The European Parliament Election gave jolt not only to foreign onlooker, French President Macron was shattered. He was surely faltering and took such a step which many commentators described as playing Russian Roulette. Seeing the fascist RN party led by Marie Le Pen surging to top and farther erosion of his party (LREM, now renamed RE) and his alliance, he dissolved the parliament and called for a parliament election (1st round on June 30, 2nd round on July 7). It was on June 9, just after results for European Parliament election in France. Where fascist party RN and its alliance got 30 seats getting 31.50% of votes and his (Macron’s) party RE and alliance got 13 seats and 14.56% votes and unlikely to get any other supporting forces in future, calling a parliament vote may turn disastrous for him if RN of Mme Le Pen gets controlling power parliament; in that case, continuing his chivalric conduct he might have to resign from presidency, else his stay will be very awkward in spite of having much power as a president.
Reality is very strange, otherwise we could not see a sudden entrance of a pact, a pact for Popular Front comprising the Socialist Party, Communist Party, Greens and what the French (and Europe) calls ‘radical left’, Jean Luc Mélenchon’s LFI (La France Insoumise) suddenly took shape facing the fascist surge after 4 days of negotiation arranged by the Ecologists. More surprise was left to be seen: Socialist party resurged to gain 13.79% votes and 13 seats became the biggest party of this ‘left’ consolidation or Popular Front. Together with LFI (9.87%, 9 seats), Communist party (2.36%, 0 seat) and Les Ecologistes (5.47%, 5 seats) together is arithmetically a formidable force (parliamentary) with 7,765,048 votes and 27 seats, just 888 votes behind the fascist RN. The Socialist boost is really bizarre; from 616,478 votes in 2022 president election they garnered 3,401,076 votes (with its alliance with PP). Interestingly, France had its last Socialist President, Hollande, in office from 2012 to 2017. In 2017 president election, the socialist party in the first round got 6.36%, and then it slipped down further in 2022 election to 1.75%.
Mbappé asking voters to vote against the extremists (fascists)
Anyway, the popular front is brittle with hard-line anti Socialist party Mélenchon and hard-line anti-Mélenchon stance of PS leader Glucksmann in the same boat, though two factors will help PS leader pragmatist Glucksmann: (i) Mélenchon is now cornered in his own party, and (ii) Glucksmann is very much flexible as he showed. There are many ‘cons’, e.g., economic policies of parties are different, differences regarding stands on the Ukraine war and NATO, etc.
But the major reason for the Popular Front’s future inability to resist and fight fascism is that all their policies, lines of actions, movements and so on are very much within parliamentary space; they have no precedence and no programme that can be called extra-parliamentary. With RN and the fascist block attracting more and more blue-collar workers, poor pensioners, small agriculturists and more and more youth (1), what any of the constituents did or spoke against the present state of affairs? RN boldly put forward its stands — against NATO, against European Union, against entry of migrant population in France. The popular front has no ‘revolutionary’ alternative to place before the masses and to call for militant anti-fascist anti-establishment militant struggle. All of them believe in fine-tuning the essentially capitalist-imperialist system to work in a ‘pro-people’ way.
IFOP Opinion Poll, June 28
According to today’s IFOP opinion poll results: Popular front is likely to get support of 29% or voters, whereas RN fascist coalition is likely to garner support of 36.5% of voters [2]. Already Italy has a fascist president, in Germany fascist AfD showed a sudden leap in European Parliament election (second position with 15.89% votes and 15 seats, after ruling Christian Democrat led coalition with 30.02% votes and 29 seats). Signs are not very well. If France, Germany and Italy are taken together, they will become a very strong economy together, very near to 3rd position globally.
Sandeep Banerjee is a political commentator
NOTES:
(1) See the presentation in my article written after French presidential election of 2022 at https://countercurrents.org/2022/04/so-it-is-ok-in-france/
(2) IFOP opinion polls, detail discussion in
Rolling Ifop – Elections législatives 2024, 28 juin 2024, 17 h, p 4
