The French political class is tearing itself apart with feuding and backbiting ahead of this month’s vote.
We’re only four days into France’s election campaign and the vendettas are already boiling over in a melodramatic flurry of grab-your-popcorn vaudeville acts.
Humiliated in the EU election, President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday called a national parliamentary election, hoping to stem the tidal advances of the far right.
His rivals tried to seize on the historic moment to set enmities aside and unite — but things haven’t gone as planned, to put it mildly.
In the country’s main center-right party, the besieged leader barricaded himself in party headquarters claiming he was still in command, until a rival turned up with a spare key to demonstrate that was no longer the case.
On the far right, two prominent figures descended into open warfare, with one accusing the other of setting “the world record for betrayal.”
Meanwhile, on the left, a co-operation agreement has been struck and parties seem intent on putting their differences behind them — but tensions still crackle between two star figures, in terms of both personality and issues including Ukraine and Gaza.
Sorry, but Les Républicains are not “center-right”, they are definitely very-right, they campaign on the same topics than the extreme-right and share a lot of points in their programs.
The new Front Populaire regroups a fairly wide variety of parties, from the the far left revolutionary communists like NPA, radical left with PCF and LFI, until the center like Les Socialistes (social Democrats) and Ecologists. Last Sunday, they were divided and dragging each other in the mud, today they have 1) signed to campaign as one, 2) decided the candidates for each county, 3) agreed on a very detailed common program for the next 2~3 years.
The vote takes place on 30th of June, therefore the political landscape of France will continue to shift frenetically for the next 2 weeks at least.
What the fuck, the left is actually the most united part of the political scene? What kind of world are we living in
It’s extremely reminiscent of the French political landscape in the 30’s when all the left wing parties united themselves as the Popular Front against the rising fascist leagues.
This netted us - amongst other things - the 40h work week, paid vacations, etc.
And then what happened at the end of the 30s?
We got invaded by the Nazis
Let’s try to avoid it this time
It is surprising everyone, including left voters. I don’t think Macron considered this outcome seriously when he made his play to dismiss the national parliament. Most likely he was counting on the “Republican blockade” (it’s kind of a tradition at this point) to draw all the center to his cause (this would have included, Green, Socialists and the traditional right of Republicans).
Instead, Les Republicains instantly imploded when their leader Eric Ciotti declared we wants to ally with the RN (leading extreme-right party), he got unanimously banned from his party. Another extreme-right party, Reconquête also failed to rally to RN (this is another crazy story, mixing family relations and betrayal). And the left in the most broad sense, is as united as ever, in a unions that seems much more serious and solid than precious failed attempts, giving (my feeling) a lot of hope for voters attached to democracy and justice.
In a nutshell there are 3 possible outcomes we can summarize in Macron’s perspective:
An age of rising fascism…
Yep, in a lot of countries. In France, the fascists has been stopped by the union of left parties, and the union of trades unions, and lead to the most social progress we still rely on (the first paid holidays for example). If we shall not thing that history repeat itself, this period have a big particularity that is not enough told : those social progress where not planned by the political parties, and the reunification of trades unions (like CGT and CGT-U) where not at the initiative of their leaders. Workers took the street and very offensive strike forced them off. Their sure is a lack of initiative of the workers, I think that’s why we fail during the retirement movement; and If trade Unions sure have a place, I’m not sure that it’s next to political parties in these “Nouvel Union Populaire”.
Unity of the left is a double edged sword. Sure it means increased bargaining power for change. Also, it usually deteriorates into a hostage situation where the most centrist “left” party in the coalition says they will cooperate with the fascists, if the other left parties do not reduce their call for change to just symbolic issues.
Pre - mass chaos and world war - world