Retour à gauche! The 2024 French legislative election

The snap election called by President Emmanuel Macron for the French National Assembly has resulted in a surprising plurality for the left-wing electoral alliance, Nouveau Front populaire ("New Popular Front") with 180 seats (up 49), followed by the centrist Ensemble coalition ("Together") with 159 (down 86), and the far-right populist and nationalist Rassemblement National ("National Rally") with 142 seats (up 53). The centre-right party, Les Républicains ("The Republicans"), which has a direct lineage from the Gaullist tradition, won a mere 22 seats (down 22), with other left-wing candidates winning 15 seats.

The 577 deputies of the National Assembly are elected for a five-year term by a two-round system in single-member constituencies. A candidate is elected if they receive an absolute majority in the first round and a vote total greater than 25% of the registered electorate. If no candidate reaches this threshold, a runoff election is held between any other candidate who received a vote total greater than 12.5% of registered voters. With an unusual tripolarised electorate and a very high voter turnout (up 20%), the 311 electorates saw three and four-candidate run-off elections ("triangulaires" and "quadrangulaires"), a situation not seen since the 1973 election. By way of comparison, the 2022 election only had 8 such contests, and the 2017 election, had only 1.

In the first round, there was a strong showing by the National Rally and their ally the Union of the Far-Right, winning 29.26% (37 seats) and 3.96% (1 seat) respectively. At this stage, the New Popular Front also made substantial gains and was placed at 28.21% (32 seats), whereas Ensemble at 21.28% (2 seats), and The Republicans at 6.57% (1 seat) lost ground. With this initial result, it was obvious that there was a strong possibility that the National Rally and their allies would be able to win a plurality if not an outright majority. In response, Ensemble called upon third-placed candidates to withdraw in constituencies to defeat the National Rally, whereas the New Popular Front - after some internal wrangling - announced that third-placed candidates who had advanced to the second round where the RN placed first would withdraw. These announcements led to 134 NFP-supported and 82 Ensemble-supported candidates dropping out.

For their own part, The Republicans gave no such instructions as they were experiencing their own internal crisis, when their President, Éric Ciotti, called for an alliance with the National Rally, breaking a long-standing convention of all parties against the far right. Ciotti was expelled, and re-instated after a court case, but also ran candidates as the Union of the Far-Right. With the two-round system effectively providing for a preferential voting system and with a decision by the New Popular Front and Ensemble to effectively preference each other, the National Rally was consigned to third place in terms of number of Deputies despite receiving a plurality of votes, and even if apparently aided by approximately half of those who voted for The Republicans in the first round.

Whilst the left and the New Popular Front are in a celebratory mood, the rise of the far right to this level of support should be considered as a serious concern. Over the past fifty years, as the National Front initially would receive less than 1% of the vote in National Assembly elections, rising to a height of 14.9% in the first round of the 1997 elections, falling to 4.3% in 2007, then rising again after that. The fact that they have received 37.1% in these second round elections and 142 Deputies compares to the 3.7% that they received in the second round of the 2012 elections and the 2 seats won. The new leader, Jordan Bardella, has sought to expand the Front's research by not only a more moderate name change, but also by adopting a pro-environmental stance, albeit one from the perspective that an environmental crisis will generate a refugee crisis. The National Rally retains its anti-immigration stance, a peculiar act of self-hatred by Bardella whose father is of Italian and Franco-Algerian origin. As with similar political movements in the developed world, these national-capitalists oppose free trade as it is to their local disadvantage.

Immigration, however, remains the top issue of the populist far-right in France, as it is the United Kingdom, and in the United States. Too rarely is it mentioned that the supposed immigration crisis is targetted towards those people whose countries were the direct result of imperialist policies of the past; many immigrants to France came from Vietnam, the Maghreb, and sub-Saharan colonies, just as immigrants to Britain have come from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria etc, and for the United States their indirect imperialist rule over many countries of Central and South America. After many decades of asserting colonial rule over such countries, after plundering their resources, and asserting dominance through means both visceral and subtle, the very same imperial powers now wash their hand of any association. Of course, the national-capitalists appeal to the "precariat", the most impoverished in our society who, without the luxury of permanent employment exist on meagre piecemeal income, pointing at the migrant saying: "they will take your job", the successes of the National Rally in Hauts-de-France and the Grand Est Regions being a particular case in point.

For the New Popular Front, they now have the opportunity and responsibility to govern. As an alliance of literally dozens of political parties, the larger groupings (La France Insoumise, Les Écologistes, Parti socialiste, Parti communiste français, Nouveau Parti anticapitaliste, etc) must emphasise the need for an objective recognition of their success and its limitations. The left in France has been subject to numerous and damaging splits in the past as the current array of political parties illustrates, whilst the success of the New Popular Front illustrates the hope that a large portion of the electorate has with the idea of a cooperative left force in the country. Likewise, the New Popular Front has to realise that whilst there is a demand for reform in the French political economy and distribution of wealth, this does not been that there country is in a revolutionary situation. Their victory is predicated on a tactical alliance with the technocratic, neoliberal, and centrist Ensemble, many of whom came from the centrist wing of the Parti socialiste.

The New Popular Front government is certainly in a position to introduce policies that are grudingly acceptable to the majority of more liberal Ensemble members (e.g., Renaissance, En Commun) who are still a powerful force in France, notably holding the position of President and, as a caretaker subsequent to the elections, the position of Prime Minister. The greatest benefit, however, can be achieved by targetting the demographic that is giving the National Rally a foundation. There is little to be gained from targetting the National Rally on the basis of a "culture war", despite the interest by many liberals to do so. Culture may be upstream from politics, but itself is born from objective conditions, and these are elucidated from the sociological facts. According to from Le Monde, the National Rally voters are most prominently working-class and disadvantaged, with lower levels of education, are more religious, live in smaller and less diverse communities, low levels of life satisfaction, and whose finances just cover their budgets or in negatives.

With these facts in hand, the most optimal position the incoming New Popular Front government can take is to adopt a policy of job security with full employment. Unemployment has been over 7% in France since 1982, and underemployment much higher still, which is utterly unsustainable, both financially and more importantly, in terms of the social fabric. At just over 20%, France's public service is a major employer compared to much of the OECD, but still significantly lower compared to countries like Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland which are all between 25% and 31%. Whilst traditional infrastructure, health, and education services are popular areas for expansion, one particular target (and well-suited for areas with lower population densities) is the introduction of employee-owned co-operatives with a focus on renewable energy, a policy that had widespread political appeal not just to environmentalists but also to those technocratic liberal economists who understand the need to mitigate against existing negative externalities that arise from a great deal of existing energy production and consumption.

There is a sense that the French Left has been somewhat lucky in these elections, however, one must never waste such opportunities. The far Right, offering a reactionary vision that will generate greater levels of inequality and social division, despite their often highly aggressive demeanor, a rather fragile political movement whose existence is only due to the failures of successive governments since the 1980s who bought into the neoliberal agenda without providing sufficient socially integrative protections for those displaced by the competitive destruction of old industries. The centrist and centre-right political parties, whether represented by Ensemble or The Republicans will vacillate between trying to be liberal capitalists or capitulating to the appeals of national-capitalism. The degree that the French Left shows leadership to rebuild the country will determine the direction of these centrists and whether or not the next elections will result in the success of the far Right.