If I can offer an “insider's” take on this?
I should explain that I vote in all French elections, presidential and legislative (they are separate) and have done for many years. I voted on Sunday. I suppose I still have the right to vote in British elections (maybe not, actually) but don't, and haven't for years, because it seems to me to be not quite honest to want to influence the future of a country that I no longer live in, do not pay taxes in, and do not expect to live in again. I hold a British passport and am perfectly proud to have been born in — and grown up in — the UK. No problems with saying that. But it is the business of UK residential citizens to determine the future of their country. That's the way I see it, right or wrong, for better or worse. (And also, to some extent, it is the businees of long-term foreign residents in the UK, but that's another argument, and I'm not interested in getting into it).
These are strange times. Nobody expected Macron to call this snap election. It caught everyone on the hop (maybe not the extreme right). The more I think about it, I think Macron is playing a huge poker game, and for very high stakes.
He is in effect saying, “Ok. You want this? You really want this? Bardella as prime minister? (with Marine Le Pen standing behind him as his « éminence grise »). Living out the next two to three years in an extremely uncomfortable «cohabitation» with me? ” The RN have played their cards very cleverly: Bardella is the acceptable face of the far right, for a lot of people who would otherwise be uneasy about voting for them. He is well turned out, young (28), well spoken. In short, a nice lad, what the French call « le gendre parfait », the pefect son-in-law who you would be happy to have your daughter bring home and who would eventually ask for her hand in marriage. At the same time, he appears to come from impeccably working-class origins, having grown up on a council estate in the 93 (Seine St Denis, « département » heavily connoted for its rap artists, its council estates, its sizeable immigrant population, etc., etc., i.e. all the things that the media seize on). It's a bit more complicated than that, of course: his father, who left when he was very young, is the managing director of a company living in a completely different area. And he saw him every week growing up.
The next presidential election is due for spring 2027. That would be nearly three years of the centre-right attempting to govern with the extreme right. Macron is saying this to all those goodly citizens who turned out on Sunday to vote for the Rassemblement National. By the way, one in two of all those eligible to vote turned out. Historically, the turnout for European elections is always very low (all over Europe, in fact). He's counting on the fact that a) quite a few of those who voted RN, a significant proportion, wanted to register a protest vote, but when push comes to shove, they will vote for Renaissance candidates (Macron's party, formerly known as La République en marche) or one of the centre-right or centre-left parties — in short, that they will defect when it comes to an election that really counts; b) he is counting on the fact that the left parties, the Parti Socialiste, the various green parties, and above all, la France Insoumise, which is well to the left of the centre-left parties, will present a united front and vote strategically for Macron in order to block the way against the RN.
This could really backfire. Precisely because those who voted RN may well say, “No, fuck you, we've had you for several years, we voted for you in the last two presidential elections, believing in a moderate right-wing solution to France's problems. We've not been particularly impressed, we're sticking with Bardella/Le Pen.”
I can well imagine it.
I can also well imagine voters for the Parti Socialiste, and especially La France Insoumise (well to the left of them),
equally saying, with equal vehemence, “No, fuck you, you've depended on our vote, given with bile and bitterness in our throats, to get you in the last two times. We had to turn out to do this as far back as April 2002, when we voted in Chirac (a liar and a cheat, in our eyes) to stop Jean-Marie Le Pen (a crypto-fascist, and not so crypto, actually) becoming president. We're sick of it. You brought this on France. Now live with it.”
I just don't know. Nobody much does, I believe. But all scenarios are plausible. All bets are off.
For anyone who wants a really illuminating background to France and its recurrent political crises, with the advantage of the long view, and written very accessibly: Michel Winock, La Fièvre hexagonale : les grandes crises politiques 1871-1968, published in 2009. Checking Amazon, I see that it does not appear to have been translated — which is a great pity.
