Macron’s miscalculation

During a visit to the Pas-de-Calais department in northern France in January 2017, Emmanuel Macron, then a presidential candidate, told the cameras that if the French voted for him, he would be the best bulwark against the far right. The former finance minister had chosen the former mining area to launch his campaign because it was the symbol of a France that, disillusioned with traditional parties, had begun to veer dangerously towards the far right. The same man who today argues about the risk of “a civil war” if “the extremes” came to power spoke at the time of the need to fight against those who exploit fear and division. Seven years later and after two terms of Macron at the head of the country, the National Rally (RN) has gone from having three million votes in the first round of legislative elections to 10 million. Pas-de-Calais has become a stronghold of the far right and the town of Hénin-Beaumont is Marine Le Pen’s stronghold. On Sunday, 14 of her candidates, including Le Pen herself, were elected in the first round in this historically left-wing department.

The result obtained by the RN, with 33% of the votes, is historic. The defeat of the former presidential majority, with only 21% and overtaken by the left bloc (28%), is not proof that the French needed to “clarify the political situation”, as the president said, but rather further proof of his miscalculation. It is as if the president did not want to realise the gravity of the situation, with an RN one step away from obtaining an absolute majority and carrying out his plan to destroy French democracy and the European project. Macron maintained this Sunday the same rhetoric that he distilled during the campaign, which consists of equating the RN with La France Insoumise (LFI), calling for “the union of democrats and republicans” in the second round on 7 July, although many analysts interpret his words as excluding the LFI candidates from this republican front. An unsustainable position, according to some experts, and one that could become a minority position even in its own bloc as the days go by. This was demonstrated by the much more nuanced intervention of the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, who assured that “not one vote should go to the RN” and called on Ensemble candidates to give up in the second round whenever a Republican candidate is in a better position to beat Le Pen’s party.

Despite the demonization strategy, the RN remains a deeply xenophobic, nationalist and anti-European party, which has continued to elect candidates for legislative elections with openly racist and anti-Semitic profiles, even conspiracy theorists, as revealed by Liberation and The World. And although it is undoubtedly true that Jean-Luc Mélenchon and some of his lieutenants have had an ambiguous and unforgivable discourse on anti-Semitism for electoral reasons, dictated by the political context of the war in Gaza, reducing LFI to the figure of Mélenchon and equating the far right with the left movement – whose programme is not based, as is the case with the RN, on suppressing historical rights acquired after years of social and political struggle – will not be forgiven if the extremism of the Le Pens comes to power. Even more so when France is a few weeks away from hosting the Olympic Games, and in the context of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and the Hungarian presidency of the EU starting this Monday. Even the leader of LFI himself has given a clear order – something he had always avoided until now – calling on his candidates to give up, even in the face of a Macronist.

“I have thrown [a los franceses] “I put a grenade in my legs. Now we’ll see how they manage,” Macron told a businessman he met the day after the National Assembly was dissolved, according to a report by The World The Elysée has denied this, and the newspaper maintains it. What many French people committed to democracy now want to see is what he will do in the midst of the crisis he has deliberately created, and whether he will finally try to really fight against the far right that he himself has fuelled all these years. It is never too late.

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