Time will tell what sort of coalition will be cobbled together in France (best guess: weak centrist), but it’s worth looking again at Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of LFI (France Unbowed). LFI is the largest party in the New Popular Front (NFP), the left/far-left coalition that was the leading element in the “Republican Front” that kept Marine Le Pen’s RN at bay, winning 182 seats in the National Assembly. After the decisive second round of voting, 74 of the NFP’s seats were held by LFI, another nine by the communists.
Charles Moore, writing in the Daily Telegraph:
Following the enormous rise in attacks on Jews in France after the Hamas massacres on October 7 last year, Mélenchon declared that anti-Semitism in France was “residual”, a word which defies the facts. Mass protests against Israel’s attacks in Gaza have frequently featured anti-Semitism. Currently, two teenage boys in France are charged with racially insulting and raping a 12-year-old Jewish girl.
If any anti-Semitism is residual, it is that of the National Rally. It still pops up in individual candidates, but Mme Le Pen has unequivocally condemned the Hamas attacks. It is now largely the far-Left, not the far-Right, which pushes an anti-Semitic narrative. In critical race theory, Jews cannot be the victims of racism, since racism is defined as a white vice. Since they are “white”, they must be racists.
Behind the approach of France Unbowed is a cold numerical calculation. Muslims – Arabs, black Africans or Turks – are the demographic future there. Their grievances present a unique opportunity for the Left, which long since lost the white working class. Much Islamist political discourse is anti-Semitic and almost all of it is anti-Israel. The Palestinian flag has replaced the old red and black ones in Leftist demos.
The New York Times’ Adam Nossiter wrote a profile of (to quote a NYT headline-writer) “France’s Far-Left Firebrand,” in which (after a while) he does get to the allegations of antisemitism (“which [Mélenchon] denies”), quoting two political scientists, one of whom observes that “there is at least an ambiguity there that favors antisemitism.” The other comments that Mélenchon is “considered by a big part of the population as dangerous and anti-Semitic.” That big part of the population is, it seems to me, correct.
Nossiter does note that Mélenchon “sometimes traffics insinuations that are stereotypes, once saying, for instance, that a Jewish former economy minister, Pierre Moscovici, didn’t “think French” but thought “international finance.”
Mélenchon is often described as a “former Trotskyist” (I wonder how former that “former” is). Nossiter also reports that one of Mélenchon’s long-term heroes is Maximilien Robespierre, “the most bloodstained of the French revolutionaries.” Awkwardly, Trotsky was critical of France’s mad Max (too bourgeois), although he did acknowledge that he had been useful: “Robespierre’s historic service consisted of his merciless purging of society of the feudal rubbish.”
Somehow I suspect that Mélenchon would not be averse to some merciless purging of his own. As it is, Nossiter relates that:
during the campaign [Mélenchon] showed his own authoritarian side, purging five members of his France Unbowed party who had often disagreed with him. “Our democracy deserves better than you,” François Ruffin, an independent-minded deputy and party member who was not one of those purged, posted on social media.
Meanwhile Moody’s has warned that “the fiscal implications of the election outcome are credit negative.” The ratings agency believes that any government that does emerge will be too weak to rein in spending, and that, since France has the highest tax/GDP ratio in the OECD, it probably won’t be able to push through tax hikes. Mélenchon would not agree. He wants a 90 percent tax on incomes above €400,000, and his plans for spending are . . . ambitious. He’d also impose price controls on some foods, electricity, gas and gasoline.
Macron has now called for a “broad governing pact,” a call that implicitly excludes LFI. That hasn’t gone down well with Mélenchon:
It is the return of the royal veto over universal suffrage! That is enough. He must bow down and call on the NFP. That is simply democracy.
Interestingly, although it came third in the contest for seats (which is what counts), RN and candidates it backed won 10 million votes in the second round, while the NFP won 7 million and the Macronist Ensemble secured 6.3 million.
In a brutal piece (if you cannot get behind the paywall, trust me on this) for The Spectator, Jonathan Miller writes:
Obviously by any rational criteria of job performance Macron is guilty of gross misconduct and should be escorted out of the building by security. It’s more complicated than that. Even though he is the architect of this capharnaüm, the constitutional process of replacing him would add even more instability to the political entropy.
Miller also notes that keeping Le Pen at arm’s length may benefit her:
She fought a competent campaign and her voters aren’t blaming her for failure. She won 37 per cent of the vote and increased the number of her seats. Best, not achieving any kind of majority, as had been predicted, has done her a favour because none of what is now unfolding is her fault.
Her protégé Jordan Bardella did well, too, broadening the reach of the party towards the young. He’s increased the size of her group in parliament by 50 per cent. She’s still in pole position for the 2027 presidential where the electoral calculus might be slightly more favourable.
2027 is a long way away, however.
An investigation has been opened into the financing of French far right National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen’s 2022 presidential campaign. Prosecutors in Paris said they will look into allegations of embezzlement, forgery and fraud, and that a candidate on an electoral campaign accepted a loan. The investigation was opened a week ago following a 2023 report by the National Commission on Campaign Accounts and Political Financing (CNCCFP).