The far right’s dream of coming to power in France has been dashed again. And in a big way. From forming a government for the first time in the Fifth Republic and with an absolute majority, it has fallen to a distant third place, behind the left-wing bloc and even the Macronist forces, which it had practically given up for dead. The atmosphere in the Paris event hall, where the National Rally (RN) was planning to celebrate its long-awaited success in style, turned into a funeral atmosphere in a few minutes, as the results came out which, although they show that Marine Le Pen’s party continues to increase its parliamentary strength, further distance the illusion of power that they had come to caress in recent weeks.
For once, the ever-controlling Jordan Bardella could not hide his frustration. The RN leader’s heir apparent, who already saw himself as the first far-right prime minister to come to power through democratic means, came out alone to denounce the “unnatural alliance” which, according to him, has “deprived millions of French people of their desire to rebuild France” and is throwing the country “into the arms of the [Jean-Luc] Mélenchon,” the leader of the radical left-wing party La France Insoumise. Nevertheless, Bardella said he was not throwing in the towel. “It all starts tonight,” he promised. “In the face of the single party,” referring to the “dishonorable alliance” between Macronists and left-wing parties, Bardella said to laconic applause from the audience: “I will remain here, for you, until victory. Tonight, an old world has fallen and nothing can stop a people who are once again hopeful.”
By the time he came out to speak, most of the 500 or so invited activists had begun to leave or were gathering at the bar at the back of the room, finishing their drinks with a defeated look on their faces. The flags – all French, none European – that several volunteers had handed out earlier were hanging limply from their hands, or had been put away.
“Yes, we have achieved less than we expected because everyone has united against us,” lamented Nicolas Fouché, a lifelong activist, while clutching his glass of wine. “But we will continue until we reach power. We are the most united bloc,” he encouraged himself and anyone who would listen.
The party leader, Marine Le Pen, was brief after the results were announced. “Macron’s situation is unsustainable,” she told TF1. “Our victory has been delayed,” continued Le Pen, who also criticised the cordon sanitaire of the left, centrists and part of the right to cut off the government’s path. And she predicted “a few more years of immigration and loss of purchasing power.” “But if it has to be done like this…” she added.
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Although the final blow came as a surprise to almost everyone, the euphoria of an unprecedented victory, supported by the results of the European elections and those of the first round of the legislative elections on June 30, had been fading over the last week, as the cordon sanitaire that until now has always managed to stop the ultras was strengthened. in extremis.
Triangular elections, where the vote is more dispersed, would have benefited the RN. But more than 200 withdrawals (the withdrawal of the third-placed candidate in the first round to concentrate the votes in the second round on the opponent with the best chance of beating the RN candidate) meant that, from mid-week at least, the main polling institutes began to distance Le Pen’s party from the dream figure of an absolute majority of 289 seats.
As the days went by and rumours of possible unprecedented alliances between parties that had hitherto been throwing everything at each other began to spread, even the possibility of a “solid” relative majority for the RN, predicted until then, of around 270 deputies, began to diminish noticeably. But no one expected them to fall so far short of their dream goal.
The RN was already showing its nervousness. Bardella, who until then saw himself as prime minister – an idea he has repeated every time he has been in front of a microphone – began to denounce the manoeuvre as an “alliance of dishonour”. He described the alliance around his party as the “true republican front”, in reference to the name given in France to the cordon sanitaire that has so far managed to stop the far right. In his last message on social media before the express campaign ended on Friday, Bardella called on his supporters to mobilise this Sunday to “not let the victory be stolen from them”.
An increasingly irritated Le Pen also denounced the manoeuvres of a “single party” made up of those who “want to retain power against the will of the people”, even though, in the end, it is the people who have voted against the RN.
In addition to the anti-RN alliances, the Le Pen party has made its own mistakes. It did not properly gauge the impact of proposals such as its plan to prevent binationals from obtaining sensitive positions in matters of national security (both in defence and in nuclear power plants, for example). Although theoretically it would only affect a few dozen people and is an accepted practice in many countries, it was denounced as proof of the anti-immigration spirit that pervades the entire far-right party. And in France there are more than three million people who have two passports.
Bardella was also not particularly good at trying to downplay as a bunch of “black sheep” the controversial cases of RN candidates that have been cropping up constantly, especially in the last few days of the campaign: a candidate for deputy posing with a Nazi military cap here, another candidate who had been convicted for taking hostages in a town hall there; a candidate who downplays on television the words of the party founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, describing the gas chambers as a “detail” of history, another who denies being racist because “her dentist is Muslim and her optician is Jewish.”
Nor did the formation benefit from the explicit support (with a photo of Le Pen celebrating the good results of the first round) from the Russian Foreign Ministry at the end of the week. Although the RN was quick to distance itself from the message in X, it has once again highlighted the closeness that the party, starting with Le Pen herself, has maintained for years with the Kremlin. A closeness – the magazine The Obs claims that one in three RN MEPs was invited by Vladimir Putin in the previous legislature – which rekindles suspicions at a time when Russia is perceived, after its invasion of Ukraine, as the greatest threat to European security.
However, Sunday’s result confirms the unprecedented progress of a party that until recently was practically a party with no roots. Not only has it now gained strength again in the National Assembly, it has also managed to become a party that many French people openly admit to voting for, something they did not do before.
That was what Cécile, a 31-year-old activist from La Courneuve, on the outskirts of Paris, was clinging to when she was invited to the watered-down RN party. “The result doesn’t matter so much, I’m happy because in recent years we have been making incredible gains, there are also many new members. We have to focus on that, that’s the positive thing,” she said. Mathes, a 19-year-old student, two of whom were RN activists attracted by the “Bardella effect,” was also trying to keep his spirits up. “There are more seats than in 2022. And that’s just a step towards 2027,” he said, with an eye on the next big challenge for the party and France, the presidential elections that Le Pen always held up as her big moment. But that is no longer so clear after Sunday’s unexpected setback.
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