“Everything must change so that nothing changes,” says the saying attributed to Tancrède, the young nobleman played by Alain Delon in Cheetah by Visconti. Rarely has a sentence better described the psychodrama that has been playing out in France for three weeks.
This is indeed the outcome of these legislative elections called on a whim by Emmanuel Macron within a timeframe that ignores any democratic requirement. How else can we describe elections that will have at most allowed a narcissistic president to return to the center of the game, for a time at least, and plunged the country into a form of lasting paralysis from which it will not be able to emerge for a year, a new dissolution not being possible earlier? Unless the nightmare lasts until the next presidential election, in a little less than three years.
Because the “blockades” do not make a program or a majority. No matter how much you spin the results, no one emerges victorious from this useless electoral saga. Whoever it is, the next government will have to govern by decree and pass its laws using exceptional procedures.
First things first, let’s start with the left, which is the only one to claim victory in the ambient cacophony. With 182 deputies, the left-wing bloc of the New Popular Front miraculously came out on top, but miles away from an absolute majority (289). This pseudo-victory was only possible with an unnatural alliance, which even saw former Prime Minister Édouard Philippe vote Communist for the first time in his life! The left has all the less reason to claim victory since its own union resembles a basket of crabs, where we find indifferently a discredited former president like François Hollande, an “antifa” listed by the police services like Raphaël Arnault, as well as reinvigorated social democrats, but whose leader Raphaël Glucksmann has never stopped calling the one who remains the only true leader of the left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, an anti-Semite.
Not to mention that his economic program, with its 230 billion euros of additional spending by 2027, would plunge into indescribable chaos a country already considered the sick man of Europe and downgraded by the rating agencies. The arrival of a prime minister like Jean-Luc Mélenchon would appear as a fatal blow. Especially since the country will have to justify cuts of 20 billion euros in its budgets as early as the fall.
With 168 elected representatives, the former presidential majority avoided a rout, but at what cost? The president may have demonstrated his tactical skill, but in his camp, his authority is more than blunted. Even his prime minister, Gabriel Attal, has distanced himself, saying he did not choose this dissolution and that he “refused to undergo it”. The voters will ultimately have granted Emmanuel Macron only a form of reprieve, as he prepares to preside over a country that more closely resembles the IVe Republic than that desired by General de Gaulle in 1958. Of sad memory, this IVe The Republic had known 22 governments in 12 years, 9 of which lasted less than 41 days.
Basically, the portrait offered by this new Assembly is the opposite of that drawn by the votes cast. Because of the so-called “republican” front against an “extreme right” in which the French believe less and less, the party least represented in the Assembly happens to be the one that collected the most votes. With its 8.7 million votes (compared to 7.4 million for the left alliance and 6.5 million for the center alliance), the RN is the all-category champion of the popular vote. Its progression since 2022 is historic. It is also the only party that is progressing with the contribution of its own votes and not circumstantial alliances.
It is nevertheless clear that the “cordon sanitaire” – which former Prime Minister Lionel Jospin himself described as “anti-fascist theatre” – is still working. As a result, France finds itself in the absurd situation of a country that has never been so right-wing, even though Sunday’s result could logically lead to a tightening of the screw on the left and the appointment of a left-wing prime minister.
Worse still, the French never stop repeating that after “purchasing power”, immigration and insecurity are their main concerns. Two words that barely appear in the programs of the center and the left. The ideas of the RN have never been so popular – and its representation, so high -, but the party still does not have the right to approach power. On Monday, François Mitterrand’s former advisor Jacques Attali drew a parallel with the legislative elections of 1978, where the Socialist Party had also won the first round, but lost the second. Three years later, it entered the Élysée.
All this may be a postponement. In the meantime, these elections can only increase resentment. A resentment which, unlike previous elections, risks being expressed in a form of chaos not only in the streets, but also in the Assembly.
We haven’t seen anything yet.