French legislative elections: 'Macron has lost his bet,' historian says

Well, let's analyse all of that for you now on the program, I'm going to talk to lecturer in Liberal Arts at Queen Mary University of London, Andrew Smith. Andrew, good to have you with us as ever on the program. I suppose the key question really seems to be now if the far right could win a majority next weekend. What's your view? Well, it's an extraordinary and quite historic result, I think, and really quite a terrifying result. Emmanuel Macron quite crassly said a few weeks ago when he was at or I do, remarking the kind of memorial to that martyr town that he had, you know, thrown a live grenade at people's legs and that he wanted to see what happened. It's looking increasingly like he threw the pen at people and it's blown up in his hands. I think, you know, nothing is settled yet. We don't know the results of these, the second round and what's going to happen. But we do know right now that Emmanuel Macron has lost his bet. That very much is clear now. I think there's there's three words that are going to define the next week that are going to define the outcome of this second round. The first, of course we've heard a lot triangular. We know there's going to be up to 300 or so of these kind of three-way runoffs. Now, the reason that's important is because the next word needy neither nor we know already that Emmanuel Macron's party had, you know, before the first round made very clear they didn't want to support the left, very clear they didn't want to support radical extremists. You know, people on the left like Francois Hollande and sort of really people that actually aren't extreme in the slightest. We're seeing some movement on that suggestions that they might step down for, you know, maybe a Green candidate or maybe a a party socialist candidate and sort of ignore this new Popular Front alliance. And then of course, the last one is probably Republican. We've heard already the Republican, the centre right party, of course, which has been torn apart in recent weeks by Eric Chiotti's scheming, shall we say. Really, the big beasts that are left within the Republican Party need to decide whether or not, well, they need to decide how Republican they are. Is it more than a name? And do they have really the the courage to stand up to the far right within this? So, yeah, for me, those are the three words, triangular, Nene and Republican. And that for me is going to define what happens next week. Yeah, there are a lot of right wing but not far right wing politicians here in France saying they can't suggest to their voters that they vote for the left bloc because that also includes the far left bloc, doesn't it? Absolutely. I think it's, you know, it's a real challenge. And of course, we've seen already that Julie Mellongcheon was the kind of ghost at the feast who's put so many people off engaging with the the far left. The suggestion that he might be Prime Minister has terrified people. But even within this kind of broad electoral alliance, and I think that's really important, this is just an electoral alliance. This isn't even as durable as Nupes Nupes. The last time that that kind of has largely fallen apart within the assembly, this was, I can admit to be a rash. The dam against the far right. Has it held? Well, it's currently being pressure tested. And that is what we're actually going to see shortly, I think. So this is going to be the big challenge. What's going to happen in these various kind of small towns and suburbs where we see this big turn towards, towards the far right. Because look, you know, already we've seen a big turn out. This is, you know, the highest since what, 1997? It wasn't a record turn out. It didn't kind of blow everyone away, but it did see actually maybe the the resemble of national didn't cause any surprises. You know what I mean? They they could have they could have returned even more. So there is some hope perhaps that people will in this second round if there is enough sort of coordination amongst central kind of Republican parties within the Republican family. That's a small arm Republican that they might actually be able to mobilise against the far right within this. Because I think that that's the big moment of the where we are right now. And we've already seen markets are are spooked by it. We've already seen European allies concerned by this. I think it is something for France, which is a really historic moment, a historic turning point. People have talked about a comparison to something like the the Brexit election, the gamble that David Cameron made, you know, in calling that and really without a plan for it. This is what it looks like for Emmanuel Macron, the end of this project and instead really the start of something quite different. The most likely scenario that we're set to be talking about this time next week, you're going to join us again at that point on the program, is that we're going to get that 3 way split. We're going to have the biggest party of the far right. We're going to have the the left and the far left as the second group and Macron as the the smaller third group. That makes the country ungovernable, doesn't it? Yep. Just about. Yeah. We've seen already. You know, you mentioned that Jordan Bardella, of course, announced that he didn't want to be Prime Minister if he didn't have an overall majority. You know, bully for him. The idea is really that this is going to be quite a challenge if you have diametrically opposed blocks, a hung parliament, which is kind of set against itself. Really, what this will start to do is test the very kind of constitutional structures of the Fifth Republic. We know the Fifth Republic was kind of set up effectively to sort of to avoid the type of kind of parliamentary turbulence that we had in the the Fourth Republic. And way back when you look at the framing of the fifth public constitution, Michel Debray, you know, of course, one of the the arch gallist framers of the constitution said that really what the idea of a dissolution was meant to do was to kind of, you know, bring about a period of dialogue between the head of state and the people. Well, what kind of dialogue is this? Let's be honest. I think what we're finding out is that, you know, if Manny Macron was put on a performance, if he is the man on the stage, well, the reviews are well and truly in and they are terrible. So I think this idea of trying to put together a parliament looking at where deals can be done, well, what's the option? Well, potentially Emmanuel Macron looks to a point, perhaps a kind of technocratic government drawing people in from outside politics. Of course, we've seen already some kind of wild speculation about figures like Christine Lagarde, who might be sort of technocratic figures that they might be able to run a parliament for a while in order to try and, you know, pass basic legislation to keep the country working. But really what we enter is to enter into is uncharted territory, constitutional experiments at moments in which we find out exactly which powers are devolved to the presidency or the Prime Minister already spooky. I think in one where we've seen Marine Le Pen challenge who's the head of the army. I don't know about you, but the idea that the far right is suddenly very interested in who controls France's armies is for me an extraordinarily worrying precedent. I think this is, you know, really a challenging time which stresses the importance of the second round to help build that Republican dam against the the far right. Andrew, just one minute left. So let me ask you very quickly. Of course the other alternative is we will have a far right government here in France. Yeah, absolutely. That is a quite scary prospect. We've seen this discussion so far with what their their policies are. Of course, they are very light on policy. We've seen some suggestions for things which you know, two weeks ago were the policy of the Rasam Blomanasi and Allen, which are no longer. We're unclear what's going to happen with the the pension reforms they've been on again off again. We're unsure what the relationship with Russia is, whether they're our best pals with Putin or in fact more sort of, you know, critical friends or something like that. What we know is that the, the, the kind of manifesto kind of, so to speak, promises essentially a lot of giveaways. It promises a lot of social spending and policies, which will put France into difficulty with European partners. We already know it's a deficit, but also promises some scary things around ideas like citizenship. Marine Le Pen says, of course, no French people should be, should be terrified. But then of course we all know that it actually is all about where people draw that line and that definition. If you are have dual nationality, you might worry about it being stripped. If you are someone who has recently taken on trench nationality, you might wonder how kind of secure that is. And those are the things which are actually quite scary. And those ideas around immigration was irresponsible policies around spending. And I think that idea of what it will put France into in a situation in terms of its wider European allies, all of these things I think are at risk with the potential of a far right government. Andrew, thanks very much as ever. Andrew Smith there, the lecturer in the liberal arts at Queen Mary University of London talk to you in a weeks time. We shall continue that conversation when we know exactly what the full results are here on France 24.