“… because THIS! Cannot be real life! It just can’t!” Those words concluded Jon Stewart’s take on the first Presidential debate on June 28, 2024. They would aptly apply to France not two weeks later.
It is actually a story that has repeated, time and again.
And the one and only lesson nobody took from this nth opposition to the far-right.
Countless articles have been written everywhere (Daily Kos) on how wrong the pundits were and what an amazing victory it was when the French far-right (RN), taking 37% of the votes and 143 seats, was beaten by the French left (NFP), with 25% of the votes and 180 seats; a result that matched the polls down to the participation level. The French barrage républicain, with candidates from the far-left to the center dropping off to give better odds of beating the RN opponent, proved effective and halved what could have been a far-right absolute majority.
This left France with three blocs: the left (NFP) with 180 votes; the center (Ensemble) with 163 votes; and the far-right (RN) with 143 votes. As for the right (LR) with 66 votes, they are expected to change president and name again (RTS Info, in French). With 25 other seats and 577 total, the lower chamber of Parliament, the National Assembly, now has to find 289 votes for a majority to even pass a budget in the fall. They are headed for gridlock.
Here is what the institutions would expect.
The left wing, being the dominant formation, should offer a prime minister and then form a governing coalition in Parliament; this would involve negotiations around a common agenda, as well as the repartition of ministries. Such a coalition would naturally extend from the left to the center and provide up to 343 votes, more than enough to get things done.
And so, naturally, the opposite is happening (RTS Info, in French).
The left is actually an unsteady alliance of parties: the far-left (LFI) with 71 seats already declared it would negotiate with no one; it and the socialists (PS) with 64 seats have instead opted for maximalist demands, with 100% of the ministries, their whole agenda and a dare for the assembly to oppose them. The left’s whole strategy, as soon as they agree on one of the four figures so far proposed to become prime minister amongst their ranks, is to govern the country with 31% of the votes. That means ruling by decree and hoping not to get censored by a majority vote.
This, in itself, would not be too troubling. It was expected of the LFI to act like an opposition and emulate the 2023 House GOP spirit but the socialists and ecologists (EELV), who hold 33 seats, are used to negotiations and compromises and could break ranks if the center tried.
The center is not trying (Euronews, in French).
Some allies of M. Macron are rather pushing to form a government around centrists and Republicans that, with their allies, have come in fourth place with more than 60 seats. However, that group would still need support from additional legislators.
Since 2022, the presidential party, lacking an absolute majority, was governing in concert with the rightwing party Les Républicains, leading to the retirement reform that is widely seen as betrayal and the main cause for this far-right surge; it also led in January 2024 to an anti-immigration law that the far-right voted for; a parenthesis to confirm that a border deal would do little to stop MAGA.
And so, after losing nearly half of their seats, the centrists are seeking to double-down on this strategy. A coalition with the right would only lack 60 votes for a majority and those votes are planned to come from the far-right, occasionally. The center’s entire governing strategy after joining a front to oppose the far-right is to work with the far-right rather than compromise with the left. (The far-right has no intention whatsoever of working with the center-right.)
To sum up, the left doesn’t want anything to do with a center that is already flirting with the far-right.
This cannot be real life. It just can’t.
Yet the math is unforgiving. Of those 343 seats a mythical center-left coalition could build, 71 were never available as the LFI’s founding principle is to impose, not compromise. Scraping unaffiliated seats would barely make for a unsteady majority if every other leftist seat agreed , which would require them to break the alliance — and be labelled as traitors by their base — and risk repeating the same past mistakes.
Because, from the left’s perspective, France has already tried the right — from 1995 to 2012 — and already tried the center — from 2012 to 2024 — with for only result the rise of the extremes. It is clear, to them, that another center-left coalition would only keep that trend. Meanwhile, from the center’s perspective, those extremes are caused by circumstances and they in the middle of this are the true stewards of the Nation, the eye of a storm bound to pass eventually. Breaking from center-right economics would doom the nation.
Therefore, the left will work with no one and the center with the far-right.
And that is the lesson.
Not the lesson France can teach the US, far from it: the lesson France should heed from the US.
Because America has more than a decade of experience to give them, with names to represent it. Progressives will tell you in length about Joe Lieberman who is singled-out as the reason why even the compromise that was Romneycare didn’t have a public option (commonhealthfund). They can talk at length of Joe Manchin (CNN), less so of Josh Gottheimer (NYT), but the story is the same each time. Brave souls defending common-sense and the sacred institutions against the excesses of progressives and their radical, too liberal president, a moderate named Obama and the centrist Joe Biden.
So France can tell its left to compromise; to which the US will say yes, so did theirs, repeatedly, in 2010 and 2021 alike (Intelligencer). The left compromising was necessary but not sufficient. What was missing from the equation, and what set Joe Biden apart (Politico), was the center compromising as well. The lesson the US would give France is for the center to grow up, do some soul-searching and start making concessions. Without it, the cycle of betrayals and distrust will only worsen.
In 2022 the French far-right got 17% of the vote. 32% two years later. In 2022 Marine Le Pen got 41% of the votes in the Presidential election. There is little doubt about Le Pen’s score next time, and the barrage républicain was already included; only three years left.
Only four months in the US.