Photo: Jordan Bardella, President of the French far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally – RN) party, July 7, 2024.
Despite predictions of an outright majority, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally suffered a setback, finishing third due to centrist and leftist alliances, exposing internal party issues.
The champagne was on ice at the far-right National Rally’s (RN) headquarters, but the celebratory mood swiftly turned to disbelief when the first projected results from Sunday’s parliamentary election appeared on TV screens.
For days, Marine Le Pen had confidently predicted that her party would triumph with an outright majority and her protégé Jordan Bardella would be prime minister. Instead, the National Rally was on course to come third, behind a left-wing alliance and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc.
It was undone to a large extent by tactical dealmaking between centrist and leftist opponents, who pulled more than 200 candidates from three-way races to avoid splitting the anti-RN vote.
The projected result brought to a shuddering halt what had appeared to be the far right’s relentless rise in France, carefully engineered by Le Pen who had sough to clean up her party’s image and tap the grievances of voters angry over living costs, strained public services, and immigration.
To be sure, Le Pen and her party have suffered disappointment before, most recently her 2022 defeat to Macron in the presidential election and have managed to bounce back more strongly than before.
But for now, the outcome was a bitter pill to swallow.
“The results are disappointing, and they don’t represent what French people want,” said Jocelyn Cousin, 18, who had come to party HQ expecting a victory party.
The RN’s momentum had appeared unstoppable after it trounced the centrists in European elections in early June and came first, ahead of the hastily assembled leftist New Popular Front, in the first round of the parliamentary vote on June 30.
Le Pen and Bardella attributed their party’s setback on Sunday to what Bardella called the “disgraceful alliance” the anti-RN forces, who he said had caricatured the party and disrespected its voters.
But IPSOS pollster Brice Teinturier pointed to the RN’s own shortcomings, including revelations before the run-off that several of its candidates had expressed xenophobic views, raising questions over whether the party had really ditched its more toxic past.
“What happened is also that RN candidates themselves showed in this campaign that they either were not ready or had in their ranks candidates that are antisemitic, xenophobic or homophobic,” Teinturier told France 2 television.
‘TIDE IS RISING’
Florent de Kersauson, an RN candidate in Brittany in western France, acknowledged the fallout had been damaging. But he also said voters may have felt the party was arrogant in predicting an absolute majority.
“I thought it was strange that they said that” said Kersauson, who lost his race against a pro-Macron candidate. “It seemed like something that was very hard to achieve.”
Bardella and Le Pen strove to put a brave face on their result. The party had increased its share of seats in the National Assembly to a record high, they noted, vowing to keep fighting until they won power.
“The tide is rising, but it didn’t rise quite high enough this time,” said Le Pen, who is likely to mount her fourth presidential campaign in 2027. “Our victory has merely been delayed.”
That was also the feeling among many of the supporters gathered at party HQ in Paris.
“I see our victory coming. People are going to understand that the National Rally is not so horrible. I believe it will happen in 2027. I have a lot of hope and I’ll continue to fight,” said Elea da Cunha, 17.
Frederic-Pierre Vos, a close associate of Le Pen and former RN party lawyer elected in a constituency north of Paris, said the hung parliament thrown up by the election would mean an ungovernable France, providing fresh opportunities for RN in 2027.
Yet despite the party’s fighting talk, Sunday’s outcome was a clear setback.
Business newspaper Les Echos ran a front page showing a grim-faced Bardella with the headline “la claque” or “the slap”.
Setback for Macron
The results were also a blow for centrist President Emmanuel Macron, who called the snap election to clarify the political landscape after his ticket took a battering at the hands of the RN in European Parliament elections last month.
He ended up with a hugely fragmented parliament, in what is set to weaken France’s role in the European Union and elsewhere abroad and make it hard for anyone to push through a domestic agenda.
The election will leave parliament divided in three big groups – the left, centrists, and the far right – with hugely different platforms and no tradition at all of working together.
What comes next is uncertain.
The leftist New Popular Front (NFP) alliance, which wants to cap prices of essential goods like fuel and food, raise the minimum wage to a net 1,600 euros ($1,732) per month, hike wages for public sector workers and impose a wealth tax, immediately said it wanted to govern.
“The will of the people must be strictly respected … the president must invite the New Popular Front to govern,” said hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon.
The RN has worked under Le Pen to shed a historic reputation for racism and antisemitism but many in French society still view its France-first stance and surging popularity with alarm.
There were hugs, screams of joy and tears of relief at the left’s gathering in Paris when the voting projections were announced.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said he would hand in his resignation on Monday but would stay on in a care-taking capacity as long as needed.
‘DIVIDED’
A key question is whether the leftist alliance will stay united and agree on what course to take.
Melenchon, leader of the hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), ruled out a broad coalition of parties of different stripes.
Raphael Glucksmann, from the Socialist Party, urged his alliance partners to act like “grown-ups.”
“We’re ahead, but we’re in a divided parliament,” he said. “We’re going to have to talk, to discuss, to engage in dialogue.”
The constitution does not oblige Macron to ask the leftist group to form a government, though that would be the usual step as it is the biggest group in parliament.
In Macron’s entourage, there was no indication of his next move.
“The question we’re going to have to ask ourselves tonight and in the coming days is: which coalition is capable of reaching the 289 seats to govern?”, one person close to him told Reuters.
Some in his alliance, including former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, envisaged a broad cross-party alliance but said it could not include the far-left France Unbowed.
RN DISAPPOINTMENT
The left and centrist alliances cooperated after the first round of voting last week by pulling scores of candidates from three-way races to build a unified anti-RN vote.
In his first reaction, RN leader Jordan Bardella called the cooperation between anti-RN forces a “disgraceful alliance” that he said would paralyze France.
Le Pen, who will be the party’s candidate for the 2027 presidential election, said however that Sunday’s ballot, in which the RN made major gains compared with previous elections, had sown the seeds for the future.
“Our victory has been merely delayed,” she said.
Voters punished Macron and his ruling alliance for a cost of living crisis and failing public services, as well as over immigration and security.
France24/ Reuters
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