The good news: last Sunday, in the second round of the legislative elections in France, the National Rally (RN) was largely defeated, the Republican Front held on. Of course, the RN practically doubled the seats it had since the last legislature, but it is far, very far, from the absolute majority it could have hoped for on the evening of the first round. It is the left, but a left with very fragile unity, which obtained the greatest number of seats and which emerged victorious (numerically) from the election. For President Macron’s camp, the defeat is ultimately relative: “its” centrists are still able to form a strong bloc in Parliament.
The bad news? This victory does not solve anything. At best, it suspends French political time until the next presidential election. Because let’s not forget two things. First, the RN’s defeat is entirely due to this “republican front” and the withdrawals from the second round that benefited both the centrist and left-wing parties. If they had not managed to reach an agreement, it would probably be Jordan Bardella who would enter Matignon, the Prime Minister’s hotel, in a few days.
The election result is therefore somewhat misleading: it is not at all clear that the union in the face of the RN’s peril will hold once this threat has been removed. The previous left-wing union was well and truly dead due to the profound disagreements between its members, particularly regarding the discourse to be given in the face of the requests of the different French communities in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Then, let’s not believe – as many seem to be doing these days in France – that the defeat of the RN (relative, since the party with the flame records its best score ever in terms of the number of deputies) means that the springs of its vote disappear at the same time. Cost of living, perceptions of a decline in security, migration issues, fears for the future of national identity, impressions of downgrading: all these phenomena remain present, strong and influential. Whether or not there is a migration problem, whether or not purchasing power is decreasing, whether or not the impression of insecurity is ultimately due to the continuous news channels that relay exaggerated news items, all this does not change the fact that, for a significant number of voters (10.5 million voters in the first round), France is doing badly and is heading towards peril.
In politics as in sociology, this old proverb is worth its weight in gold: “if individuals define a situation as real, it is real in its consequences”. The French political-media class, the same one that, at the last minute, managed to build a “republican front”, which worked as well as in the presidential elections of 2017 and 2022, can no longer act as if nothing had happened, as if, on June 30 and July 7, a significant part of the French population had not forcefully expressed its suffering and fears. It is possible that the RN supporters are wrong. But they act on the basis of their beliefs and we must deal with their actions and their reality.
Its voters, now present, according to the various analyses of the vote, in almost all categories of the population (and in the majority among workers and on the way to becoming so among employees), are not all racists, xenophobes or fascists. That would be too simple. Perhaps they are misguided, perhaps they are mistaken about the diagnosis, but all that changes nothing in the political equation: they have an increasingly important political weight and which, if things do not change, will continue to grow. At 33% of the vote for the RN, in a two-round election, the “republican front” of “anyone but the RN” still holds. When the RN gets 45%, perhaps it will still hold. But when it gets 50%?
A heavy responsibility
Ultimately, the only urgent political question facing the new French leaders, the new National Assembly, is this: is it better to wallow today in the illusory victory over the RN and change nothing or, on the contrary, is it better, finally, to give a voice to these millions of voters today (without taking up the RN program, of course) in order to prevent a victory that, having been in preparation for so long, could, in three years, know no bounds? Is it really wise to reproduce once again the media and political contempt that all these French people perceive and which fuels the vote for Le Pen’s party?
In short, the victory of the Republican forces on July 7th could turn out to be very disappointing. The former National Front did not enter Matignon, certainly, but it obtained the best score in its history. It will have the possibility (because it will have much more funding), in the coming years, to professionalize itself and to further improve its image, while ultimately not changing in the essentials. National preference, the repeal of the right of the soil, all these measures will remain on the program, but the wolf will continue to turn into a lamb.
The French leaders of the Republican arc are facing a heavy responsibility today. It will hurt their hearts, it will probably be against their will, but they will have to agree to dialogue with the RN voters, to really listen to what they have to say and cry, and to offer them another way, more republican, more humane, but which would be able to comfort them. Starting, first of all, by lifting the sterile and counterproductive omerta on the national and migration question.
Does this mean that the left will have to become national again? One thing is certain, and this is true in France as elsewhere, we do not see any other way of reversing the trend apart from conventional political arrangements that will eventually rust.