” bill.

Hopefully, the next three years may finally give a break to Muslims and other racialised minorities, who may be able to breathe better in a less toxic, less racist and Islamophobic atmosphere.

Conclusion

The 2024 electoral sequence, which will remain in history, has produced an unprecedented French political situation which its actors, and the French in general, will have to learn how to navigate for probably quite a long time.

This stunning electoral sequence that just ended is only the beginning. France is now in a transitional period that will last months and possibly years, and it is impossible to predict what may ultimately come out of it.

If the New Popular Front is able to maintain its unity and exert influence, Muslims and other racialised minorities should, as said above, benefit from a break until at least 2027 and fare better than they have under Macron, when the discrimination, racism, stigmatisation, and scapegoating has been intense.

Regarding Palestine and Israel, it is unfortunately unlikely that we will see much change in French policies: the only genuinely pro-Palestinian party (France Unbowed) in this otherwise extremely rich and diverse political landscape that goes from the revolutionary left to the far right is itself a minority within its own New Popular Front coalition which is itself, even taken together as a bloc, a minority within the new Assembly. And all the other parties, blocs, and leaders including the Macronists (and Macron himself), the conservative Republicans, and the far right, which taken together are a majority, are all unconditional pro-Israeli parties — none of which ever did or say anything concrete about the massacre of Palestinians still under way. They will for sure oppose any initiative from the New Popular Front that would either try to put pressure on Israel or seek to redirect French policies in a more pro-Palestinian direction.

Despite emerging figures like Rima Hassan (but she is a European MP not a French one), the political situation that emerged from the election should not give Netanyahu much cause to worry or much hope for the Palestinians.

*Portions of this paper appeared in the Middle East Eye, France elections: Voters rejected the far-right. What happens next?