Surpassing its wildest expectations, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally turned in its best-ever performance in parliamentary elections on Sunday, increasing its number of MPs from eight to 89. Le Pen is to focus on leading the parliamentary group to make the most of its new-found powers, but can it convince?
Heading into the polls, National Rally (RN) heavy-weights said they were confident they could win a large parliamentary group, and on Friday Le Pen spoke of "winning 60" of the 577 seats in the National Assembly.
In the end they did far better, securing 89.
Le Pen called it "a divine surprise" while a party big wig said it was no less than "a tsunami".
"The people have chosen to send a very powerful group of National Rally MPs to the assembly, by far the most numerous of our political history," a triumphant Le Pen told supporters in her fiefdom of Henin-Beaumont on Sunday night.
Political scientist Jean-Yves Camus, a specialist on the far right, told RFI the tsunami reference was not exaggerated.
"It’s uncontestable, because with proportional representation in 1986 the National Front got 35 MPs, now they have 89 with a two-round [winner takes all] vote which is a lot less advantageous. It's a tsunami when you compare it to the 60 or so seats Marine Le Pen said she was hoping for on Friday."
Getting that result required mobilising the electorate, which the party did.
"There was momentum and once more we underestimated RN's capacities," Camus says.
RN have made inroads way beyond its heartlands of Hauts-de-France in the north and on the Mediterranean coast.
They won swathes of new territory, with "spectacular breakthroughs" in Picardy, Champagne, part of Burgundy, and in the southwest, the analyst adds.
New powers
Having a parliamentary group will bring immediate benefits for a party that up until now remained on the National Assembly sidelines.
There are financial advantages for a start – RN is set to receive some 10 million euros each year for the next five years, a welcome windfall for a party deep in debt.
It will also gain more visibility, more speaking time and have more say in how the assembly works.
The group will benefit from access to constitutional rights like proposing motions, putting forward no-confidence votes and deferring laws to the constitutional council, Camus explains.
"Can Emmanuel Macron do what he wants? No, he can't," Le Pen said on Monday morning.
Macron's proposal to raise the retirement age from 62 to 65, which encountered strong opposition, was "buried", she said, adding that RN MPs could now carry out the will of the people and lead an "extremely firm but constructive opposition".
The need to appear useful
In terms of seats, RN is behind the left-wing NUPES alliance which won 137. But since that alliance brings together Jean-Luc Mélenchon's France Unbowed, the Greens and Socialists, RN sees itself as the largest single opposition group.
As such, the populist party lays claim to leading the finance commission and the vice-presidency – prestigious posts which traditionally fall to the largest group in opposition.
"We have MPs with RN who know the terrain very well," said interim RN president Jordan Bardella, fielding doubts that RN lacked the professionalism to hold such difficult posts.
"We are not pariahs, we’re not sub-French, sub-citizens," he insisted.
The main question, Camus says, is what RN is going to do with the force it now has at the assembly.
"It's not just a question of having MPs, they have to show they're useful to their voters, to appear professional, and erase the image of a party that doesn't have broad enough shoulders to hold a position of responsibility."
Whose fault is it anyway?
"We are facing a democratic shock because of a very strong breakthrough by the National Rally," Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told France 2 television.
So how did it come about?
One explanation appears to be linked to turnout, which at 46 percent, was worryingly low.
In previous elections, high abstention has disadvantaged RN and France Unbowed – parties with younger, more working-class electorates who are less inclined to make the effort to vote than Macron's much older support base.
But on Sunday, a portion of Macron's electorate abstained, benefiting RN.
"35 percent of those who voted Macron in the presidential election did not turn out to vote for him," said Brice Teinturier of Ipsos polling institute.
Macron appears to have been punished for a lacklustre campaign and taking his supporters for granted.
"It's a serious blow for the republican front," Teinturier told France Inter radio, referring to the way parties traditionally club together to block the far right, as they did in the second round of the presidential election in May.
In addition, "the RN no longer frightens people," he said.
Camus agrees Macron and his majority have to take some of the blame for RN's spectacular breakthrough.
"Ahead of the European elections in 2019, President Macron identified this rift between progressists and nationalists, as being something essential in French political life. So in a way he put RN at the centre of the game and made it credible."
And then there was the recent blunder by PM Elisabeth Borne the day after the first round on 12 June, when RN and NUPES had shown they were posing a threat to Macron's majority.
Borne called for "no vote to go to the extremes" in the second round – thereby putting the left-wing NUPES coalition on an equally extreme footing as RN.
This undoubtedly played a role in the collapse of the republican front with some centrist and left-wing voters abstaining in contests where their own candidate wasn't in the run-off.
Borne's reaction "spread confusion and rests on the false premise that the two extremes join up and resemble one another," Camus says.
Gaining momentum
While Le Pen lost out to Macron in the presidential race she's skillfully tapped into the general disenchantment with Macron and pinpointed anger nationwide over the rising cost of living and the perceived decline in many rural communities.
And she has attracted new blood since she took over the National Front from her father in 2011, rebranding it National Rally.
"A new generation has arrived, 30 or 40 year-olds who came into the party for Marine Le Pen and who didn't know Jean-Marie Le Pen," says Camus.
"And there are many more women than before."
Le Pen has worked hard to give the impression her party is ready to govern. But that has still to be proven.
"One of the challenges in this RN victory is not to be seen as a parliamentary group that creates havoc. The party is still seen as one of protest," Camus says, underlining that close to 50 percent of the French view its leader as a danger for democracy.
"There would be nothing worse for this party than to be seen as heckling the rules and being a destructive force. So MPs will have to work and show they are capable of laying down proposals that stand up judicially, and if possible co-signed by MPs outside of RN. But that will be complicated as they have no allies."
Macron meanwhile would do well to end the high-handed "hyper-presidential" political style he's renowned for.
"Jupiter is finished," political scientist Pascal Perrineau told Le Parisien on Monday.
"It should be finished," Camus said. "The President has to understand that this kind of hyper-presidential style, exercised in a rather solitary way and without the necessary pedagogy also contributed to bringing about Sunday's result."
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