The far-right tends to be banalized in French politics, expert says

And for some analysis on this, I can bring in French politics experts Jonah Levy, who's associate professor of political science at Berkeley. Thanks for speaking to France only for thanks for having me on your program. So it's been an extremely emotive week for voters in France. As someone following French politics for decades, it must have incited some emotions in you too. Yeah, it did. And in some sense a high degree of melancholy. Even in looking at the protests today, they really weren't all that huge. They totalled about 250,000 people in all of France. By contrast, when in January 2023, in a demonstration against pension reform, there were more than four times as many demonstrators, 1.1 million. So you could almost say that more French people care about pension reform than the prospect of a radical right government. And, and that of course makes me somewhat blue. I also think if one takes a historical perspective, 20 years ago when Jean Marie Le Pen surprised observers and made it to the runoff in the presidential election, there were one and a half million people, or six times as many protesting. And I think that difference between one and a half million and 250,000 tells you almost everything you need to know about how vandalized and accepted the National Rally has become in French political life. In terms of the mayhem that we've seen this week following Emmanuel Macron's call for a snap election, where does this rank in the history of French political shake UPS for you? Well, I mean, it's certainly sparked a certain degree of entertainment value. But at the same time, it does speak to the deloquescence of some of the mainstream French parties, particularly the high people you can who originated with General de Gaulle, President de Gaulle's movement, and have now become sort of this pathetic divided rump, much of whom may go over to the National Rally, a movement that would certainly have de Gaulle turning over in his grave. So, yeah, there's entertainment value until you think about the underlying dynamics, which are a French political system in which the mainstream parties have not been able to formulate solutions to the concerns of the voters and are being deserted in droves. And we've so as you say, we've got that sort of meltdown on the right. There's been a purge on the left as well. Who do you see as coming out as the strongest challenger to the far right in these elections? I think the only enemy of the far right would be the far right itself. You know it. In many ways, Jean Jean Luc Melonchon is the best thing that ever happened to the far right in that he he comes off as the authoritarian. He comes off as the anti semite, he comes off as the bomb thrower in the party. Whereas the National Rally looks sort of cool and professional and well spoken and sort of the adult in the room. These are words I never thought I would hear myself pronouncing in terms of, you know, what might change the dynamic. One wild card or joker that got thrown in today was the announcement by former President Francois Hollande that he was running for Parliament. And I sincerely doubt that Hollande is looking to be one of 577 members of Parliament, a backbencher for the rest of his life. He was president, after all. But, you know, something that might make sense of Hollande's move would be that he's perhaps hoping that the elections will yield a hung parliament with no party having an absolute majority. And that the forces fearful of the National Rally might turn to a relatively undivisive feet figure like Hollande, who could play the role of elder statesman willing to shepherd France through an economic and social crisis. A dynamic we've seen in Italy several times, most recently under European Commissioner Monti, who took power in a crisis and made a a number of difficult reforms. So, you know, maybe that's the angle that Hollande is playing. I'm not sure that it would work. A lot depends on how hung the parliament is and how many seats short of a majority the National Rally is. But you know, it is one more scenario of kind of an alternative to the National Rally. And I notice you haven't mentioned the Macron centrist party as a, as a challenger to, to, to the far right in this upcoming election. Macron has exploded politics in France. Why has he done that if he didn't think he could win this election? You know, I think he he misjudged a number of things. For starters, it's worth noting that McCall talked to about four or five close advisors in making his decision. It was a it was a typical highly centralized mode of decision making. And I think he didn't get necessarily get the feedback that perhaps he needed to make a proper decision. Thinking historically, it reminds me of when Al as You Pay announced his disastrous pension reform in 1995 that led to huge protests and basically the fall of the government. Eventually, he bragged that not ten people had known about his plan before he presented it to Parliament. That's not the best way to make decisions, and you do increase the chance of error when you take decisions in the centralized bubble with a bunch of technocrats who think the same way as you do. I also think that McCall did not anticipate that the left would get its act together so well within just a week. The parties at the left, who were hurling insults at each other during the European Parliament election campaign have struck an alliance, allocated candidacies so that there's a single candidate in every district and come up with a common platform. By doing so, they the left has in many ways positioned itself as the more compelling alternative to the National Rally than Macron. Macron's is deeply unpopular. His economic record, which is supposed to be his strong point, is not very good. He's alienated a lot of people through his arrogance and refusal to listen or to change. And so it seems more likely that the main opposition or challenger to the National Rally will be the the left, which is organized in a so-called New Popular Front. As opposed to Macon's party which is being squeezed on both sides on the left by the Popular Front, on the right by RN, and is not and is suffering from being an unpopular incumbent party. I have to say this decision was incredibly reckless and irresponsible by McCall, even if he somehow pulls out this election. Basically, he wanted to win a few extra members of parliament so that it would be easier to do the next round of austerity reforms or unemployment insurance cuts. And that was more important to him than the risk that he might be turning France over to a party with very questionable democratic principles and certainly not liberal principles at all. Well, how about this two round system then? Does this still mean that the far right can't win an absolute majority? I don't think it does. The two round system obviously means that you can't just take the results of the European elections, which were under proportional representation and say that's what's going to happen and you'll have the same allocation of seats. The two round system does put a premium on forging alliances, but let's think about what that might look like on the second round. The National Rally is set to qualify in the vast majority of French electoral districts, so it will be in the second round most likely, and what it will also receive somewhere on the order of 35 to 40% of the vote according to current polls. Of course, that can change, but there's no sign that the National Rally is losing support. And then in the runoff election, you have the scenario where if it's a Popular Front candidate, many of the the Mccall's supporters won't vote for that candidate. They fear me, El Schon more than they fear Valde La. And many of those voters will either vote for the national rally or at least abstain. And on the other side of the equation, if it's somehow Mccall's party when SLS candidates who make it to the second round, well, then you're going to have the left voters who are sick and tired of giving their support to McCall only to have him thumb his nose at them as soon as the elections are over. And it's unlikely that they're going to provide a lot of support to to Macron's candidates. So, and, and in many ways, that's how the 2022 legislative elections played out where neither side was willing to support the other side in runoffs against the National Rally. So ironically, it may be that the National Rally is the party with the most opportunity to increase its vote from the first round to the second round and to win a majority, something that's never been the case in France before. It was always that the National Rally would score well in the first round, but had no other basis of support in the second round. Now there are people, particularly on the center right and mainstream right, who would conceivably vote for the National Rally in the run off right. So say they do get that absolute majority, how will they govern? What will the consequences be? Well, they won't have all the power. The French President does retain some power, particularly in foreign policy and in defence. In addition, the president possesses the right to dissolve parliament and call new elections as often as once per year. So that means that the National Rally is going to have to be very careful about doing anything unpopular because if it becomes too unpopular in a year, McCall can call snap elections, dissolve parliament and potentially kick out the National Rally. So being in charge of France is not unlimited power. In this case, it's shared power with a Sword of Damocles hanging in the form of the threat of a snap election that may limit the radicalism of the National Rally. In addition, France seems to be in a deep economic and fiscal crisis. Under McCall, France's public finances have gone from those of a northern European country to those of a southern European country. France has the largest budget deficit in the EU among the Western European countries, and it has a higher level of public indebtedness than either Spain or Portugal. And so the National Rally won't have a lot of room to maneuver in terms of programs that might cost money. And indeed, the National Rally might have to implement austerity programs to recover France's public finances. So there are a lot of economic and political constraints on the National Rally. That said, in terms of what the party is most interested in, which is tightening immigration, stepping up law and order, police and aggressive policing and rewriting French immigration law there, the National Rally will probably have a lot of room to maneuver and will prob that's probably where we'll see the biggest imprint of the National Rally's ideology on public policy. But of course, that's all speculation at this point. What did you think about the claim that Macron actually didn't think it would be the worst thing in the world if the far right came, got an absolute majority out of this because he would like to in some way show the electorate that they would mess up the country? That's, that's one opinion that I've heard. I mean, I, I've heard that opinion. I, I do have to say I don't find it terribly compelling. I can't imagine that Macron dissolved parliament thinking wouldn't it be great to have the far right in power for the last three years of my presidency? I think the better explanation is that he misjudged things and that he was a megalomaniac, to put it crudely. You know, he took a huge gamble for the sake of boosting his plurality and making his life a little easier in governing. And he was willing to do that at the non negligible risk of bringing the far right to power. And OK, maybe three years later, the the Nash, the Macron's party or some other party will defeat the far right in a presidential election. But maybe they won't. Or maybe in the interim, France will move towards something more like an illiberal democracy that we see in Eastern Europe. No one knows for sure. It's impossible to play out. But McCall took a huge gamble, and I don't think there's a lot of upside to the notion of the National Rally winning the legislative elections. Certainly for my call, who can't run for president again in 2027. So really, the end of his career would be three years of being reduced to a figurehead. I can't think of anything further from what McCall likes that the man who craves the spotlight and wants to talk for an hour without interruption, I can't imagine anything worse than being for him than being sidelined politically for his last three years as president. All right. Jonah Levy, associate professor of political science at Berkeley, thank you so much for speaking to France 24. Thank you, Peter.