Friday, June 14, 2024

French left-wing parties form ‘Popular Front’ to contest snap election

Socialists, Ecologists, Communists and France Unbowed have formed a left-wing alliance

Jon Henley in Paris
Fri, 14 June 2024 

Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the Communist party, addresses a news conference by the Nouveau Front Populaire to announce the alliance of left-wing parties.Photograph: Stéphane Mahé/Reuters

France’s four main leftwing parties have agreed to form a “New Popular Front” (NPF) to contest the snap election, as the far-right leader Marine Le Pen said she would seek a “national unity government” if her National Rally (RN) wins.

The Socialist party (PS), Greens, Communists and France Unbowed (LFI), led by the hard-left firebrand Jean-Luc Mélenchon, will campaign on a common platform and field a single joint candidate in each of the 577 parliamentary constituencies.

“A new page in the history of France has been written,” they said in a joint statement. Mélenchon tweeted his “warmest congratulations and thanks to our negotiators who had four sleepless nights” deciding on the programme and 577 candidates.

Macron called the snap ballot last Sunday after his list in the European elections suffered a crushing defeat at the hands of the RN, managing less than half the far-right party’s score. The vote will be held over two rounds on 30 June and 7 July.

The LFI MP François Ruffin said the left could now “start our campaign – with the aim of winning!”. Raphaël Glucksmann, who led a successful Socialist-backed list in the European elections, said he would also back the alliance.

“We can’t leave France to the Le Pen family,” Glucksmann told France Inter radio, adding that the NPF looked like the only way to prevent a far-right victory in the election, France’s most momentous in decades.

Glucksmann, whose list scored about 14% in the EU elections, just behind Macron’s camp, accused the president of “plunging France into chaos” and “opening the way to power for the far right”.

It was unclear who would lead the NPF and be its candidate for the post of prime minister. Glucksmann ruled out the bombastic and divisive Mélenchon, saying: “We need someone who can achieve consensus.”

Manuel Bompard, a senior LFI MP, said the alliance’s aim would be to “offer the country a complete break with the policies of Emmanuel Macron, so as to respond to the people’s most immediate needs, and to implement the necessary green transition”.

The NPF, presenting its policies on Friday, said its top priority if elected would be the cost of living crisis, which was “harming the lives and confidence of the French people”. It pledged to cap the price of essential foods, as well as electricity, gas and petrol.

The parties also said they would immediately reverse the unpopular pension changes pushed through last year by Macron’s government and return the French retirement age to 60, as well as overturning a more recent change to unemployment benefits and introducing a wealth tax.

They said France’s minimum wage and pension would be raised, while the NPF would also demand an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, recognise the state of Palestine, continue supplying necessary arms to Ukraine and legislate for carbon neutrality by 2050.

Related: French elections: who are the key players and what is at stake?

Polls suggest that the NPF, a repeat of the Nupes left-green alliance formed for France’s 2022 parliamentary elections, is unlikely to beat Le Pen’s RN, which is polling at about 33% of the national vote.

But it could capture more than 25%, giving it more than enough deputies in the national assembly to prevent Macron’s centrist coalition, forecast to lose half its MPs, and RN, which could double its tally, from forming a stable majority.

As Nupes, the same left-green alliance worked together in 2022 and 2023, before a leadership struggle, Mélenchon’s polarising tactics and policy differences, notably over the conflict in the Middle East, triggered its de facto collapse.

Campaigning in northern France on Friday, Le Pen said RN was on course to win the election, form a “government of national unity” and “pull France out of the rut”.

The RN leader added: “We will gather all French people – men and women of goodwill – who are aware of the catastrophic situation in our country.” It would be up to the 28-year-old RN president, Jordan Bardella, to “choose his team”, she said.

Infighting has continued in the centre-right Les Républicains (LR), the party of the former presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy, after its president, Éric Ciotti, unilaterally announced a surprise alliance with RN.

That prompted the rest of the party’s leadership to vote him out on Wednesday, and again on Friday, but Ciotti has continued to insist he is still the conservative party’s leader. A Paris court was due to rule on the case on Friday evening.

Speaking on BFM-TV on Friday, Bardella, France’s probable prime minister if the far-right party wins a majority in parliament, said the alliance between RN and LR would field joint candidates in roughly 70 constituencies. LR said no such deal was in place.

French left forms 'Popular Front' to fight far right


By Paul Kirby, BBC News
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JULIEN DE ROSA/AFP

France's left-wing political parties say they have united to form a "New Popular Front" to go head to head with the far right in snap parliamentary elections at the end of this month.

President Emmanuel Macron called the two-round vote after the anti-immigration National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella won a resounding victory in European elections last Sunday.

The latest opinion poll for Le Point website puts RN on 29.5% of the vote in the first round on 30 June and the left-wing alliance on 28.5%, squeezing Mr Macron's Renew into third with 18%.

That has prompted each to claim it will form a "block" to prevent the others winning power in the National Assembly.

With little more than two weeks left before French voters go to the polls, the sense of uncertainty surrounding French politics has been been reflected on the Paris stock exchange and bond markets.

The CAC40 index has endured its worst week since March 2022, slumping by 6.2% since Monday, and by 2.66% on Friday alone. French government bonds have also suffered, and the margin has widened between 10-year interest rates on French and German bonds, the biggest spread since 2017.

The pace of campaigning has been frenetic and the main three groups have launched direct attacks on their rivals.

France's fragmented political landscape and two-round system encourage alliances, which is why the Socialists have agreed to join forces with the Greens, Communists and France Unbowed, the far-left party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.

The former presidential candidate has alienated many voters on the left by focusing on criticising Israel over the war in Gaza, and his party trailed the Socialists under Raphaël Glucksmann in last Sunday's elections.

However Mr Glucksmann decided the risk of letting down his centre-left voters was worth taking.

"The only thing that matters to me is that the National Rally doesn't win the elections and won't govern the country," he told France Inter radio, adding that Jean-Luc Mélenchon would not lead a left-wing movement.

"We can't leave France to the Le Pen family," he said. While Marine Le Pen leads the parliamentary party, she now has the backing of her niece Marion Maréchal who has been thrown out of a rival far-right party for calling on voters to vote for National Rally.

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REUTERS/Christian Hartmann
Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella are on course to win the elections, polls say

The head of the powerful, left-wing CGT union, Sophie Binet said there would be 200 protests across France this weekend: "It's our responsibility to build the popular wave that will block the far right".

Minutes later, National Rally leader Jordan Bardella gave a TV interview declaring that he was "the only one capable of blocking Jean-Luc Mélenchon and blocking the far left". He appealed to "all the patriotic forces of the republic" to unite to prevent the danger of the left winning the election.

For the first time the opinion polls suggest National Rally has a chance of winning the vote, while stopping short of an absolute majority.

Mr Bardella vowed to push through an immigration law enabling the expulsion of "delinquents and Islamists", if he becomes prime minister. He also promised to cut the cost of energy.

A poll on Friday evening for Le Point-Cluster 17 suggested the new left-wing alliance was not far behind Mr Bardella's party.

It indicated RN could win 195-245 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, with the New Popular Front on 190-235. The Macron centrist alliance would be reduced to up to 100 seats.

French right ditch leader over far-right alliance deal


Macron takes huge risk with surprise election


Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire warned of a potential financial crisis if either the far right or the left won the elections. "I'm sorry, [National Rally] do not have the means to afford these expenses," he said.

The left, which has been dominated by France Unbowed in the outgoing parliament, has proposed scrapping the Macron government's pension reforms, lowering the retirement age to 60, a year after it was raised from 62 to 64, and it is also planning to raise the minimum wage from just under €1,400 (£1,180) to €1,600 a month.

Condemning this programme as "total madness", the finance minister said it would break the rules of the EU's stability pact.

Under the Popular Front agreement, France Unbowed is likely to have by far the loudest voice, putting up candidates in 229 of France's 577 constituencies, while the Socialists field 175 candidates, the Ecologists 92 and the Communists 50.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal warned that the left's plans would be very bad news for French people "who would see their taxes rise again". Ecologists leader Marine Tondelier hit back, accusing him of a leading a "Robin Hood government in reverse" with reforms that took money from the poor and left the wealthy alone.

Reuters/Stéphane Mahé
Ousted Republicans leader Eric Ciotti eventually left Republicans party HQ

One party that appears to be completely out of the race is the conservative Republicans, who imploded this week when leader Eric Ciotti called for the party to form an alliance with National Rally.

His colleagues then expelled him from the party and for a while he refused to budge from party headquarters in central Paris.

"It's all turning into a farce," Mr Ciotti accurately observed, after the Republicans (LR) held a new meeting to confirm his expulsion.

A court in Paris met on Friday to consider whether or not LR's decision to ditch its leader followed party rules. It was due to make a decision during the evening.

Jordan Bardella has claimed that 70 RN candidates will run jointly with the Republicans, although the figures are disputed by LR.

However, Republicans in the western suburbs of Paris have reached a local deal with Mr Macron's party to form their own alliance.

Mr Attal said candidates in Hauts-de-Seine had agreed to "block the extremes of the right and left and create a republican arc".


French left vows 'total break' with Macron policies
AFP
Fri, 14 June 2024 


France's left Friday vowed a "total break" with President Emmanuel Macron's policies if its new alliance wins historic polls that could propel the far right to major gains in parliament.

Far-right figurehead Marine Le Pen, also making a pitch to voters, pledged a "national unity government" if her party takes power in the snap legislative elections.

Macron on Sunday stunned France by calling polls after Le Pen's far-right National Rally (RN) scored more than double his centrist alliance's result in last week's European elections.

Left-wing groups including hard-left France Unbowed (LFI), the Socialist, Communist and Green parties on Thursday agreed an election alliance called the New Popular Front.

On Friday, they unveiled a joint manifesto, whose headline measures included jettisoning Macron's controversial immigration and pension reforms if they win the polls, which open on June 30 with a second round on July 7.

They also promised to "rise to the climate challenge" -- without agreeing on whether to go ahead with modernising France's fleet of nuclear plants -- and to maintain support for Ukraine against the Russian invasion.

"It's going to be either the far right, or us," Greens party leader Marine Tondelier told reporters.

The coalition won backing from leading left-wing politician Raphael Glucksmann, 44, who led the Socialist-backed list in the European elections.

"We can't leave France to the Le Pen family," he told broadcaster France Inter.

The name of the alliance is a nod to the Popular Front, a political alliance founded in France in 1936 to combat fascism.

Opinion polls suggest Le Pen's party will massively increase its parliamentary presence from its current 88 out of 577 seats.

She took over the National Front -- founded in 1972 by a former SS member -- from her father in 2011, renaming it and standing three times as its presidential candidate.

- 'Hate and discrimination' -


Francois Hollande, the Socialist former president, backed the new union, saying the left-wing forces had "got beyond our differences".

It remained unclear however who would lead the New Popular Front and become prime minister in case of victory. Glucksmann ruled out the LFI's abrasive leader Jean-Luc Melenchon.

Aurelien Rousseau, a former health minister under Macron, announced on Friday he was switching his allegiance to the Popular Front.

"The RN must not come to power," he said, adding that only the Popular Front was capable of stopping it.

Hitting the campaign trail in the Pas-de-Calais region of northern France, Le Pen claimed the RN could win the elections and form a "national unity government".

"We need to pull France out of the rut," said the 55-year-old, who is expected to run for a fourth time in the 2027 presidential election.

The country was in a "catastrophic situation", she added.

The far right suffered one setback Friday in the shape of an Instagram post from one of France's top YouTubers, Squeezie -- the alias of 28-year-old Lucas Hauchard.

"I've never wanted to talk to you about politics," he told his almost nine million Instagram followers.

"But I think firmly opposing an extremist ideology that preaches hate and discrimination goes beyond any kind of political positioning," he said. The post garnered almost 900,000 likes within a few hours.

- 'Profoundly wrong' -

Other right-wing forces were mired in infighting.

Eric Ciotti, leader of the conservative Republicans, broke a historic taboo this week, announcing his party would form an electoral alliance with the RN.

The rest of the party leadership promptly expelled him, confirming the decision with a second vote on Friday according to party sources.

But Ciotti appeared to have successfully challenged their decision Friday. A Paris court suspended the decision against him pending a more in-depth ruling within eight days.

The 28-year-old RN chairman, Jordan Bardella, said the far-right party and the Republicans would put up joint candidates in 70 of France's 577 parliamentary constituencies, hailing what he said was a "historic agreement".

Macron remained defiant, defending his decision to dissolve parliament and call snap elections.

Speaking at a G7 summit in southern Italy on Thursday, he said his G7 counterparts had praised his move.

"They all said: 'This is courageous'", Macron told journalists.

He took time too, to take a swipe at the programmes of both the Popular Front and the National Rally, describing them as "totally unrealistic".

Italy's far-right Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Thursday accused Macron of seeking to score points with voters at home, saying it was "profoundly wrong" to use the G7 summit for "campaigning".

France's stock market suffered its worst week since March 2022 and the first weeks of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

The CAC 40 index fell 6.23 percent between the election announcement and close of trading Friday.

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