France: Left and Pro-Establishment Parties Unite to Keep Le Pen’s National Rally From Power
The France24 TV: “More than 210 left-wing or Macronist candidates … have already withdrawn in order to block the far right from winning a majority.”
With Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (NR) party expected to emerge as the biggest party in the second and final round of voting on July 7, pro-establishment parties in France are working behind the scenes to prevent the right-wing party from building the next government by winning an absolute majority.
In the first round of the vote held on July 1, the nationalist National Rally won over 33 percent of the vote, indicating that the party could win between 230 and 280 seats. Le Pen’s party will need 289 seats to secure a majority in the 650-member French parliament.
More than 200 candidates, ranging from Communist to pro-EU parties, have dropped out of the race for the second round of the vote. The move is expected to unite the vote behind candidates considered most likely to beat their National Rally rivals in individual constituencies.
“More than 210 left-wing or Macronist candidates qualified for the run-off round of the legislative elections have already withdrawn in order to block the far right from winning a majority, according to a provisional count by AFP,” the state-run France24 TV channel reported Tuesday.
The French newspaper Le Monde on Friday the final poll projection before Sunday’s vote:
The far-right Rassemblement National (RN) could obtain the largest group in the French Assemblée Nationale, with 175 to 205 seats, including its new allies who joined from the conservative Les Républicains (LR) party, but without an absolute majority. It is therefore looking like there will be an unstable Assemblée, or even alternative coalitions, according to the Ipsos Talan electoral poll (…). Two days before the second round of voting, the expected turnout remains extremely strong, ranging between 66% and 70%, compared with the 66.7% turnout in the first round.
While the far right looks set to double its numbers, the second-ranked bloc, the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) left-wing alliance, could win 145 to 175 seats .(…)
In third place, President Emmanuel Macron’s coalition formed by MoDem, Renaissance and Horizons could drop from 245 seats in the previous legislature to between 118 to 148 seats.
Despite ‘unite the vote’ effort, the National Rally is likely to emerge at the largest party in the parliament, giving it the opportunity to form a coalition government with the Republicans. Le Pen and party’s prime ministerial candidate, Jordan Bardella, have so far denied interest in joining a coalition government.
In the upcoming second round, the Republican candidates have aligned themselves with the leftist bloc to weaken National Rally’s chances of winning a majority.
If the National Rally falls short of a majority and decides to join the opposition, this, too, could spell trouble for President Macron, who will have to contend with a large hostile bloc in the parliament.
The NR opposes Macron’s pro-EU policies that erode French sovereignty and transfer power to unelected Eurocrats in Brussels. The right-wing party is also opposed to the EU’s open borders policy that is causing a demographic shift in Europe as the continent is swarmed by illegal immigrants from Muslim-dominated North Africa and the Middle East.
Electoral gains by the French right-wing party could have a spillover effect in neighbouring countries, EU political elites fear. “A potential victory of the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) in France’s snap legislative elections has sparked fears of a wider Euroscepticism wave across the bloc, compounding the far-right’s surge in the recent EU elections, the pro-EU news website Euractiv noted recently.
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Defeating the voters is different in parliamentary systems. Here it just takes soap opera news to defeat them.
I can’t imagine these people voluntarily gave in like this. A few of them might be such incredible ideologues but not that many. How much were they paid?
30 shekels of silver each.
There will be deals being made. Nothing in politics happens “just because”.
It’s absolutely laughable to describe NR as ‘far right.’ It really is not. It spends little, if any, energy on typical lightening rod social issues like abortion, gay and transgender rights. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything to suggest that NR or Le Pen wants to unwind socialized medicine. I would say its platform on most domestic issues damn near mirrors Bill Clinton’s positions during the 1990s….perhaps even a bit further to the left than Clinton (as he was then).
ALL the opposition from the left & the media to Le Pen and National Rally centers almost exclusively on preserving a French national identity by limiting immigration and foreign entanglements, National Rally wants to. Its critics don’t.
It’s only far right because these clowns have lurched so far to the left we look a million miles away from them when in fact we haven’t changed our views and beliefs at all!!
You’re falling for a linguistic fallacy, that terms have to make sense.
“Far right” doesn’t mean “far to the right”, as in extremely conservative. The “far right” isn’t really on the usual left-right spectrum; it’s off in its own realm. Le Pen is accurately described as “far right”, but on the normal spectrum she’s actually solidly on the left. She’s an outright socialist; in Bernie Sanders / Elizabeth Warren territory. But she’s anti-immigration and anti-immigrant, and leads a party that used to be frankly neo-nazi, though she’s heavily reformed it, so she’s “far right”.
We have a country where:
A) The party in power ignores what the people want in the name of Leftist ideological correctness.
B) What passes for opposition party(s) care not a whit for what the people want.
C) The physical soil of the country is literally invaded occupied by a huge, hostile foreign army that is functionally above the law of the country.
D) There is an election, and the ruling party gets its collective gluteus maximus, minimus, and medialis handed to it and a party that actually might do what the people want gets most of the votes. The response of the once ruling party is to ally itself with its former opposition to thwart the will of the people.
Now, despite what seems like eerie resemblances to our own poor country; the country involved is France. Now it is a point of pride to our educational establishment that American students have no knowledge of the means and motives for the establishment of our own country. For most Americans, understanding of French history is at the level of animated cartoons or perhaps a Mel Brooks movie.
Besides being a history buff all my life, while in college I studied it, including quite a bit on the French Revolution and Napoleon.
The European approach to politics, and especially with their history the French approach to politics, is very, very different to our own. The Anglo-Saxon evolution of politics that eventually became our own deliberately tries to avoid mass bloodshed when things reach an impasse. Which is possible when say an electoral approach works. The key is what happens when the electoral approach does not work.
France has shown what happens when electoral, peaceful politics do not work. France as a Republic is younger than our relatively juvenile country. Since 1789 they have had 2 monarchies, one “Consulate”, one “Directory”, two Empires, and 5 Republics; each with their own Constitution, laws, and political systems with their own definitions of legitimacy.
“Every [French] head of state from 1814 to 1873 spent part of his life in exile. Every regime was the target of assassination attempts of a frequency that put Spanish and Russian politics in the shade. Even in peaceful times governments changed every few months. In less peaceful times, political deaths, imprisonments and deportations are literally incalculable.”
These are NOT a people you deliberately disrespect when you are in power, nor [with their even more ancient history] do you encourage their occupation by a more ancient foreign enemy. This is likely to get far more untidy than we expect over here.
And if our own Anglo-Saxon political approach ever fails . . .
Subotai Bahadur
If your populace has a tendency, and ability, to revolt, those in power want to remove one of those. Either replace the population with people so dependent on the government that they’d never revolt, or take away their means via gun control.
Which method those in power choose depends on the country.
The Muslim fifth column in France is guaranteed to revolt as their prime directive, deliver France to Islam, mandates it. If France’s ruling parties believe otherwise they are fools.
Exactly. They need to deal with them now or it will be too late. Perhaps it already is. Very messy and ugly business.
@randian: Macron and the French leadership, as far as I can tell, are a bunch of fools when it comes to Islamicization.
“If France’s ruling parties believe otherwise they are fools.”
I’m gonna have to go with “they are fools” on that one..
Masterful and educational résumé of French history.
Well put. The pot is boiling, the lid is clamped down tight, and all the chefs agree that there’s no problem adding more heat. This won’t end well in France (or in much of the rest of Europe, for that matter.) Rather than allow a controlled release of pressure and a reduction of heat with Le Pen they’re going to continue as if nothing is wrong… and the resulting expulsion will be inevitable and much more destructive.
I’ve been saying for a while that the future of Europe is war. Not country vs country, but ugly civil war followed by dictatorship. Probably sooner than anyone thinks. The oh-so-civilized Europeans go from decedent pseudo-socialism to full-on fascism like a light switch is being flipped. When their Muslim populations reach the (rapidly approaching) point where they feel confident enough to start making real pushes for power both the European left and right will bend over… but the people won’t. And Europeans are very, very good at… umm… *thinning* their populations of unwanted minorities. And the French in particular have a fetish about head choppin’.
Damn it, “DECADENT.” Not “decedent.”
The real problem in France is that the situation is becoming like early 1930s Germany — the far left is as anti-democrat as the far right, but the collapse of the traditional parties means that putting together a governing coalition under the voting system will be difficult if not impossible.
hmmm
the “far right” vs the far left” >>both anti democratic????
how so?
at the bottom line is as follows:
the far right are nativists meaning they want to protect the rights of the people born in that country more than any immigrants
the far left wants to put immigrants rights over the natives
now if someone comes into your house ( invited or not)
and wants to eat the last bit of food you have vs your own child having that last bit of food
are you morally in the wrong for giving your OWN CHILD that last bite of food??
I say no you are not wrong you are correct in doing so
Why is there going to be a “Round Two”… isn’t one election sufficient?
Governments love power and loathe giving it up. Here in the US, we created a Ranked Choice voting system and “Open” primaries — both intended to keep populist upstarts from threatening the careers of entrenched politicians.. In a similar fashion, France holds a second election to isolate its ruling classes from snap elections by giving themselves the opportunity to limit or reverse the damage.
Notice how Macron is instructing his coalition to side with the Communists in order to prevent Le Pen’s coalition from taking a majority. This is no different than all those Republicans who announced their retirement in 2018 so the Democrats could take the Congress and stop Trump and the MAGA agenda.
Sure, the French “Republicans” (just like our beloved Republicans) will make all the noises about how we need to stop the Left’s agenda and beg for donations (of course) and in the end wind up helping the Left.
spotttt on!!
I have not heard anyone other than myself and maybe a few others even talk about
the RCV and cumulative voting etc to make sure they stay in power
thats why the rinos were so against trump
he ruined the agreement that the gop has with the leftists on keeping themselves secured in their ruling over the plebs
Don’t be silly.
There’s a second round because in many seats nobody got a majority.
The US and the UK have a completely unfair “first past the post” system. We just saw what an unfair outcome it produced in the UK. Some states have second rounds, such as GA and LA.
FrechEXIT??
or
frexit