OPINION - Can France hold back the march of Le Pen and the hard-right?

Jack Kessler
·3-min read
(AP)
(AP)

Please let me be.

Please go away.

I am NOT going to get up today!

The alarm can ring.

The birds can peep.

My bed is warm.

My pillow's deep.

Today's the day I'm going to sleep.

It would have been frankly easier to begin today's newsletter with a quote from W. B. Yeats' The Second Coming. You know, the one where "things fall apart" and "the centre cannot hold". But on reflection, I Am NOT Going To Get Up Today! by Dr. Seuss feels more apposite.

For those without small children or long memories, the book is about a young boy who lays in bed, declaring to his mother and the world (but I repeat myself) that he simply will not get up today. Family and neighbours attempt to lure him about of bed, even the US Marines arrive to help, but all to no avail. Finally, his mother concludes: "I guess he must be serious".

Bear with me, but we now turn to Sunday's French parliamentary elections. Following a disastrous performance in last month's European elections, President Emmanuel Macron called a snap election, seeking a "clarification" from voters. Essentially, he sought to call their bluff.

Macron's calculation was that voters may be content to support the far-right in elections that they consider distant and unimportant, but when it matters, they would return to the mainstream fold. The ploy failed spectacularly. In backing Marine Le Pen's National Rally (RN) a second time, the French demonstrated to their president that they were indeed serious.

In the first round of voting, RN came top with a third of the vote, ahead of the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP), a melange of parties ranging from communist to social democratic. The President's centrist coalition, Ensemble, finished a distant third. What happens next depends not only on the votes at the second round on July 7, but also what the parties of the centre and left do next.

Outgoing French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal has said there is a "moral duty" to prevent Le Pen's party from gaining a majority in the National Assembly. Avoiding such an outcome would require NFP and Ensemble candidates who finished third withdrawing and supporting the other. But there's a problem.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the hard-left France Unbowed, has been accused of antisemitic dog whistles and downplaying anti-Jewish hatred in France, where antisemitic acts have risen by nearly 300 per cent between 2022 and 2023. Indeed last month, a 12-year old Jewish girl was raped in what police have called a hate crime, with one of the boys involved calling her a "dirty Jew", according to a report by BFM.

No doubt, this is a good time to be a far-right party in Europe. The so-called cordon sanitaire – the practice of more moderate parties joining forces to prevent them from attaining political power – is crumbling.  But at the risk of making the spectre of the first far-right government in France since the Second World War about Britain, it does raise uncomfortable questions for the next UK government.

If the United States is our most important ally, then France is a jolly close second. After an extended period of being an exporter of chaos, Britain looks set once again to be a moderating influence on the world stage. But by the autumn, both the US and France may be going through convulsions of their own, with implications for everything from Nato to the border force.

It is enough to make one not want to get up today. But that only gives the bad guys a head start.

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