As the smoke cleared following the first round of France’s presidential election on Sunday, the most significant political speech of the night was arguably delivered by one of the losers. After coming unexpectedly close to beating Marine Le Pen to second place in the race, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the hard-left leader of France Unbowed, urged his supporters not to vote for her in the runoff between Emmanuel Macron on 24 April. “There must not be one single vote for Le Pen in the second round,” said Mr Mélenchon.
The bluntness of the message indicates the gravity of a political moment that feels alarmingly unpredictable and unreadable. Mr Macron secured 28% of the first-round vote. His four-point lead over Ms Le Pen was actually slightly bigger than five years ago, when he went on to win their head-to-head confrontation by a landslide. But the context of 2017 – when Mr Macron was seen as a fresh-faced liberal insurgent promising democratic renewal, and Ms Le Pen was struggling and failing to detoxify her brand – no longer applies. This time round, polls suggest a far tighter contest in two weeks, with some suggesting that the gap between the two candidates is within the margin of error; for the first time in the 64-year history of the Fifth Republic, the French far right has a genuine – if outside – chance of winning the presidency.
How did France get here? Clever PR has enabled Ms Le Pen to successfully soften her public image, while the ongoing collapse of the centre-left and centre-right has normalised her presence in the spotlight. The emergence of a far-right rival in the form of the xenophobic television pundit Éric Zemmour has also helped, allowing the National Rally leader to present herself as a relative moderate while preparing to inherit his support. In the runoff, she will be able to consolidate a far-right bloc of more than 30% of voters.
But as Mr Mélenchon’s Sunday night injunction suggested, Ms Le Pen’s chances of actually entering the Élysée depend on her ability to mobilise a section of the left – one which is just as hostile to the mainstream consensus that Mr Macron embodies. To that end, Ms Le Pen will continue to channel anxiety over the cost-of-living crisis, while downplaying the more extreme aspects of her programme relating to immigration, Islam and Europe. As the first-round results emerged, she in effect made a direct pitch to the anti-establishment left, promising a presidency devoted to offering “social justice and protection” and “solidarity towards the most vulnerable”. Polls suggest that 30% of mainly working-class Mélenchon supporters may vote for her and an equal number abstain. Mr Macron cannot afford those numbers to go much higher, but unpopular policies such as raising the retirement age risk becoming a liability.
A president sometimes perceived as aloof, high-handed and on the side of the wealthy – and whose relations with much of the left have ranged from tricky to toxic – thus faces the biggest test of his political career. The stakes could scarcely be higher: a Le Pen presidency would unleash xenophobic and nationalist demons in France, have dramatic repercussions for the future of the EU and disrupt western unity at a critical moment. Perhaps understandably, given his focus on events in Ukraine, Mr Macron has fought a lacklustre and lethargic campaign so far. His visit on Monday to a depressed post-industrial region in northern France signalled a change of gear. Between now and 24 April, Mr Macron must find a way to shore up a “republican front” of anti-far-right voters that appears dangerously fragile. The reckoning as to how it was ever allowed to get this close can come later.
