French Elections: Stormy Weather By Andrew Stuttaford
I have no idea what is going to happen in the next (and final) round of the French parliamentary elections, and I’m not convinced that many do. With all the runoffs ahead, some of which will be three-way runoffs, only so much can be extrapolated from Sunday’s vote. One key problem for those who wish to opt for a “republican front” of (essentially) all the other parties against Marine Le Pen’s RN is the presence of Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left LFI (France Unbowed) in the second-place NFP (New Popular Front). If blocking the RN was their goal, the parties of the center Left may have blundered badly by going along with LFI in the NFP, an alliance that is likely to make some, particularly on the center right, pause as they consider how to vote.
After all, as Anne-Elizabeth Moutet writes in the Daily Telegraph:
Only three weeks ago, on June 12, Macron could not find hard enough words for the Jean-Luc Mélenchon-led New Popular Front. “The socialists, greens and communists are allying themselves with an anti-democratic, anti-parliamentarian, anti-Semitic, anti-nuclear power, pro-Russian party”, he thundered, meaning the hard-Left, which had grabbed the lion’s share of winnable NPF constituencies. Yet he now wants his own candidates to support them.
I watched footage of a large left-wing demonstration in Paris last night. Perhaps the camera angles were unfair, but there were quite a few red flags, while the tricolor was hard to find.
If I had to guess (not very bravely: A lot of people seem to think the same), the RN will be the largest party after Sunday’s vote, but will fall short of an overall majority (289 seats). Under those circumstances, the party’s president, Jordan Bardella, has said that he would not want to be prime minister. Moutet thinks that could change if the RN is within five or ten votes of the magic 289. Strategically that could make sense. The RN has repeatedly emphasized that it has come a long way from its disreputable predecessor, Le Pen senior’s National Front, but saying that in opposition and showing it in government are different things. This could be Bardella’s chance.
Moutet adds two extra details:
Macron has let it be known that he plans to dissolve the House again in a year’s time, on July 8 2025, the instant he is allowed to again. In the meantime, he means to announce this coming Wednesday a series of new nominations at key posts in France’s plethoric civil service, to ensure maximum friction for every bill and decision that manages to be passed by politicians he doesn’t like. For a gambler like him, it’s the ultimate thrill.
One, I suspect, that many French people could do without.
The New Popular Front’s economic policy is awful, and so is the RN’s. Horseshoes and all that.
Both blocs’ agendas are “dangerous for the economy”, according to Patrick Martin, the head of medef, a business federation. The hard left’s tax and spending splurge could lead to a “catastrophe”, according to Olivier Blanchard of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while the hard-right’s programme “is like a Christmas tree, without logic or coherence”.
As I mentioned the other day, France has a debt/GDP ratio of 110 percent and is running a budget deficit of 5 percent, awkward numbers made more awkward still by the fact that France’s currency is the euro, a “foreign” currency, meaning that, a wrinkle or two aside, it cannot simply print more money to pay its debt. Some have been talking about this triggering a(nother) eurozone crisis. I don’t think so, but it may be that financial constraints (as in the case of Mitterrand’s first term) will act as a brake.
The Financial Times recently ran an interview with veteran fund manager Édouard Carmignac. He thinks that gridlock (Macron will still be president) will, along with financial markets, act as a restraint (gridlock beats driving over a cliff) and let slip one other interesting thought:
The fund manager also predicted that the unity of the leftwing NFP may not last long beyond the election as its far-left component “do what they can to create havoc” and “moderate socialists realise that they can actually sail on their own”.
The sooner the center Left breaks with LFI the better.
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