France’s political extremes exploit Macron’s weakness

This is the English version of the Europe Express newsletter. You can read the French version here.

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En juin 2014, Le Point, magazine d’actualité parisien, a remarqué que “la France se trouve désormais dans une situation pré-révolutionnaire où tout devient possible”. Dix ans plus tard, après la décision d’Emmanuel Macron de convoquer les élections législatives anticipées, la prévision du Point se-réalise-t-elle enfin? Vous pouvez me joindre à tony.barber@ft.com.

In June 2014, the Paris news magazine Le Point commented that “France finds itself now in a pre-revolutionary situation where everything is becoming possible”. Ten years later, after President Emmanuel Macron’s gamble in calling snap legislative elections, is Le Point’s prediction finally coming true? I’m at tony.barber@ft.com.

This edition of the Europe Express newsletter will continue in English, but you can read it en français here. The next three Saturday editions will also be available in French.

To get started, here are the results of last week’s poll. Asked about Macron’s decision to call snap elections, 44 per cent of readers said it was a reckless gamble, 42 per cent thought it was a smart move and 14 per cent were on the fence. Thanks for voting!

Flourishing extremes

The election’s first round is eight days away. The second, run-off round will follow on July 7. Any predictions must allow for the many uncertainties regarding voter turnout and which political forces and candidates will make it into the second round. (The BBC provides a useful summary here of how the French electoral system works.)

In one vital respect, however, Macron’s gamble seems to be backfiring. An election that, for the president and his supporters, is meant to rally as many citizens as possible in defence of moderate liberal democracy is instead boosting the political extremes of both right and left.

Summing up this argument for Radio Canada (here in French), François Brousseau quotes an editorial this week in the conservative Paris newspaper Le Figaro. Its headline proclaimed: “Emmanuel Macron’s hara-kiri dissolution [of parliament].”

Brousseau draws attention to the doubts in Macron’s camp about the wisdom of his gamble. He quotes finance minister Bruno Le Maire as saying: “It was the decision of one man alone. It’s created worry, incomprehension, sometimes anger in the country.”

This mood reflects the trend of opinion polls, which suggest that Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National will win the election, a leftist coalition will come not far behind in second place, and Macron’s centrist forces will finish a distant, humiliating third (though a new poll released on Thursday night showed them ticking up a bit).

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Implications for war in Ukraine

It’s safe to say that most EU and Nato leaders would greet such a result with unease, not to say alarm. One exception is Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s prime minister. In this interview, he drew a connection between Macron’s defeat at the far right’s hands in this month’s European parliament elections and France’s support for Ukraine in its war of self-defence against Russian invaders:

“In the key country of France . . . where you find people who were perhaps most committed to sending western soldiers to the war in Ukraine, the political system has been overturned. Now early parliamentary elections have to be held there, where there’s a good chance of a repeat of [the June 9] victory for the pro-peace party.”

Orbán exaggerates Macron’s desire to put soldiers on the ground in Ukraine. Moreover, his term “pro-peace party” — implicitly, the far right — brushes aside the fact that any peace now would entrench Russian territorial gains since 2022 and, indeed, since the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

Nevertheless, Orbán has a point when he says a second electoral defeat for Macron in one month could have serious implications for France’s pro-Ukrainian stance. Writing for The Globalist, Holger Schmieding says:

“The French parliament controls the country’s purse strings. While Macron as the commander-in-chief could probably still send [already allocated] weapons or possibly even soldiers to Ukraine, parliament could deny him the funds for any major new initiative …

“The signal which an end of French money for Ukraine would send could further encourage [Vladimir] Putin to believe that he can prevail.”

Constitutional deadlock — or chaos

The election’s three most plausible outcomes are:

1. a relative majority for Macron’s forces;

2. “cohabitation”, in which the RN wins a majority and Macron appoints Jordan Bardella, Le Pen’s lieutenant, as prime minister;

3. a hung parliament, in which no party or coalition wins an absolute majority and political fragmentation increases.

Tullia Bucco, a Milan-based economist for UniCredit, the Italian bank, regards the first outcome as improbable, the second as possible and the third as the most likely. She writes of the third scenario:

“This would worsen the current stalemate, with the president unable to dissolve the National Assembly [parliament’s lower house] before a year has passed, according to the French constitution. Eventually, Macron may decide to break the impasse by calling for a new presidential election in the hope that this will bring political stability.”

Of course, the winner of a snap presidential election might be Le Pen — a disturbing prospect, as Shahin Vallée wrote for the FT, given the presidency’s far-reaching executive powers under the Fifth Republic.

Economic and fiscal risks

France’s fiscal and economic outlook wasn’t promising even before Macron called the election. But with the prospect of a legislature dominated by the far right and the left, financial markets, business leaders and France’s EU partners are more rattled than ever, as set out in this FT analysis of the parties’ economic programmes.

The markets’ view is summed up by Ludovic Subran, chief economist at Allianz:

“The left would cause capital flight and the far right would cause a debt crisis . . . and a technocratic government [in a hung parliament], a little bit of both. The French risk premium may not recede any time soon.”

1936 all over again?

Subran’s reference to capital flight prompts me to consider the parallels between this election and the famous 1936 campaign won by the Popular Front, a leftist coalition. Today’s left consciously evokes the anti-fascist spirit of those times, labelling itself the “New Popular Front”.

There are intriguing similarities — but crucial differences, too.

Like today, the international situation in 1936 was alarming: Nazi Germany was on the rise, and the Spanish civil war confronted the Popular Front with agonisingly difficult choices. But unlike in 1936, today’s left is not united in seeing Russia as a threat in the way that the Popular Front viewed Adolf Hitler.

Like today, there was a domestic far-right threat in France. Ultranationalist riots in February 1934 were the most violent episode in the French capital since the 1871 Paris Commune. But the RN differs from the far-right leagues of the 1930s insofar as it seeks to overthrow the political establishment not on the streets but through the ballot box.

This may not make the RN less dangerous — but it underlines the party’s determination to rid itself of the image of a neo-fascist rabble and acquire the democratic legitimacy of a winner of free, fair elections.

As for the left, the Popular Front of 1936 was scarcely less divided that its successor today. It comprised three forces — the Radicals, Socialists and Communists. Despite their name, the Radicals were a pillar of political moderation in interwar France, especially strong in the conservative-minded provinces, and they had almost nothing in common with the Communists, loyal servants of Joseph Stalin who later supported the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact.

Today, mainstream Socialists such as former president François Hollande — who has re-entered the political stage as a candidate for this election — don’t see eye to eye with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the radical leftist leader.

The final point concerns the 1936 Popular Front’s policies. These included a 40-hour week, paid holidays and hefty wage settlements for industrial workers, and a devaluation of the franc — the latter step impossible today with France in the Eurozone.

Massive capital flight ensued as the markets took fright — exactly the scenario outlined above by Allianz’s chief economist. Less than a year after assuming office, Léon Blum, the Socialist premier, declared a “pause” in the Popular Front’s programme — and that, essentially, was that. Many of the 1936 reforms were rolled back by subsequent governments, up to the 1940 Nazi invasion of France.

Something similar happened in the early 1980s when François Mitterrand, a Socialist president, and a leftwing coalition government attempted to implement a radical economic programme. The market reaction was so fierce that Mitterrand backtracked.

In conclusion, we can make a reasonable guess about what might happen in the rather unlikely event that the left were to emerge victorious next month. As for the far right, even if it does not win the election, its prospects of gaining power at some point later in this decade would surely not disappear.

In this sense, Le Point’s prediction of 2014 still carries force.

More on this topic

Macron and the French patient: a high-risk operation — a commentary by Nicolas Tenzer for the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis

Tony’s picks of the week

Joe Biden hopes that Donald Trump’s description of Milwaukee as a “horrible city” will help the Democrats in Wisconsin, a state that could determine the result of November’s presidential election. The FT’s James Politi reports from Baraboo

Public debt has reached alarmingly high levels in economically advanced countries, where fiscal consolidation policies will need strong institutions and a solid political consensus to succeed, Yougesh Khatri writes for the UK’s Chatham House think-tank