Readers of a certain age will remember the halcyon days when society was allowed to have a sense of humour and comedy movies were actually funny. Among the best and oddest of cinema from those times was Will Ferrell’s Anchorman. It is that movie which gave us the classic line, now of worldwide meme fame, “Boy, that escalated quickly.”
Ferrell didn’t know it in 2004, but anchorman Ron Burgundy nailed the current atmosphere in the French National Assembly. We all knew it would go sideways fast, but boy, it’s escalating quickly.
The situation in the French parliament is best described as a dog’s breakfast, but let’s do our best to paint a picture of the meal.
In an unsurprising development, the French left can’t agree. Though generally true about most things on the French left, in this particular case it cannot agree on a prime minister. The now-former head of government, Gabriel Attal, resigned Tuesday, and there’s no consensus on a replacement. President Emmanuel Macron is trying to paint this as the left’s fault, but he must share in the blame.
Following his battering in the European Union elections, Macron made an ill-advised gamble to dissolve parliament in hopes of receiving a stronger mandate from the French people. The French, however, decided they had had quite enough of Macron’s arrogance and voted overwhelmingly against his centrist Ensemble coalition in the first round of the national parliamentary elections, preferring the hard-left and hard-right parties.
Macron had dissolved parliament expressly to stop the advance of the hard-right Rassemblement National (RN) and, when it became clear the RN could well get a parliamentary majority in the second round of the French elections, Macron wheeled and dealed with the recently cobbled together Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), of which the largest constituent party is Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI). The NFP also includes the Socialists, Greens and Communists.
Macron’s trick worked and blunted the RN’s momentum and, according to him, saved France from the tyranny of an RN government. In reality, the fun had only begun.
Having eliminated the possibility of a political alliance to the right, Macron’s centrist Ensemble party must now look left. It is not liking what lurks over in Mélenchon’s extreme left ranks. Ensemble and LFI were always extremely uncomfortable bedfellows and this is now publicly apparent.
To address this, the Socialists on Monday proposed a prime ministerial candidate “from civil society,” that is to say, not an elected member of the National Assembly. The name being circulated is Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation. The French Constitution allows for the president to appoint whoever they wish as prime minister, including non-officeholders who have not been elected. In practice this is rare, as they must command the confidence of the National Assembly, but it has happened in the past.
The proposed Tubiana candidacy is a non-starter for Mélenchon and LFI. She is too close to Macron and, in their view a rejection of left-wing values. As a result, Mélenchon and LFI have suspended negotiations with the other parties of the NFP. They insist that a candidate be chosen from those elected and are accusing the Socialists of having abandoned the plan which got the NFP elected.
It all spells gridlock and dysfunction. France is not accustomed to building political coalitions in the manner of, for example, Germany. The French two-round run-off system is specifically designed to create parliamentary majorities for stable government. Normally this would have been the RN, but because of Macron’s backroom deals with the left to block them, the present chaos is the result.
The fear — manufactured or real — of the RN, its leader Marine Le Pen and its president Jordan Bardella, led to hasty alliances with Mélenchon and the Communists. Incredibly, what no one seems to have considered is that Mélenchon is just as extreme to the left as Le Pen is to the right.
On the economy, LFI proposes to bring the retirement age back down to 60 and “restore” an effective work week of 35 hours (32 for arduous or overnight jobs); legally, France has a 35-hour work week, but employees work more on average. The party also wants a 90 per cent top marginal tax rate, and to limit tax-free inheritance. For France’s energy future, they plan to move to 100 per cent renewable energy while getting rid of nuclear at the same time. All this while nationalizing France’s largest energy providers Électricité de France (EDF) and Engie.
LFI is Eurosceptic and considers the European Union a neo-liberal enterprise. It is also anti-NATO, staunchly pro-Palestinian and never could condemn the October 7 attacks without also blaming Israel.
Mélenchon is no friend to Macron and is uncompromising in his demands. This has always been the case, even if his bombastic and angry rhetoric seldom reached an international audience. The French, Macron especially, have always known that the hard-left figure would be a nightmare for their country if he were let anywhere near the reins of power. And yet, amazingly, this is exactly what Macron manufactured when he allied with the NFP to block the RN.
Macron has done his best to keep a low profile ahead of the Paris Olympics, which will start later this month. As it stands, France is more divided than ever before, with a parliament in total disarray and a raging leftist demanding and perhaps protesting his way to political influence. The Olympics, planned as the president’s zenith, could prove to be his worst nightmare if Mélenchon decides to marshal his troops for battle.
National Post