A Brief Guide for the Post- European-Elections World

One of the most important results of the European elections has been the collapse of the two traditionally strongest political forces in the Fifth Republic: the conservative party, now called Les Républicains; and the Socialist Party on the Left.  The Socialists fell apart in the presidential elections in 2017 with the poor showing of their candidate, Benôit Hamon, who immediately resigned from the party.  Les Républicains held on in 2017 with a respectable number of deputies in the National Assembly, only to be thrown into crisis because of their weakness in the elections for the European Parliament.  They came in above the 5% margin so they won some seats, but they were in the very low fourth position (out of five) of those parties that qualified, behind Le Pen’s National Rally in first, followed closely by Macron’s La République en marche, and the EELV, or green party. La France Insoumise, on the hard left, both boosted and harmed by its controversial leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon, came in fifth.

So, in brief (or not so brief), here’s what happened:

The troubles in both parties can be traced back to the 2017 presidential elections, which were deeply influenced by both a spike in the migrant crisis and by terrorist acts–Charlie Hebdo and Bataclan at the beginning and end of 2015, and the Nice truck attack on July 14, 2016.  President François Hollande, the Socialist Party incumbent, declared late in 2016 that he would not run for a second term. His decision came after the Trump election in the United States and after the Brexit vote in the UK.  He had some genuine achievements to his credit–a law that allowed same-sex marriage, most notably. But it was easy for opponents to paint this policy as evidence of communautarisme, that is, as “identity politics”; in terms of economics, his most visible actions were neoliberal (raising taxes, cutting state spending, adding a corporate tax credit, weakening worker protections) and had led to major protests; they also did not solve the high unemployment crisis in France. (Some of his most contested attempts were led by his young Minister of Economics, the investment banker Emmanuel Macron.)  Most expected Prime Minister Manuel Valls to win the Socialist Party presidential primary; instead it was won by the most left wing candidate in the race, BenoIt Hamon.   

In 2016, François Fillon, Nicolas Sarkozy’s prime minister from 2007-2012, was the most conservative of the three LR presidential contenders, proposing layoffs of 500,000 civil servants, deep cuts in social benefits, and other parts of this all too familiar package. But it was his new late-September “campaign” book, Vaincre le totalitarisme Islamique, that gave him a positive buzz, and took him to the top of the first round in Les Républicains primary, on November 20. The timing of the book, the demeanor and apparent rectitude of the candidate, won the day against Sarkozy (who came in last) and beloved Bordeaux mayor Alain Juppé, who had a 2004 felony conviction on his record. Juppé was convicted for something similar to the accusations being made against Trump White House advisor Kellyanne Conway (receiving a government salary while carrying out political or party work.) Juppé had been head of his party and an associate of Paris mayor Jacques Chirac, and was convicted for using Paris mayoralty employees to carry out party work, thus defrauding the Paris taxpayers. (It was generally thought, though he was certainly guilty of the offense, that he had also taken the fall for President Jacques Chirac.) He had received an 18-month suspended sentence; on appeal, the prohibition against holding political office for ten years had been reduced to one year. He had become mayor of Bordeaux in 2006.

It was only after Fillon’s installation as presidential candidate that members of his party raised serious doubts about the harshness of his program, and he was urged to soften these measures. In the end, Fillon’s candidacy was tanked by Penelopegate, even though he remained in the race and came in at a high third, just a hair above Melenchon, in the first round of the presidential election.  After much pretrial maneuvering, Fillon, his wife Penelope, and an associate are set for trial by the end of 2019 for the misuse of public funds (Penelope was paid half a million euros over the course of several years with the funds her husband received to hire Assembly aides; she was on the books but did no work.)

Hamon, the surprise winner of the Socialist Party primary, was not a strong candidate; in addition, much of what would have been the Socialist Party’s vote went instead to Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Socialist Party member who ran under the banner of his hard-left self-founded party, La France Insoumise. With the absence of the moderate Valls (the expected winner) for the Socialist Party, and the absence of the moderate Juppé for Les Républicains, the centrist lane was left wide open for Macron, and in the second round, facing off against Marine Le Pen, he won the presidency.

On to the European elections: 

In the meantime, the new post-Fillon head of LR, Laurent Wauquiez, following the lead of Fillon (and Sarkozy), moved even more emphatically to the right and tried to absorb some of the Le Pen’s issues–most notably those around Muslims and immigration–as well as their voters.  For the European elections, Wauquiez selected a relative novice in politics to head his list, professor of philosophy François-Xavier Bellamy, as someone who represented the traditional Catholic right of the “old” conservatism. Bellamy’s lack of political experience–he had served only as vice-mayor of Versailles, had been defeated in a single run for the National Assembly–has been blamed for some of the difficulties in their campaign, but probably unfairly. Their chief problem? Given the presence of the National Rally party of Le Pen on the far right, and the increasingly center right drift of Macron, the party simply has no reason to exist.

Wauquiez has since resigned as head of the party because of the European defeat, and the remnants are suffering a predictable division over strategy. Approach Macron to their left? Reach out to Marion Maréchal [Le Pen] on their right?  A likely successor, Valérie Pécresse, suddenly resigned from the party itself, to the surprise of everyone, leaving Les Républicains in even further disarray.  Some LRs throughout the country, running for mayor, regional council positions, and other local posts, have switched to Macron. Sarkozy has explicitly removed himself from the contest for party leader. (Besides, as of mid-June he is fighting another anti-corruption investigation over his financial dealings.)

The poor showing of the far left La France Insoumise, with the appealing candidate Manon Aubrey at the head of the list, threw that party into disarray as well, and allowed the low rumble of dissatisfaction with Mélenchon’s leadership style to come into the open. He announced he was stepping away from party leadership (though not his role as deputy in the National Assembly); besides, he will be defending himself in September for violently resisting a police search of his party headquarters late last year, when his campaign finances were being investigated.

As for LREM, despite the stiffness of candidate Nathalie Loiseau heading the list for Macron, the party managed to come in second to Le Pen. That was, in almost every respect, a win for Macron. Not only has Macron endured a steady stream of social media bashing as well as the anger of the Gilets Jaunes, but his party lost to Le Pen by less than 1 percentage point.

This is what it all means:

Is ecology the new left?  Maybe, especially after the surprise third place finish by the EELV (Green) party; and given the importance of the climate change issue, that direction might make sense.  On the other hand, there does need to be a force in place to provide a set of solutions for the genuine economic woes represented by the Gilets Jaunes. The often derided Green New Deal in the United States has not made that either/or mistake, and its backers have put class and economic issues firmly in the picture with climate change.

In France the only parties left standing, at the moment, are the center right of Macron and the Far Right identitaire party of Le Pen.  Old parties and tendencies are evolving into new ones, clustered around strong party programs, and that might make sense as a direction for Britain now as well.  That natural evolution is made difficult in the United States by the winner-take-all electoral college in the presidential elections.

Here’s why the collapse of the traditional parties is important:

Macron’s party now incarnates the centrist right, but the Left is, for various reasons, virtually impotent, rarely able to provide a counter-force to the continuing rightward drift of political discourse. This description also applies in different ways both to the United States and to Great Britain.  (The US is additionally hamstrung, again, by the electoral college, which has delivered the presidency to the minority vote-getter in the case of two out of the last three presidents.)  

Macron, despite the pummeling (much of it deserved) he has taken over the course of the last year, presides over a party that is trying to hold a right center ground and maintain traditional foreign policy based on alliances and shared interests, on NATO and the EU.  In economic and social reform issues, he supports the neoliberal globalist unfettered-capitalism philosophy that took over both the Socialists and the Republicans in the 1980s and 1990s; but on the other hand, he seems to be all that is left, in the face of the weakness of the traditional parties, to fight off the white nationalists of the RN.

________________________

I’m on summer break now, and there are a number of topics that I will be hoping to cover in the coming weeks: the Hollande presidency, beset by both terrorism and migration; the fragmentation of the Left, with Mélenchon as a lightning rod; the rise of the EELV (and what that means); the spectacular implosion of the François Fillon candidacy in the 2017 presidential election; the rise of Macron.   

And other things.

_________________________

Header image from Shutterstock.com