2022-06-21 07:00:01
The Hindu Editorial
June 21, 2022
Cracks at the centre: On France’s elections
Macron seems to have lost some of his support base to both the new left and the far-right
In the June 2017 parliamentary elections, held a few weeks after Emmanuel Macron was first elected President, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s leftist France Unbowed party won just 17 seats. Five years later, Mr. Mélenchon’s coalition has emerged as the second largest bloc in the French Parliament with 131 seats, clearly showing a resurgence of the left. Mr. Macron’s party, Renaissance, and its allies won 245 seats, short of the 289 needed for absolute majority in the 577-member National Assembly. The far-right National Rally led by Marine Le Pen came third with 89 seats, a historic high. The results largely endorsed the trend that was visible during the presidential elections earlier this year. In the first round, the two far-right candidates — Ms. Le Pen and Éric Zemmour — and the Left’s Mr. Mélenchon together polled more than 50% of votes. Mr. Macron secured a comfortable victory in the run-off, but his margin over Ms. Le Pen shrank substantially unlike in 2017 — an indicator of slow-burning voter resentment. Mr. Mélenchon read the tea leaves correctly and built a wider leftist platform to fight the parliamentary polls. He forged an alliance with socialists, communists and greens, trying to avoid a split among voters in the left of centre spectrum. Ms. Le Pen doubled down on her anti-immigrant populism. Mr. Macron, faced with a two-flank attack, could not hold his centrist fort.
France’s polity, traditionally dominated by the centre-right Conservatives and centre-left Socialists, has undergone structural changes. As the old consensus collapsed, Mr. Macron, a liberal populist, emerged as the guardian of the status quo. With pro-market economic policies and social liberalism, he projected himself as an alternative to the emerging new left and far-right parties. Though it helped him win back-to-back presidential elections, he could not calm rising resentment, which has finally hit his own party. The next five years will be harder for him than his previous term. He will have to stitch an alliance with the conservatives or win support from the left to drive his legislative agenda. What makes matters worse is a relentless cost-of-living crisis that has shaken western economies. France has managed to control fuel and electricity prices, for now, with a cap, but consumer price inflation has hit record levels. With a mushrooming energy crisis in the wake of Russia’s Ukraine invasion, France, dependent on energy imports, is facing added pressure. This explains Mr. Macron’s guarded approach towards the conflict. Unlike the U.K., the U.S. or eastern European countries, he has repeatedly called for ending the war through talks. Unless the war ends, he cannot tackle the inflationary pressure effectively. And unless he tackles the cost-of-living crisis, he cannot stop the new left and the far-right from eating into his support base.
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