CFaced with its biggest test since World War II, France’s republican camp has resisted admirably and courageously. More than 200 left- and center-leaning candidates withdrew in the second round of parliamentary elections on Sunday, leaving the field free for better-positioned rivals to challenge Marine Le Pen’s far-right opponent. Their sacrifice has paid off in a way no one expected: Le Pen’s National Rally party (RN), which won the first round with a nearly absolute majority, has fallen to third place.
This is a welcome outcome in a time when the rise of right-wing nationalism is happening at the same time as a decline in trust in mainstream politics. Emmanuel Macron’s feckless election allowed the RN to significantly increase its number of representatives in the National Assembly. But high voter turnout across France led millions of voters to join the forces opposed to the RN, hiding very real differences. They did so to oust a party with a xenophobic core that is at odds with republican values of equality and inclusion. The RN’s plan to exclude dual nationals from key public offices has proved politically more harmful than beneficial. candidate Their racist views and sympathies for Putin were made public on social media, sparking widespread revulsion.
What happens next is much less clear, to say the least. A last-ditch stand has split parliament into three main blocs with no clear path to a stable majority. The second surprise of the weekend was the rise to power of the New Popular Front (NPF), a hastily assembled broad-based left-wing coalition. But to take power, the NPF would need the support of a significant number of Macron’s Renaissance MPs, who would be reluctant to make any deals with Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s radical left.
Meanwhile, Macron might want to bring back a centrist government, perhaps made up of a reinvigorated center-left Socialist party and center-right Republicans. But the president is not in a position to call the shots, given that his parliamentary coalition lost about a third of its seats to fall into second place. Weeks, if not months, of negotiations loom, with outgoing Prime Minister Gabriel Attal staying on as caretaker prime minister.
This is an unsatisfactory, unstable mess, and the president is to blame. For Le Pen, whose main target in the 2027 presidential election is the Élysée Palace, political paralysis will only help her achieve her goals. If deep-rooted anger over falling living standards, especially in less affluent cities and rural areas, goes unaddressed, she will find an ever-growing number of disgruntled citizens eager to hear her out.
In that light, and with a sense of humility after the mayhem he has caused, Macron should look at the numbers and allow the narrowly-victorious center-left to set the policy agenda. Marrington Delia Having risen to prominence in this former mining town and RN stronghold, she showed signs of representing a viable progressive alternative to Le Pen, and some of the NPF’s platforms showed signs of a more aggressive policy course to counter the radical right: a focus on increased spending on health and education, for example, should now be at the heart of the national debate.
The republican camp held on, but in times of increasing uncertainty, French mainstream politics cannot afford to repeatedly turn to it at extreme moments.
