France : after the dissolution of the Assembly, both the left and the right struggle to put on a united front

Well, I'm joined now by Andrew Hillier from France 24's International Affairs Days desk. Hi to you, Andy. What a week it's been for French politics. I mean, I think I speak for everyone when I say that I can barely keep up with everything that's been happening. But now, with less than an hour to go for candidates to register, both the left and the right are struggling to put on a united front. Yeah, that's right. I mean, it's been a week in which I think French politics really has been turned on its head. You know, on the left we saw, look at this, you can just see how chaotic it has been since Emmanuel Macron called those snap elections last Sunday. On the left, we saw unity at the start of the week with the announcement of that Popular Front. Then the very next day, by Thursday, they'd already those left wing parties announced a shared election manifesto. But by Friday, by the weekend, that unity partly unravelling. There was uproar on Friday night when Adrian Catnance, an MP for France on Baud, appeared on the list of candidates standing for re election. Now he's a very controversial figure because he actually was convicted for domestic violence and at the same time several figures, these are well known critics of Jean Luc Meron, the leader of France on Baud. They appear to be excluded from those lists. So that appeared to be a party purge. He's now Katnos has withdrawn his candidacy. So that will go somewhere, I think, to smoothing over the divisions. But let's just bring up that graphic again and see what's happening on the right wing of French politics. Because on the right wing of French politics, we've seen a party practically implode on itself. On Tuesday, June the 11th, Eric Ciotti, the president of the Republicans, announced an alliance between his party and the far right. And then the very next day, his own party announced that he'd been excluded from the Republicans. Then Friday, we saw a Paris court suspending the decision to expel Eric Zotti as president of the party, a decision that's only valid for eight days. So we have now, Jenny, this surreal situation with less than an hour to go until candidates have to register for the elections. On the one hand, you have within the same party, the Republicans, those who oppose Shotty's decision. These are people who have the party machinery and the party financing behind them, and then on the other hand, in the same party, those digging in behind that legal decision. Now nothing has been definitively decided yet by French justice. This is a temporary ruling. And in the meantime, both sides are racing ahead with their campaigns claiming legitimacy under the banner of the Republicans. And Andy, this time last week, we were asking how Emmanuel Macron's block would fare in the EU elections. Now we're asking whether he he'll be able to govern after the July the 7th. Yeah. I think, Jenny, this, you know, his announcement last week came as a massive shock, not just to people watching here in France, but also people watching, you know, across Europe. And he, Emmanuel Macron claimed that it was a democratic choice after his party's disastrous results in those European elections. But essentially what he's done here is he's basically called France's bluff. He's called the nation's bluff by saying to voters, OK, so you voted for the far right in the European elections. Do you really want them to govern? At the same time, he's called the far right's bluff. You know, the far right say they're ready to govern, but this suddenly puts them on a campaign footing, giving them less than three weeks basically to prepare for an election. So, you know, all we can say here with certainty is that political norms have been upended. We've even even seen a former president, Francois Hollande, announced his candidacy as an MP. That's the first time that's ever happened. We've seen on the right, Nicolas Sarkozy, another former president, criticizing the decision to call snap elections. So the big question here is this is a huge political gamble. Will it pay off or has Emmanuel Macron released political forces beyond his control? Right. I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens on those first round of elections happening on the June 30th. Andrew Hillier from my International Affairs desk, thank you so much for your analysis.