Macron’s Liberal Coup
In a desperate attempt to cling on to power, Macron is blocking the French left from government. If this assault on democratic principle is not defeated, it will all but ensure the far-right's victory in the next election.
Emmanuel Macron is blocking the left from government despite its election victory. (Photo by Sean Gallup/Getty Images)
The staging is neat. President Emmanuel Macron interrupts the night of the European elections to address the nation. He is right that the situation is serious: Renaissance, his centrist party, has just suffered a heavy defeat, garnering only 14.6 percent of the votes cast, a long way behind the far-right Rassemblement National (RN), which came first with 31.37 percent. In an attempt to keep control of a political field slipping away from him, the head of state announces the dissolution of the National Assembly and calls for snap elections in three weeks. He thus complies with the demands of the RN, a party founded by former Waffen SS members and ultras from French Algeria, and paves the way to their political cohabitation.
His decision, however, was made without considering the maturity of the left forces. These proved able to rise to the moment by forming an alliance — the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) — and a common programme breaking with the neoliberal order in less than five days of negotiations.
The voting system for French general elections is unique in Europe. Instead of a proportional system, there is a two-round majority vote in the country’s 577 constituencies — a legacy of the regime of Napoleon III. Candidates for Parliament reach the second round if they win the votes of at least 12.5 percent of voters registered, which means a high number of constituencies in which the second round is between three candidates rather than two.
At the end of the first round, the NFP failed to catch up with the far-right, winning 28 percent against 33.5 percent for the RN and its allies. Renaissance, with its 20 percent, was in third position. As soon as the results were published, the leaders of the NFP’s different components announced that their candidates who came in third would withdraw to prevent the election of as many far-right members of parliament as possible. This clear and courageous position was unfortunately not adopted as quickly by those close to Macron, who were torn between calls to do the same and their desire not to cede ground to the candidates of the main component of the NFP — Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise (LFI).
This hazardous ‘neither-nor’ policy (neither RN nor LFI), which places the radical left and the far-right at the same threat level for the Republic, accompanied most of the second-round electoral campaign. It must be admitted that it would’ve been difficult for the President’s supporters to backtrack on their constant demonisation of Mélenchon — particularly the accusations of antisemitism levelled against LFI for its criticism of Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza, conducted with France’s support — without admitting their perjury. That that demonisation campaign was backed by the media, which also contributed to whitewashing of the far-right, made the shift even harder.
In the end, though, there was relief. Contrary to the pollsters’ predictions and the fantasies of the media, the RN’s gamble failed, and the NFP declared a surprise win. 192 MPs make the united left the main force in parliament, ahead of the plummeting presidential bloc on 163, and the far-right bloc, which, with 143 seats, still made significant gains. Nonetheless, the NFP remains far from the 289 seats necessary for an absolute majority. This configuration deepens a trend that has been at work since the 2022 presidential and general elections: the setting of the political field into three blocs, each incapable of securing an absolute majority on its own, which remains unprecedented under the Fifth Republic regime in place since 1958.
Democracy Under Threat
The president is now meant to task the leading group with forming a government. Since the end of this electoral cycle, however, Macron has been silent on addressing the NFP. Numbers-wise, for a coalition to govern the country, it must now recruit from both the conservative right and the centre-left. But for this option to materialise, Macron must overcome two obstacles: convincing the radicalised right of his own party to ignore the siren call of an alliance with the RN, and above all, breaking the NFP.
The centrists’ tactic is simple: isolate some and grant respectability to others. In practical terms, this translates into efforts to exploit the internal divisions of the Parti Socialiste (PS) — whose right wing only very timidly celebrates its presence in the NFP due to its hatred of the now hegemonic LFI — to make it leave the NFP and join Macron’s liberal project. For now, the left union holds strong, as the warning from organised civil society is intense: those who betray the citizens for a handful of ministerial portfolios should beware. But the longer Macron stalls for time, the more this disastrous scenario gains credibility. And all means are valid to achieve it, including the denial of reality.
In any properly functioning democracy, the left would have already been invited to govern — but that outcome would require a repression of Macron’s megalomania and his deep aversion to redistributive politics. Macron’s greatest fear is seeing the NFP succeed in improving the daily lives of the working and middle class, which would empower the progressive coalition for the next presidential election in 2027. His camp would prefer disaffection spurs support for the RN, which will continue its economic and social policies and spare the rich. As in the 1930s, the bourgeoisie has made clear it prefers ‘Hitler to the Popular Front’. The left therefore bears an immense responsibility: without maintaining unity around a break from neoliberalism, it will fail to prevent the far-right from coming to power.
The unity and goodwill displayed by the leaders of the various components of the NFP, however, have already come under strain due to the liberal desires of the PS. In ten days of intense negotiations to determine a government team, the PS vetoed all LFI’s proposals for the post of prime minister, despite LFI having the most deputies. They also rejected a candidate proposed by the Parti Communiste Français (PCF) and endorsed by LFI, Huguette Bello, insisting instead on their own leader, Olivier Faure. Bello, president of the French overseas region of Réunion in the Indian Ocean, embodied the hope of the NFP’s electoral base. As a Black woman who successfully imposed price controls on essential goods — a key measure of the common program — she could have successfully promoted a policy of rupture with the neoliberal norm and stood up to Macron. But this was too much for the PS, which, without giving a clear reason to its NFP partners, definitively buried the proposal.
There was widespread consternation in the NFP as a result. Realising their isolation, the PS then backed a nuclear option proposed by the party’s right wing, Laurence Tubiana. An economist with a focus on ecological protections, Tubiana nonetheless embodies the structural inability of the ‘right-wing left’ (gauche de droite) to break with the neoliberal economic order. Proof of this came just a few days after the NFP’s victory, when she co-signed an op-ed calling on the left to compromise with Macron so that a centrist majority could emerge — in other words, to betray left-wing voters, something that would precipitate the total victory of the RN in the 2027 presidential election, or even sooner if Macron decides to dissolve the parliament again next year.
The PCF and the Greens sided with PS proposal for reasons that remain uncertain. LFI then halted the negotiations, since continuing them would have been a tacit agreement that Tubiana should be the one to carry out the NFP programme. In doing so, and despite renewed attacks from the political and media class eager to depict them as sectarians, LFI held to the line endorsed by left-wing voters.
After a few days of pause, the negotiations resumed and eventually came to a conclusion. White smoke at the NFP: on 23 July, the left-wing parties managed to agree on Lucie Castets. Castets’ relative anonymity has not prevented her from demonstrating a firm commitment to defending public services, promoting fiscal justice, and combatting the rise of the far-right. The tenacity of LFI should be applauded; without it, such a prime ministerial candidate, respectful of the programme endorsed during the electoral campaign, could not have emerged.
The NFP’s statement was published barely an hour before Macron’s first media address, scheduled for that same evening at 8pm. Many, me included, were convinced that the president could no longer ignore the NFP — that the unity reaffirmed on the left that day would force him to make gestures towards its voters. But we hoped in vain. Instead, Macron repeated what he had already written in the press: ‘No one won.’
This behaviour goes beyond a denial of democracy. It is a liberal coup d’état structured around Macron’s fantasy of a ‘republican front’ explicitly excluding LFI and allowing him to cling to power.
So, what is to be done? And who should do it? The first question has an obvious answer: everything that can help prevent the election results being swept away by a megalomaniac. The second is more complex. The left has fulfilled its part of the deal: from the evening of the second round, immense citizen pressure was exerted on its components to make it clear they had to overcome their differences and propose a government. It is now the turn of the trade union leaders to provide sufficient resources to support and amplify the sectoral strike movements that will inevitably emerge at the end of the summer. If Macron only understands force, then strike action is the only instruments capable of making him yield and appoint a government that respects the citizens’ vote.
Of course, a general strike cannot be decreed from above. But the strategic mistakes of the opposition movement to the 2023 pension reform must not be repeated. Sporadic strikes did not force Macron to back down; close coordination between more combative trade union leaders and a determined left is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the president to finally return to reality. Without massive popular mobilization articulating social and democratic demands, Macron’s liberal coup could succeed.