“And now, what do we do?” was the headline on the front page of the daily newspaper Le Parisien, the day after Sunday’s shock. Election results began to sink.
The day after a historic election, France woke up to definitive results that no poll had predicted. New Popular Front took the most seats in the National Assemblybut not enough to form a government, followed by President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition, which lost dozens of seats. Finally, in third place is the party that pollsters and pundits expected to see lead – the National Rally of the Far Right.
The question then facing the country was who would govern France and how.
In a country with little inclination for political compromise and collaboration, it is difficult to know how to form a government and undertake the important task of passing the country’s budget and enacting new laws.
On Monday morning, one question was answered, but apparently only for now. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, from Mr. Macron’s party and once a favorite of the president, offered his resignation, but Mr. Macron asked him to stay in office for now “to ensure the stability of the country,” the Élysée said.
Mr Macron will now have to consider who he wants to appoint as prime minister. The challenge will be to nominate someone capable of forming a government that new MPs from both the left and right cannot bring down with a motion of censure.
President called for early elections a month ago, after the eurosceptic far right defeated his pro-European party During the European elections, Mr Macron had explained that the national vote would bring “clarification” to the country. In other words, he was asking his compatriots whether they could really let the far right take power when so many people consider its views a danger to society.
Ultimately, the answer seems to be that many could not have imagined this scenario. That included the left-wing parties and some of Mr Macron’s centrists, who banded together to form a barrier against the National Rally by withdrawing dozens of candidates in three-way races.
The country, however, seems more confused than before, with three major political blocs, each with a very different vision and project for the country. The electoral map shows persistent divisions: Paris and its suburbs vote for the left and center, and the far north and south regions along the Mediterranean vote for the far right.
Le Parisien summed up the situation in the coda of its editorial: “When the clarification plunges into the thickest fog.”
The country is mired in “the greatest confusion”, announces an editorial in the conservative daily Le Figaro“The National Assembly of tomorrow will be more ungovernable than that of yesterday.”
The editorial promised readers to “chart a path through the fog of this endless crisis.”
“Everything is possible and everything is imaginable,” declared Jean-Philippe Derosier, professor of public law at the University of Lille, interviewed at length in a special broadcast devoted to the election on France Info in the morning.
Much of the country was in shock. Before the election, all the polls suggested that the far-right National Rally was on course to win the most seats. The question was whether it would manage to muster an absolute majority and take control of the prime minister’s office and government appointments.
“The turnaround – a spectacular reversal,” read the headline of one editorial in La Croix, a Catholic daily.
To some, the results appeared to be a clear rejection of the National Rally’s anti-immigration ideology, even though the party and its allies made significant electoral gains, winning about 140 seats, about 50 more than the National Rally had previously won.
The front page of the business daily Les Echos was covered by a large photograph of the party president, Jordan Bardellawith a short and biting title: “The Slap”.
The sense of relief and joy in the country’s capital, which has excluded the far right, was palpable.
People gathered in Republic Square, the city’s historic protest site. They danced, hugged, congratulated each other. Fireworks exploded above their heads.
“I’m relieved,” said Charlotte Cosmao, 33, a set designer who was at the edge of the square drinking a celebratory beer with a friend. “I’m happy.”
At another Place de la République, 225 kilometers southwest of Paris, in the city of Le Mans, a more modest celebration was held. The region had also prevented the far right from winning seats. One of the defeated candidates was Marie-Caroline Le Pen, daughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen, one of the party’s founders. (Another daughter, Marine Le Pen, is a longtime leader of the National Rally and won her seat in the first round of the election.)
“It’s incredible and completely unexpected,” Damien Fabre, 36, a history teacher, said at the celebration in Le Mans, as someone nearby shouted that there were no fascists in the area, to cheers from the large crowd. “It changes the entire political future of this country.”
“We were starting to get used to the idea of having a relative majority for the National Rally,” said Fabre, who participated in the campaign of a candidate from the far-left party La France Insoumise. “Now a path has opened up for the left: if it may not be able to implement its program, it will at least be able to be on the offensive and set the tone.”
While the evening ended with some clashes with police in some parts of the country, the vote did not result in the wave of violence that many, including the interior minister, had anticipated. Some 30,000 police officers were deployed across the country, including 5,000 in and around Paris, where the far right is particularly unpopular and authorities fear that protests could turn violent if it wins. Many of the city’s shopkeepers had boarded up their storefronts along the capital’s most famous avenue, the Champs-Élysées, expecting looting and riots that did not occur.
Among far-right supporters, many of whom were seduced by his promises of tax cuts, reduced immigration and improved public services, disappointment was evident.
“They call us fascists, but that doesn’t exist anymore,” said newly elected National Rally candidate Claire Marais-Beuil at her victory party at a local cafe in Beauvais, northern France.
“I am worried about my France,” she added. “It will become ungovernable, and all the things we wanted to do will be blocked or difficult.”
There is also the question of whether the left’s victory is more a rejection of the far right than an endorsement of the left coalition’s program. Last week, the new coalition called on voters to help it form a barrier – the “dam” or “republican front” – against the rising National Rally to prevent it from coming to power. It even withdrew 130 of its candidates from the three-party elections and threw its support behind its opponents to defeat the National Rally.
The left-wing newspaper Libération editorial The newspaper credited the left with defeating what it called the xenophobic right. The editorial began: “Thanks to whom? Thanks to the Republican Front.”
But the vote, the editorial said, forced the left-wing New Popular Front to “live up to the voters’ maturity.” The editorial called on the coalition to show humility, tone down its partisanship and respond to the deep sense of disenfranchisement among many voters that fuels the far right.
Remember, he told left-wing leaders, that “the far right is more powerful than ever in our country.”
Liz Alderman report contributed from Beauvais, France; Segolene Le Stradic from Le Mans, France; and Aida Alami from Paris.
