TPosters on the streets of Montreuil, east of Paris, still flutter in the breeze, days after the stages, microphones and politicians who gathered to inaugurate France’s new government have left.
Here, from the smoldering ashes of a domestically bickering left, an anti-far-right coalition has risen.
The New Popular Front (NFP) is a nervous coalition of the Socialist Party (PS), the Green Party (EELV), the Communist Party (PCF), the far-left Unyielding Party (LFI) and other Red Flag candidates that opinion polls suggest is the country’s best (or maybe only) hope of thwarting the National Union (RN) majority government in the final vote of parliamentary elections due in two weeks’ time.
For France’s Socialist party, allying with the LFI was a tough sell after its outspoken leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon insulted and attacked their European campaign leader, Raphaël Glucksmann. But Glucksmann says it has to be accepted to win what he calls “the mother of all battles.”
“It’s complicated… I wouldn’t say it’s a love marriage,” he said of the new left-wing coalition.
The coalition agreed to divide the electoral districts so that left-wing candidates would not face off against their opponents. But the launch of the coalition in Montreuil last Monday evening was tense after the shock announcement that five LFI deputies had been dropped from the election, including the city’s outgoing councillor, Alexis Corbière, a critic of Mélenchon. Corbière and his partner, Raquel Garrido, an LFI deputy in the neighbouring district of Seine-Saint-Denis who was also dropped from the election, are now running as independents and NFP candidates.
Establishing a program for the hastily assembled NFP hydra (most of which hate each other) meant swallowing even more medicine and making compromises.
Its manifesto includes raising the minimum wage, freezing prices of basic goods and energy, scrapping the pension age at 64 and lowering it to 60, and raising income, property, wealth and inheritance taxes. The party denies opposition claims that this would cost 100-200 billion euros but has yet to provide its own figures.
Emeric Bréhier, director of the Observatory of Political Life at the Jean-Jaurès think tank, said the prospect of a Liberal Democrat majority in the 577-seat National Assembly forced the left to overcome deep political differences.
“They risked being defeated separately and letting the RN and Emmanuel Macron’s parties through. By joining forces nationally, we can win as many votes as possible. [NFP] “We want to advance as many candidates as possible to the second round,” Brehier said.
“The RN has not put a foot wrong in this election campaign. It has gained trust and made people think it is a normal party. It is saying what people want to hear. To fight the RN, the left has had to work together, compromise and form a separate political force,” he said.
Macron has called for early elections. announced a centrist alliance As the only political alternative to Marine Le Pen and RN leader Jordan Bardella. Opinion polls suggest otherwise. Vote Les Echos Opinion Way A poll on Saturday suggested the RN still had a large lead on first-round voting intentions with 35 percent, followed by the NFP on 28 percent and Mr Macron’s coalition on 22 percent. Those questioned said the cost of living, immigration and social security were their priorities.
Brehier said the expected high voter turnout and fewer candidates this time could lead to more “triangles” – the unusual situation in which three candidates, instead of two, make it to the second round. In the past, when two parties faced off against the far right, one would often withdraw to avoid splitting the vote.
So far, the PS and LFI have said they will advise voters to support candidates who will exclude the RN after the first round of voting next Sunday.
But unlike previous elections, in which voters from all walks of life have tended to vote against the far right, this may be different: To many in France, Mélenchon’s far-left stance is just as repulsive as Le Pen’s far-right stance.
Last week, France men’s soccer team captain Kylian Mbappé warned voters to avoid “extreme”, a comment that was interpreted as a criticism of the far-right as well as the far-left LFI. Holocaust documentary activist and Nazi hunter Serge Klarsfeld has said that if he had to choose between the RN and the LFI, he would vote for the far-right, as has French-Jewish philosopher and Alain Finkelkraut, a member of the Academie Française. Philosopher Bernard-Henri-Lévy has chosen a position that is neither right nor left.
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Frédéric Sawicki, professor of political science at the Sorbonne, said: Rejecting the Equality of “Extremes” And they tried to reassure moderate-left voters who were hesitant to support the LFI candidate by suggesting that other coalition members would neutralize the more extreme elements of the far-left.
“There are big differences between the RN and the LFI. The LFI is currently in a coalition government with a democratic platform. In any case, there is no guarantee that the LFI will win the most seats in the coalition government, which means it will have to work with the Socialists and other parties. [in parliament],” He said.
“The real danger is an RN government, so we hope that voters will not abstain in the second round and will vote without wavering between the NFP and RN candidates.”
Speaking at Montreuil city hall, France’s Communist mayor Patrice Bessac said an RN government would upset everyone in the town, which has a large immigrant population from more than 60 countries, and pose a wider threat to France’s diversity and social cohesion.
“People here are scared, they know that the first targets of the far-right are immigrant and working-class areas like ours,” Bessac said.
“The threat from the far right means that the left must put aside their differences and campaign together. The only thing that matters is that we propose a new path for the country that is not RN.”
Glucksmann, whose Socialist party led a relatively successful European election campaign (finishing a close third to Macron’s party), said he understood the reluctance of his party’s “social democrat, environmentalist and pro-European” supporters to vote for the LFI candidate, but said unity was the only way to avoid a “terrible victory”.
in Le Monde Editorial He wrote: “We must prevent France from sinking into the abyss within a few days. This is the mother of all battles, the battle that makes all others possible. There is little time left, very little, and history is watching us.”
