Far-right gets red card from French voters

Contrary to opinion polls, the far right was defeated in the French legislative elections. With 577 seats in parliament allocated, the National Union of Jordan Bardella and Marine Le Pen won 143 deputies. Voters voted en masse and chose the leftist Popular Front Union as the main political force, with 182 members elected. Juntos, a centrist alliance led by President Emmanuel Macron’s Ennahdha party, came in second with 168 votes. In light of the results, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced that he would resign on Monday.

The fourth largest force in terms of votes was the Republican Party, which won 45 seats in the new design of the Palais Bourbon, also known as the National Assembly, the lower house of Parliament.

It was not long before the reaction of the National Union leader came. Jordan Bardella described the victory of the left as the result of “unnatural political alliances” and “dangerous arrangements.” Referring to the electoral agreements “coordinated from the Elysée,” the leader of the French far-right said that Emmanuel Macron had “pushed the country into a state of uncertainty and instability” and that the electoral agreements had “thrown France into the arms of the far left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon.”

Bardella’s criticism was directed at Macron and also at the “Republican Bloc” that Gabriel Attal had called for last week, immediately after learning of the National Union’s victory in the first round. The protagonists of the “health blockade” on the far right were Macron’s members and the New Popular Front, whose most visible face was the radical leftist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, founder of France Insupérieure.

Mélenchon was the first to speak out once the first forecasts were published, saying that the new Popular Front was “ready to govern”, after “dismantling the trap set for the country” with the far-right expected to come to power. Olivier Faure, leader of the Socialist Party, stressed that the left-wing alliance would “open a new page” in the country’s history.

In a reaction later than others, Marine Le Pen said the National Union victory had been “just postponed”. “The tide is rising. This time it has not risen enough, but it continues to rise.” However, her party is expected to win a record number of deputies.