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Shock Upset for Le Pen in Second Round of French Elections

July 8, 2024 GOVERNMENT, Spotlight 1

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ER Editor: How did this happen?

The results of the European elections back in June shifted the centre of political gravity to the populist right as they were expected to do. Then with snap elections called both by Sunak and Macron, plus the first round of the French elections last week where Le Pen took a significant share of the vote, this was not an expected outcome at all.

The French voting turnout yesterday was around 68%, the same for the first election round. Compare that with turnout for the UK election, at 34%.

The Front Populaire, a composition of the old Parti Socialist (recall former president Francois Hollande), Melenchon’s party (LFI), Greens and Communists, won the most votes but not an outright majority. Macron’s party did better than before. It is believed that in ridings where both parties, plus Le Pen’s, were candidates, the Left and Macron’s party strategically voted (or ganged up) to keep out Le Pen’s party by dropping out candidates  (see the explanation below). This is called a Republican Front in France, and is somehow a source of pride, yet how such blatant, in-your-face denial of millions of other French voters their democratic right to choose is somehow ‘right’ or ‘good’ is beyond us. But this is a typical reaction to years of public propagandizing around Le Pen, and it works.

A reminder that career politician and high-ranking freemason Jean-Luc Melenchon is no friend to the ordinary person but he’s spent a career pretending he is with a lot of fiery rhetoric. He’s as much a fixture of the Establishment as Macron is, albeit in a different way and they are known to collude when it suits. This result is frankly odd to say the least, and to some degree echoes Establishment Neocon/Globalist/Zionist Starmer gaining a huge number of seats in the UK election last Thursday. Both results have bucked the right-populist trend, putting unsatisfactory so-called ‘Left’ candidates in power. We smell strategy somewhere – perhaps to expose these types of political choices? How much have Americans had to witness for the penny to finally drop that ‘Biden’ is incompetent and was never ever in control?

Below is some standard Politico.eu reporting on the French result. Here is Eric Verhaeghe’s partial take (paywall):

Against all expectations (we will come back to this during the week), the new Popular Front should become the first parliamentary group in the Assembly, ahead of the Macronists… and the National Rally (Le Pen), relegated to third place. Reinvigorated by this unexpected result, the left-wing leaders are now claiming power… and the implementation of their program, based on a massive tax increase starting this summer (€50 billion, it is said, compared to €30 billion under François Hollande), and on an explosion in public spending. Problem: this strategy is not in line with France’s European commitments, and could very quickly put us in a Greek scenario. For your assets, the situation risks quickly becoming dramatic.

The victory of the new Popular Front in an assembly which does not have an absolute majority is a surprise.

It should be noted here that the final photograph of the Assembly corresponds fairly well to the “exit poll” figures released under embargo by the Ministry of the Interior from 5:30 p.m. On the other hand, this photograph is in complete contradiction with all the “private” polls published before the results were announced. We will return this week to this apparent inconsistency, which raises questions, between the figures from the institutes and the final result.

In any case, from 8pm or so, Jean-Luc Mélenchon was taking on the airs of Lenin on a barricade in a striking factory to announce a deep reform of society. Taxation worse than duels in a Western movie, wage increases with whips for the bosses, authoritarian intervention by the State in all areas. Castro had dreamed of it, Mélenchon is going to make it happen. Olivier Faure’s intervention, a few minutes later, was of the same ilk.

The strategy of the Popular Front therefore involves a few items which make people smile today, but which will become real constipators in a few weeks:

  • the minimum wage at €1,600 (the Courrier calls itself “chic” because this announcement promises a few articles on the “boosts” to the minimum wage which have downgraded our employees for 20 years)
  • price freeze
  • the requisition of empty housing
  • the transformation of our taxation into a mathematical thesis intended to confuse democracy and consent to taxation
  • the confiscation of the retirement savings of our bakers, our butchers, our farmers, our artisans, in the name of capital taxation

In short, the Popular Front is preparing to make all successful proletarians pay for the crisis, in order to properly assign everyone to the cards they were given at birth. …

Some tweets —

A typical left-wing reaction —

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French left beats Le Pen’s far right in election shock

Macron’s snap election saddles France with a messy hung parliament as the price for stopping the far right.

PARIS  —  The left-wing alliance in France won the most seats in parliament in a dramatic election, dealing a surprise blow to the far-right party of Marine Le Pen.

In the first round of voting a week ago Le Pen’s National Rally came top and was aiming to secure the most seats in France’s legislature for the first time in the party’s history on Sunday. But tactical voting and collaboration between Le Pen’s opponents to keep her party out of power paid off, final results showed.

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Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Raphaël Glucksmann. | POLITICO photo illustration (source images from Getty)

The election, however, looks set to throw the country into a period of political turmoil, with no single group coming close to winning enough seats for a majority in parliament.

President Emmanuel Macron gambled on a snap election after a stunning defeat in last month’s European Parliament election, promising “a clarification” he hoped would put the far right back in its box. Instead, he lost seats and landed France in greater uncertainty.

Even so, the mood inside the president’s camp was upbeat on Sunday night, with Macron himself striking a defiant tone. At a gathering of his political allies, the French president galvanized his troops: “Our ideas are still alive and [we] haven’t lost voters,” he claimed, according to one participant who spoke to Paris Playbook.

Macron’s own position as president was not at stake: He is due to remain in office until 2027. His Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has said he’ll offer to resign, though who could take over is far from clear.

With results in for all districts, showing an unusually high turnout, the left-wing alliance won 188 seats in France’s 577-seat National Assembly — a gain of almost 60. That put it ahead of Macron’s liberals, who finished on 161 seats, down more than 70 since 2022.

The far-right National Rally and its allies finished with 142 MPs in the new legislature, an increase of more than 50 on two years ago. (ER: They were predicting around 250 plus after the first round.)

In the minutes after the initial seat forecasts were announced, the far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon took to the stage in front of his jubilant supporters. “[We] wrested a result that everyone said was impossible in a wonderful leap of civic spirit … The people have avoided the worst,” he said.

After the first round of voting on June 30, Le Pen’s party was on course for its best ever election result and a majority in parliament.

Macron and Mélenchon worked to stop Le Pen

But frantic political maneuvering in the days that followed saw Macron’s team and leaders of parties on the left muster their forces in a national effort to thwart the far right. Hundreds of candidates on the left and center of French politics pulled out of the contest to avoid splitting the anti-Le Pen vote.

Their initial aim was to stop Le Pen’s party winning an outright majority, which seemed a likely outcome a week ago. Instead their efforts handed the initiative to the other side of French politics, the left. (ER: A useful point. Is this a lesson in ‘be careful of what you wish’?)

Attention will turn to who could become France’s next prime minister. Convention dictates that Macron will invite a politician from the largest grouping to take on the role. The president’s office said he would reflect on the results before taking “the necessary decisions.”

Attal, Macron’s choice as the current French prime minister, said Sunday that he would offer to resign, but he opened the door to heading a caretaker government during the Paris Olympic Games, which begin on July 26. “I will carry out my duties as long as duty demands it, it cannot be otherwise on the eve of such important events,” Attal said in Paris.

At the rally in the Northeast of Paris, Mélenchon demanded Macron appoint a prime minister from his left-wing coalition, known as the New Popular Front. “The president has the power and the duty to call the New Popular Front to govern. It is ready,” said Mélenchon, who leads the radical France Unbowed party.

Nicolas Camut, Giorgio Leali and Anthony Lattier contributed reporting.

CONTINUE READING HERE

Featured image source, Jean-Luc Melenchon: https://www.politico.eu/article/france-election-french-prime-minister-new-popular-front-socialists-greens-communists-jean-luc-melenchon-france-unbowed-lfi-movement-marine-le-pen-national-rally/

Featured image source, Marine Le Pen: https://www.politico.eu/article/france-elections-2024-marine-le-pen-jordan-bardella-parliamentary-vote-far-right-national-rally-emmanuel-macron/

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1 Comment on Shock Upset for Le Pen in Second Round of French Elections

  1. 666 : signature of the counting doctors

    “La participation lors du second tour des élections législatives anticipées ce dimanche s’élève à 66,63%, selon les derniers chiffres du ministère de l’Intérieur communiqués ce lundi matin. Un record dans un second tour depuis les législatives de 1997. Mais un chiffre très légèrement en baisse par rapport au premier tour (66,71%)”

    https://www.francebleu.fr/infos/politique/legislatives-2024-le-taux-de-participation-s-eleve-a-26-63-a-12h-en-legere-hausse-par-rapport-au-premier-tour-2544612

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