If Emmanuel Macron still harboured hopes that his decision to gift Marine Le Pen a snap parliamentary election would pay off, they are surely dispelled now. Following humiliation in last month’s European polls, Mr Macron recklessly gambled that historic levels of support for Ms Le Pen’s National Rally party (RN) would melt away once protest voters were confronted with the prospect of a radical right government for the first time in postwar history. So how did that work out?
A high turnout in Sunday’s first round saw RN comfortably win first place with 33.1% of the vote, almost two points up compared with three weeks ago. For context, this is the first time that the party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen has broken through the 20% barrier in a legislative election. The hastily assembled New Popular Front (NPF), combining the forces of the left, scored 28%. Mr Macron’s centrist Together coalition trailed in at 20.8%, in third place. In an act of hubristic folly, Mr Macron thus appears to have blown up his power base in parliament, transformed himself into the lamest of lame duck presidents, and handed Ms Le Pen’s youthful protege, Jordan Bardella, a decent chance of becoming France’s next prime minister.
Ahead of the second round on 7 July, the stakes are now very high indeed. In recent years, Ms Le Pen has skilfully rebranded and normalised her father’s party, distancing it from its antisemitic and neofascist roots and targeting blue-collar discontent in economically disadvantaged areas. During the current election campaign, Mr Bardella has begun to row back on big spending commitments that would spook the markets. But irrespective of such opportunistic positioning, the party’s deeply authoritarian, xenophobic soul – its historic raison d’être – remains unchanged.
Plans to exclude dual nationals from sensitive professions, in a country with one of Europe’s biggest minority ethnic populations, testify to a political project 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 lay bare the extent to which Islamophobia drives an exclusionary cultural agenda. Envisaged new legal protections for the police offer a dark hint as to the manner in which such aggressive measures could be enforced.
More broadly, an RN-led government would seek to undermine the values of the European Union from within, in the name of nativist nationalism. Little wonder then that Alice Weidel, the co-chair of the far-right Alternative for Germany, greeted Sunday’s result “with admiration and respect”, noting that Ms Le Pen’s party was “of course … a role model”.
France’s two-round electoral system means that the worst may yet be avoided, as candidates can drop out to allow voters to form a single bloc of opposition to the radical right. This tradition of a robust “republican front” has faded in recent legislative elections. It must urgently be revived to ensure that RN does not achieve an absolute majority in the second round, even if this means further misery for the president’s centrist alliance. Unlike some in his movement, Mr Macron appeared on Monday to acknowledge this, despite originally, and falsely, suggesting that a vote for the leftwing NPF could be as dangerous as a vote for Ms Le Pen.
The time when Mr Macron could divide and rule is over. Whatever the outcome in six days’ time, it seems certain that the RN will consolidate itself as the first force in French politics. The task now, for a diminished leader and mainstream voters across the spectrum, is one of damage limitation. A party whose programme and instincts jeopardise the republican values on which modern France was founded has never been closer to power. It must not be allowed to take it.
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