Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press via AP
French President Emmanuel Macron arrives for an Italian skydiving team exhibition during the G7 summit in Borgo Egnazia, Italy, June 13, 2024.
When French President Emmanuel Macron reacted to the devastating defeat of his party in last week’s elections to the European Parliament, he responded by impulsively dissolving the French National Assembly. Macron grandly proclaimed that the French people needed to decide what sort of country they wanted.
Commentators across the political spectrum denounced Macron for his arrogance and narcissism. In voting for Marine Le Pen’s party, French voters were not rejecting the Republic; they were rejecting Macron. How could he possibly believe that his grandiose words would cause them to change their allegiance? The likelihood was that Le Pen’s National Rally party would gain the most seats; her protégé, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, would be named prime minister; and Macron would be a lame duck for the remaining three years of his term, governing in coalition with the far right.
But then something quite unexpected happened. Macron’s move caused the dispirited French left—Socialists, Communists, Greens—to put aside their differences and resolve to run on a common program as a New Popular Front. It now looks as if the left could be more unified going into the June 30–July 7 snap elections than at any time since the presidency of François Mitterrand, whose first government in 1981 included both Socialists and Communists.
A couple of preconditions were necessary for these stars to align. The far-left leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a highly divisive figure, had to fade. And the Socialists, who were all but wiped out in the last parliamentary elections, had to come up with an attractive new leader. As our colleague Harold Meyerson has reported, they have done so with the charismatic Raphaël Glucksmann.
It’s still early, but polls show that Le Pen’s party is likely to get 30 or even 40 percent of the seats in the National Assembly. The left will place second with at least 30 percent. Macron’s party will get 20 percent or more, and minor parties will get the rest. As frosting on the cake, Macron’s move has caused the neo-Gaullist right to splinter, after the leader of the Republicans, Eric Ciotti, called for an alliance with Le Pen.
All of this means that even if Le Pen’s party gains votes, she will not get enough seats to name the prime minister. Then it becomes the left’s turn to try.
The left plus Macron’s party are likely to get enough seats to form a governing coalition. Expect prolonged jockeying over whether the prime minister comes from the left coalition or from Macron’s diminished ranks, but arithmetic is on the left’s side.
Macron is not enamored of the left, but he is far more hostile to Le Pen. So it’s looking more and more likely that the next French government could have a coalition led by the left.
It would give Macron far too much credit to conclude that he was crazy like a fox when he called the snap election. Governing in coalition with a unified left was not the outcome Macron sought. But it could be the result. And that would also position a left candidate to be the alternative to Le Pen’s party in the 2027 presidential elections.
The left has only to remain unified for three more weeks. As anyone who follows French politics (or left politics) is all too aware, that is an eternity. A united left could still come apart over ideology or personality. But for now, the resurgence of the right and the collapse of the center could portend a welcome period of French progressive leadership.
