Emmanuel Macron is scrambling to form a centrist and left-wing alliance to block the far right National Rally party from taking control of France‘s government, after the president’s snap election backfired.
The far-right National Rally (NR) of Marine Le Pen won a resounding victory in the first round of voting on Sunday, with Macron’s centrists trailing in third place behind the left-wing New Popular Front.
Le Pen has urged voters to give the RN an absolute majority during a second round of voting on July 7, which would see the party’s 28-year-old chief Jordan Bardella become prime minister.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer has said he would be willing to work with Le Pen if NR formed the next government, adding that should they win at the polls it would be a lesson to everyone to listen to voters.
But most projections show the RN falling short of an absolute majority, even though the final outcome remains far from certain.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been scrambling for a centrist and left-wing alliance to keep Marine Le Pen’s hard-right party at bay
Marine Le Pen (pictured) won a huge victory in the first round of voting on Sunday and has urged voters to throw their weight behind her once again to see in the first right-wing government since WWII
‘The extreme right at the threshold of power,’ read Monday’s headline in daily Le Monde.
Macron’s camp has begun forming a left-wing alliance in the hopes that tactical voting will prevent the RN winning the 289 seats needed for an absolute majority, which Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said would be ‘catastrophic’.
Third-place candidates who qualified for the second round have been urged to drop out to present a united front against the far right.
On Sunday night Macron called for a ‘broad’ democratic coalition against the far right, and convened a cabinet meeting on Monday to decide a further course of action.
‘Let’s not be mistaken. It’s the far right that’s on its way to the highest office, no one else,’ he said at the meeting, according to one participant.
But he did not give any firm instructions to candidates over standing down, sources said.
The deadline to decide whether to stand down is Tuesday evening. According to a provisional count by AFP, more than 150 left-wing or centrist candidates have already dropped out.
Analysts say the most likely outcome of the snap election is a hung parliament that could lead to months of political paralysis and chaos, just as Paris is preparing to host the summer Olympic Games.
Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer has said that the NR’s popularity is a lesson to all to listen to disaffected voters and said he would work with Le Pen’s party if he gets into power on Thursday
With a total of 76 candidates elected in the first round, the final composition of the 577-seat National Assembly will be clear only after the second round.
The second round will see a three-way or two-way run-off in the remainder of the seats to be decided – although a tiny number of four-way run-offs are also possible.
The arrival of the anti-immigration RN in government would be a turning point in French modern history – the first time a far-right force has taken power in the country since World War II, when it was occupied by Nazi Germany.
If the RN takes an absolute majority and Bardella, who has no governing experience, becomes prime minister, it would create a tense period of ‘cohabitation’ with Macron, who has vowed to serve out his term until 2027.
The election results fuelled fresh criticism of Macron’s decision to call the early vote, a move he took with only a tight circle of advisors in the hours after his party was trounced by the RN in European elections last month.
The right-wing Le Figaro said in an editorial that the country faced a ‘tragedy’ with only ‘bad solutions’ on offer.
The chaos risks damaging the international credibility of Macron, who is set to attend a NATO summit in Washington immediately after the second round.
US State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said Washington expected to continue its ‘close cooperation with the French government’ regardless of the election results.
German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said the far-right success was a cause for concern, describing the RN as ‘a party that sees Europe as the problem and not the solution’.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said the results represented a ‘very dangerous’ turn for France and Europe.
Russia, which the French government has repeatedly accused of seeking to interfere in domestic politics, is following the election results in France ‘very closely’, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
With elections looming on Thursday, Labour leader Keir Starmer has sad the French results were a lesson that ‘we need to address the everyday concerns of so many people’
While he accepted the results might not be what he was expecting, the potential new Prime Minister said he would be willing to work with Marine Le Pen’s party if they win the French elections.
He told Sky: ‘I will work with any government in Europe and across the world if we are elected in to serve the country. For me, that’s what serious government is about.’
He also emphasised that an NR party would not undermine Labour’s efforts to work out a better Brexit deal for the UK despite Le Pen being vocally Eurosceptic.
But far-right Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni hailed the results, saying attempts to ‘demonise’ far-right voters were losing impact.
And Hungary’s nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose country is taking over the EU’s rotating presidency, said the election showed that French voters wanted ‘change’.