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Macron Names Right-Wing Prime Minister, 'Turning His Back' On French Voters
The president drew criticism for rejecting the candidate put up by the left-of-center coalition that won the most seats in parliamentary elections.
Sep 05, 2024
French President Emmanuel Macron on Thursday named the right-wing politician Michel Barnier as prime minister, prompting outrage from a coalition of left-of-center parties that won the most seats in recent parliamentary elections and argued that the premier should be chosen from its ranks.
The decision marks the end of an unprecedented period in which France hasn't had an active government following the final round of parliamentary elections on July 7 and the previous prime minister's resignation on July 16.
The election ended with the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP), the left coalition, winning a plurality of seats at 32.6%, Macron's own Ensemble coalition of centrist neoliberals winning 27.9%, and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN) winning 24.6%. NFP and Ensemble coordinated their efforts in the final round, forming a "republican front" to block the RN—a successful effort that drew praise from left and centrist figures across the world.
Barnier's center-right party, Les Républicains (LR), once a powerful force in France, gained only 8.3% of the seats, yet emerged victorious in the prime ministerial sweepstakes following Macron's negotiations with RN leader Marine Le Pen, who's thought to have agreed to Barnier's appointment. Without RN's support, Barnier could be ousted by a no-confidence vote in parliament.
In late August, Macron rejected the NFP's proposed prime minister, Lucie Castets, a little-known civil servant and economist whose nomination was itself a compromise reached by the parties within the NFP, which include the center-left Parti Socialiste (PS), the left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI), and Les Écologistes, a green party.
Les Écologistes on Thursday condemned Macron's choice, saying he was "obsessed with the preservation of his neoliberal record" and he'd aligned with the far-right.
"By appointing Mr. Barnier, who did not call for a republican blockade and whose positions on immigration resonate with those of the RN, to [Hôtel Matignon, the prime minister's residence], Emmanuel Macron is turning his back on the millions of citizens who have created a historic republican blockade in France," the party said in a statement.
🔴⚡ Un accord a été trouvé entre le président de la République, LR et le RN sur la nomination de @MichelBarnier | Il ne manquait plus que l'accord de Marine Le Pen, le RN confirme ne pas censurer un gouvernement #Barnier. pic.twitter.com/rKlaeE1n1n
— Nouveau Front Populaire 🟢🔴🟡🟣🔴 (ex NUPES News) (@NupesNews) September 5, 2024
Normally, the French president names a prime minister within days of an election for the National Assembly, as the directly-elected house of Parliament is called. However, with no party gaining a majority, and Macron opposed to the NFP—the coalition had run on a platform of rolling back his anti-worker agenda—the negotiations dragged on, especially once the president announced an interlude for the Olympics.
In the French system, the president chooses the prime minister, who has power over governmental ministries, but a majority of the National Assembly must approve of the choice or the deputies, as members of parliament are known, can issue a vote of no confidence. Not since the Fifth Republic formed with constitutional reform in 1958 has the country gone so long without a prime minister.
Barnier, 73, was first elected to the National Assembly in 1978 and worked his way up, serving various key ministerial posts in the 1990s and 2000s under center-right Presidents Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. From 2016 until 2021, he served as the European Union's chief Brexit negotiator.
Barnier was generally regarded as a centrist conservative but moved to the right in 2021, speaking harshly about immigration as he prepared a 2022 presidential run. The effort failed: He didn't receive his party's nomination.
Le Pen emerged in recent days as the "kingmaker" in the prime minister negotiations, according toLe Monde. With the backing of Ensemble and the RN, Barnier will be able to hold on to the job, as together the two blocs have more than 50% of the seats in the National Assembly.
Le Pen indicated at least a modicum of support for Barnier on Thursday, saying that he is "someone who is respectful of the different political forces and capable of addressing the RN."
Castets, on the other hand, said she was "very worried" about Barnier's appointment and called him "reactionary."
"Michel Barnier is the continuation of Macron's policy, or even worse," Castets toldMediapart.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, standard-bearer of the French left and leader of the LFI, the NFP party holding the most seats, also decried the choice, pointing out that Barnier's party did poorly in the election and hadn't been part of the republican front. He said the "election has been stolen."
Mélenchon has led an effort to impeach Macron for his refusal to name an NFP prime minister but experts say it has little chance of succeeding. Mélenchon's allies are holding a rally on Saturday to call for the ouster of both Macron and Barnier.
Fabien Roussel, the leader of a Communist party that's a smaller member of the NFP, called Macron's move "a middle finger to the French who aspire to change," roughly translated, in a social media post.
The PS, which includes such figures as former President François Hollande and Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, hasn't joined the impeachment call but was critical of Macron's process. Olivier Faure, the party's leader, called it an affront to democracy.
"Democratic denial at its peak: a Prime Minister from the party that came in 4th place and who did not even participate in the republican front," Faure said. "We're entering a crisis of regime."
The transfer of power to Barnier was set for 6 pm local time at Hôtel Matignon on Thursday.
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'This Election Is Being Stolen From Us': French Left Calls Mass Protest Against Macron
"The people must get rid of Macron for the good of democracy," said the leader of France's Green Party.
Aug 27, 2024
Leftist parties in France on Tuesday accused President Emmanuel Macron of election theft and announced mass protests after he rejected Nouveau Front Populaire's proposed candidate for prime minister, even though the left-wing coalition won the most seats in a snap parliamentary contest last month.
The left-wing parties that formed NFP in June to fight off the surging far-right expressed outrage at Macron's decision, with the Jean-Luc Mélenchon-led La France Insoumise (LFI) Party condemning Macron's dismissal of a leftist government as a "coup" and urging a "firm response from French society."
Backing demands from youth-led organizations, the party specifically called for "a large demonstration against Macron's coup on September 7" and expressed "hope that the political, union, and allied forces committed to the defense of democracy will join this call."
Marine Tondelier, the leader of France's Green Party, said Tuesday that "this election is being stolen from us" and declared that "the people must get rid of Macron for the good of democracy."
"He is chaos and instability," Tondelier added.
The French political system has been engulfed in chaos since Macron called snap elections in June after his party performed dreadfully in European Parliament elections in June as Marine Le Pen's far-right, xenophobic National Rally surged.
While the French left and Macron allies successfully teamed up last month to prevent the National Rally from seizing control of the nation's government, NFP's stunning victory in the snap election created a new dilemma for Macron, who has been openly hostile to the left since taking office in 2017.
"Facing a hung parliament in which each of the three almost equal groupings—the left, Macron's centrist bloc, and the far-right National Rally—have ruled out forming a coalition, the president appeared to be back to square one," Reutersreported.
Macron claimed Monday that a leftist-led government "would immediately have a majority of more than 350 MPs against it, effectively preventing it from acting."
"In view of the opinions expressed by the political leaders consulted, the institutional stability of our country means that this option should not be pursued," said Macron, ruling out the NFP's candidate for prime minister, Lucie Castets.
Protesting Macron's decision, leftist leaders boycotted a fresh round of negotiations on Tuesday, with Tondelier saying that "we're not going to continue these sham consultations with a president who doesn't listen anyway... and is obsessed with keeping control."
"He's not looking for a solution, he's trying to obstruct it," said Tondelier.
In a social media post on Monday, Mélenchon pledged to move ahead with an impeachment motion against Macron, calling for a "swift and firm" response to the French president.
"The president of the republic has just created a situation of exceptional gravity," Mélenchon wrote.
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French Elections: What the Global Left Should Learn About Defeating the Far-Right
A united left is a formidable opponent that cannot only halt the surge of neo-fascism, but can also offer a positive and inspiring vision for the future.
Jul 10, 2024
Far-right forces have gained ground across Europe, particularly in Austria, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. In fact, the Netherlands has a new government, a coalition between far right and right, and the far right came first in the first-round of France’s snap election. But fearful of the prospect of a neo-fascist and xenophobic party in government, French voters came out in record numbers and rallied not behind Ensemble—the centrist coalition led by President Emmanuel Macron—but behind the coalition of left forces calling themselves the New Popular Front (NFP), delivering in the end a blow to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN) which had made historic gains in the first round and topped the poll with 33.15 percent of the votes cast. NFP came in first in the run-off election, with 188 seats, but falling short of majority.
France’s snap parliamentary election results help us to make sense of the surge of the far right and offer valuable lessons for the left all over the world, including the U.S. where a centrist democrat and a wannabe dictator face off in November.
First, it is crystal clear that the main reason for the rise of Europe’s far right, authoritarian, and ethnonationalist forces is the status quo of neoliberal capitalism. The neoliberal counterrevolution that begun in the early 1980s and undermined every aspect of the social democracy model that had characterized European political economy since the end of the Second World War has unleashed utterly dangerous political forces that envision a return to a golden era of traditional values built around the idea of the nation by fomenting incessant and socially destructive change.
France’s snap parliamentary election results help us to make sense of the surge of the far right and offer valuable lessons for the left all over the world.
True to its actual aims and intent, neoliberalism has exacerbated capitalism’s tendency to concentrate wealth in the hands of fewer and fewer, reduced the well-being of the population through mass privatization and commercialization of public services, hijacked democracy, decreased the overall functionality of state agencies, and created a condition of permanent insecurity. Moreover, powerful global economic governance institutions—namely, the unholy trinity of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization—took control of the world economy and became instrumental in the spreading of neoliberalism by shaping and influencing the policies of national governments. It is under these conditions that ethnonationalism, racism, and neofascism resurfaced in Europe, and in fact all over the world.
In France, the rise of the far right coincided with President François Mitterand’s turn to austerity in the 1980s as his government fell prey to the monetarist-neoliberal ideology of the Anglo-Saxon world. Once Mitterand made his infamous neoliberal turn, the rest of the social democratic regimes in southern Europe (Greece under Andreas Papandreou, Italy under Bettino Craxi, Spain under Felipe Gonzalez, and Portugal under Mario Soares) tagged along, and the eclipse of progressivism was underway.
Less than two decades later, reactionary political forces had emerged throughout Europe as extreme neoliberal economic policies had paved the way for the emergence of political tendencies with an eye to exploiting the catastrophic social and economic impacts of neoliberalism by tapping into a huge reservoir of public anger and discontent with the establishment. Indeed, as neoliberalism tightened its grip on domestic society, far right forces gained more ground. The surge of Marine Le Pen’s RN occurs against the backdrop of Macron’s obsession with converting France into a full-fledged neoliberal society.
A crucial lesson offered by the results of France’s snap election (as well as by Labour’s victory in UK) is that economics remains the rule of the day. Political forces that seek to promote multiculturalism and social rights while pushing at the same time the neoliberal economic agenda will, in the end, get the short end of the stick.
Initially, Macronism was a strategy of trying to appeal to a wide range of center-left and center-right voters by defending secular social rights and even making gestures to LGBTQ people but always with an eye to transforming the social contract and freeing up the “energy of the workforce.” Macron’s “progressive liberalism” philosophy worked up to a point. It backfired in a big way along the way when workers, farmers, and minority groups realized that their economic future was at stake by Macron’s pro-market policies—and that was clearly far more important to them than concerns over social issues and even the environment itself. The “yellow vest” movement that rocked Macron’s presidency in 2018 and left an “indelible mark” on French politics was the first indication that any set of government reforms that carried a disproportionate impact on the working and middle classes was going to be severely challenged.
In the end, Macronism even lost the support it initially had from women’s and LGBTQ organizations, and not simply because Macron’s stance on social policies hardened along the way as part of an opportunistic and desperate attempt on his part to stir conservative voters away from the arms of the far right. It is worth pointing out here that, unlike most social movements which are male-dominated, the “yellow vest” movement was distinguished by the “high proportion of women” that took part in the protests. It was economics that drove French women out into the streets, demonstrating against Macron government’s unjust tax reform measures.
Again, the lesson here is that voters are unlikely to be deceived by the sort of political rhetoric that emphasizes diversity, multiculturalism, and environmental concerns while policies are being pursued in favor of a brutal neoliberal economic setting. Social rights under neoliberalism is a mirage. This is a critical lesson for all left forces in an age in which multiculturalism and the politics of identity play such a prominent ideological role. We see the counter effects of this ultimately “pro-capitalist-stratagem” in the U.S. where voters without college degrees, which amount to over 60 percent of the population, are overwhelmingly on Trump’s camp. A similar tendency can be seen in the Latino community as a growing segment of Hispanic voters are joining Trump’s GOP party.
Voters are unlikely to be deceived by the sort of political rhetoric that emphasizes diversity, multiculturalism, and environmental concerns while policies are being pursued in favor of a brutal neoliberal economic setting.
For the benefit of political expediency and ideological integrity alike, the left should stick to its universalist traditions while remaining of course sensitive to diversity and particularism. But it has no business playing the game of identity politics that has become the hallmark of corporate capitalism and of the liberal political establishment. Last thing we need is a cultural and post-material left morphed into a movement vying for space in a capitalist dominated universe.
More important, as the unique experience of the formation of a coalition of leftist parties in France for the snap parliamentary election attests, the left’s best hope for making major inroads in today’s western societies, which are unquestionably highly complex and diversified, is by introducing and promoting an attractive yet realistic economic agenda that addresses the immediate concerns of average people but without losing sight of the broader objective of the leftist vision which is none other than social transformation.
The “shocking” success of the New Popular Front in the run-off election in France did not materialize simply because French voters wanted to halt the rise of the far right to power, which is the mainstream interpretation. French voters backed NFP for two key reasons: first, because they finally saw the left leaving behind factionalism and, second, because they were lured by its radical manifesto.
For the first time since the 1930s, not only has an anti-fascist alliance been revived in France but there is now hope for the future of the left because of its economic vision, assuming of course that the left can stay united beyond the election. And this is perhaps the greatest lesson leftist forces should draw from the French snap elections: a united left is a formidable opponent that cannot only halt the surge of neo-fascism but can also offer real hope for a humane and sustainable future.
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