Sunday’s upset result could lead to a long political deadlock and a “new era” in French politics, Macron’s Prime Minister Gabriel Attal said Sunday night. Macron on Monday rejected Attal’s request to resign and asked him to stay on as prime minister “for the time being” to “ensure the stability of the country.”
A week ago, when Macron’s party suffered a landslide defeat in the first round of voting, the French president’s grip on domestic politics seemed to be rapidly fading. But the unexpected outcome of the final vote has put Macron back at the center of the French political game, but perhaps only for a limited time.
Macron, who is due to attend a NATO summit in Washington this week, must decide who to appoint as the next prime minister. It would be customary for him to give a chance to the left, the largest political force, but the constitution does not require him to do so.
France’s divided left has formed an unlikely alliance ahead of the election to thwart a far-right victory, forged in part by deep dissatisfaction with Mr Macron, but to form a governing majority it will probably need the support of at least some of Mr Macron’s allies.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the controversial leader of the far-left party Unbowed France, who describes himself as spokesman for the coalition, denied that possibility on Sunday. [Macron’s] “I will win a majority for the party,” he said in his speech, needing at least 100 more seats than his coalition won, but he did not say how he would achieve that goal.
Olivier Faure, first secretary of the center-left Socialist party, said Monday that the coalition would announce its candidate for prime minister soon. But some acknowledged Monday that the coalition’s unexpected victory had surprised even left-wing leaders. Choosing a joint candidate could deepen divisions and tear apart the fragile coalition.
Pierre Matthiot, a political scientist at Sciences Political de Lille, said a split in the National Assembly into blocs with no clear path to a majority could give Macron some room to maneuver and he could try to nominate a moderate as prime minister.
But Matteo warned that it would be a mistake to think that the gamble of holding the elections was a success. “This is an unprecedented situation in the Fifth Republic,” he said. For now, the only alternative to a very fragile left-wing coalition seems to be a broad political alliance, common elsewhere in Europe but contrary to French political culture.
Matteo said a broad coalition across the political spectrum “might be a way to govern France in the short term,” but in the medium term there was a risk that “we would end up handing power in 2027 to Marine Le Pen,” whom he called a far-right leader.
That’s exactly what Macron said he wanted to prevent when he called elections last month following the victory of France’s far-right in the European Parliament elections. At the time, he argued that France needed a “clarity” at the ballot box because “we don’t want to hand over the keys to power to the far-right in 2027.”
On Sunday, he appeared to be right about how the public would react to the prospect of the first far-right government since World War Two, but he also appears to have underestimated the appeal of the left.
The left-wing coalition wants to lower the pension age, which Macron raised last year, and significantly increase government spending on social welfare, environmental protection and health. To form an electoral coalition, the left-wing parties agreed to field one candidate per constituency, which would likely undermine Macron’s gamble that his presidential candidate would advance to a runoff against a far-right challenger in most constituencies.
But the election has once again exposed deep divisions within the left. Mr. Melenchon’s critics say he is too divisive to be put forward as a candidate for prime minister. Others say his policy proposals are unrealistic, too extreme for moderates to accept and would spark conflict with the European Union.
Outgoing French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said on Monday that the left-wing coalition’s spending plans would trigger a “financial crisis.”
Critics also accuse Mr Mélenchon of stoking anti-Semitic sentiment within the party.
Some left-wing leaders appeared to distance themselves from Mr. Mélenchon on Monday. Marine Tondrier, a leading member of the Green party, said “there are many people who fit the criteria” needed to be the left-wing coalition’s candidate for prime minister. She said the coalition wanted someone who could “pacify and repair the country” and “build consensus,” which are not Mr. Mélenchon’s strong suit.
Socialist leader Faure also appeared to dispute Mr Mélenchon’s claim that there would be no negotiations with Mr Macron’s allies. “Realism is essential,” he told French national television, suggesting the left could find like-minded lawmakers on each bill even if they did not have a majority in parliament.
The new National Assembly will convene for the first time on July 18. But on French television, some analysts had already begun speculating on Sunday night about when the National Assembly might be dissolved again.
Among the far-right, Sunday’s weaker-than-expected results may raise questions about the readiness of the party’s candidates, many of whom lack political experience, but there is no debate about the movement’s rapid rise: Two years ago, it had fewer than 10 seats in parliament.
They are also ideologically unified.
“The New People’s Front and [Macron’s] “The National Coalition is made up of one group,” Ouest-France newspaper said in an editorial on Monday. As a result of the electoral victory, the party “will have considerable new financial means to prepare for the next elections,” it added.
“A prolonged political stagnation will favour the National Coalition,” the paper concluded.
