In April, French voters gave Emmanuel Macron a second term as president. Yesterday, they voted in the first round of elections to the National Assembly — i.e. the French Parliament.
According to Le Monde, the centrist “Together” block headed up by Macron’s LREM party, which came a clear first in 2017, has been narrowly beaten into second place. Just ahead of them in votes (but not seats) is NUPES — a broad-based coalition of Left-wing parties. By far the biggest component of this grouping is Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s anti-establishment LFI party — the other members are the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists.
Expect the success of this “progressive alliance” to be held up as an example for the British Left to follow.
However, it’s worth pointing out that with about a quarter of the vote, the combined share for the French Left is not significantly greater than it was in 2017 when the parties ran separately. It’s mainly because the Macronistes did significantly worse than five years ago that the two blocks have drawn level.
In terms of votes, the biggest winner last night was the far-Right. In 2017, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally got just 13% in the first round and Éric Zemmour’s Reconquest party didn’t even exist. In 2022, the two parties combined got close to a quarter share of the vote — so not far behind the Left-wingers and the centrists.
The biggest losers, meanwhile, were the parties of the centre-Right, led by the Republicans. In another terrible result for French conservatives, they sunk well below the 15% level.
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