Rassemblement National wins big in the first-round French elections

There is one big winner from the first round of the French legislative elections — and several big losers. The winner is the Rassemblement National (National Rally) with 33 percent of voters backing its candidates or their allies — on a turnout of 67 percent, the highest in decades. The RN now has a fighting chance of forming a working government from July 7. 

Marine Le Pen has called on voters to give her party an “absolute majority” in the National Assembly in the next round of elections on Sunday. “We need an absolute majority for Jordan Bardella to be named prime minister by Emmanuel Macron in eight days,” she said, to “avoid the country falling into the hands of… a far-left leaning toward violence.”

She’s referring to the Nouveau Front Populaire (NPF) who scored 28 percent, well ahead of President Macron’s Ensemble on 20.8 percent and the rump Parti Republicain on 10.2 percent. The NPF are likely to be a formidably vociferous grouping in the National Assembly and beyond. 

The biggest loser is of course Emmanuel Macron. Not simply because he has lost his reckless dissolution bet, but with it a whole political career. He came to the presidency in 2017 alone and he will leave it alone. The party he hastily, and brilliantly, rustled together has exploded. The arrogance and disdain for his citizens from bottom to top has finally got its comeuppance. In claiming back in 2017 to rid France of the reasons for voting for the "far right," he ended up bolstering them and those of a radical left to boot. His will be the negative political legacy of the likes of the vainglorious President Marshal Mac-Mahon who in attempting to put up was forced to shut up.

The next biggest loser is the stable moderation that General de Gaulle thought he had baked into the Fifth Republic: the orderly alternation between two main political groupings of right and left. Emmanuel Macron dynamited that. The result, when the dust settles, will be two highly confrontational and ideological blocs whose struggle will take place in and beyond parliament. The tremors of today’s explosion — political, social, economic, financial, cultural — will be felt for years to come. France is regressing to that old atavism of revolution and reaction she thought she had grown out of.

Another loser is the European Union. For the first time since the Treaty of Rome, with the occasional exception of de Gaulle, European institutions will be confronted by a French government that is overtly Euroskeptic. When Brussels attempts to manipulate levers in its control, notably financial, the new French government is unlikely to take that lying down — as the EU’s second largest economy and budget net contributor. Contrary to received opinion, for several years now the RN has been preparing for government with like-minded civil servants, judges, lawyers and EU functionaries (the RN MEP Fabrice Leggeri is the former head of Frontex) in the manner of an official opposition. A Bardella government will quickly knit alliances with like-minded member states — from Italy to Holland to Hungary — that will challenge the EU’s hubris and unsettle Brussels’ consensual cosiness and make it in the image of a fractious France. 

The coming week will bring an earthquake in French politics the likes of which has not been seen in the history of the Fifth Republic

And a further loser is France’s stature in the world. Post-war General de Gaulle, against all odds, restored France’s international standing. Under President Macron that image has been tarnished in Africa, Europe and the Far East for its diplomatic inconsistency and ineffectiveness. But that image also rested on more philosophical foundations: France is a bastion of the Enlightenment, home of the rights of man. Perhaps unjustly, an RN government will be seen in the Global South and parts of the developed world as marking the end of that old, and largely self-proclaimed, idea of France as model of civilization.

Finally, an incoming Labour government in Britain will also be a loser. Shadow foreign secretary David Lammy’s recent exegesis in Foreign Affairs — "The Case for Progressive Realism" — laid great store in bolstering foreign and security links with France through the Lancaster House agreements as an entry point to closer relations with Brussels. That strategy saw the Europhile Macron as the gatekeeper. That no longer looks credible in the face of a Euro and NATO-skeptic RN government. Labour will have to rethink its strategy towards the EU.

The coming week will bring an earthquake in French politics the likes of which has not been seen in the history of the Fifth Republic.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.