French President Emmanuel Macron’s gamble of a snap parliamentary poll has miserably failed to pay off in the first round of voting. Instead of helping him consolidate his position, it has created a situation in which the Far Right – National Rally party (RN) led by Marine Le Pen, is moving fast towards its goal of forming its first ever government in the post-war history of France. After having tasted ignominious defeat in last month’s European polls at the hands of the RN, Macron took the supposedly foolhardy step to dissolve the parliament controlled by his party and went for the snap poll hoping the historic levels of support for the RN would go down once voters, not wedded to the Far Right ideology, were confronted with the prospect of a radical Right government for the first time in post-war France. He possibly had not judged the mood of his people.
The results of the first round of voting on 30 June leave no one in doubt as to the utter folly and high risk taken by Macron with his poll decision. A high turnout saw RN comfortably win first place with 33.1 per cent of votes, almost two points up compared with what it had got three weeks ago in the European parliamentary polls. If one considers results of the first round of the 2022 presidential polls, the figures appear even more startling for France’s liberal tradition. Marine Le Pen then got 1.3 million votes less.
To set the record straight, this is the first time the party founded by the anti-Semitic and neo-Fascist Jean-Marie Le Pen has broken through the 20 per cent barrier in a legislative election. Macron’s party has been so discredited that even the hastily assembled New Popular Front (NPF), comprising Left forces, secured 28 per cent of votes. Macron’s Centrist coalition trailed far behind occupying third position with 20.8 per cent votes. The outcome is such that the President is in danger of becoming the lamest of the lame duck Presidents should Marine Le Pen’s youthful protégé, Jordan Bardella, become the next Prime Minister after the second round of voting on 7 July which is a likely prospect.
It goes to the credit of Marine Le Pen that she has succeeded in rebranding her father’s party, distancing it from its anti-Semitic and neo-Fascist roots and incorporating in its political agenda the economic discontent of the populace. During the ongoing election campaign, Bardella is even talking about big spending commitments. All the same, the party’s deeply authoritarian, xenophobic political line remains intact. One testimony to this is the plan to exclude dual nationals from sensitive professions. France has one of Europe’s biggest minority ethnic populations. But, that has not deterred the Far Right party from presenting before the electorate a political agenda that seeks to marginalise and stigmatise French-born citizens who are not white. A mooted law to combat “Islamist ideologies” and a proposal to ban headscarves from public places clearly show to what extent Islamophobia drives the party’s cultural agenda. This is only because France is suffering from acute Islamic action and the local populace, the French people, are in no mood to tolerate the irritating behaviour and actions of the Moslem population that has seen a large increase in recent years. In brief, the French mood seems very anti Moslem and the RN seems prepared to cash in.
It also has plans for new legal protections for the police which is an euphemism for allowing the force to take aggressive measures against the minorities – mostly Jews and Moslems.
Significantly, Alice Weidel, the co-chair of the Far Right Alternative for Germany, hailed the results “with admiration and respect,” noting that Marine Le Pen’s party was a role model.
There is still a faint hope for Macron as France’s two-round electoral system means candidates can drop out to allow voters to form a single bloc of opposition to the radical Right. The situation is so desperate that Macron and his coalition have to immediately cobble up an alliance with the Left shedding their allergy as only five days are left for the second round of voting. If he fails, a party that does not care a fig for the republican values that laid the foundation of modern France will surge ahead and form a government. This will spell doom for both France and the European Union.