🇫🇷 🥐 The French Election Twitter Summit
Join us today at 5:00 pm Paris time
The excitement isn’t over! Here’s the link to join Arun Kapil, Anne-Elisabeth Moutet, Jérome Clavel, and moi in Twitter Space. We’ll be discussing the election results and what they mean for France as well as the upcoming legislative elections.
Do you have questions for us? Send them to us before 4:45 pm today and we’ll be sure to answer them.
🍷 Here’s some reading if you’d like to prepare …
“There was general relief,” writes Arun Kapil,
in France and further afield, on Sunday, when Emmanuel Macron was projected to win the second round of the French presidential election. The polls in the final week of the campaign all showed him opening up a 10 to 14 point lead over Marine Le Pen—especially after last Wednesday’s debate, in which he was thought to have the upper hand—but worries had set in during the latter half of March among hard-headed analysts as well as inveterate hand-wringers. …
‘Thank f**k for that’: Foreigners in France relieved after loss for far-right Le Pen.
French parliamentary elections: Here’s what happens and why they’re important.
The man who could topple Macron. Forget the honeymoon—democratic chaos awaits, writes Anne-Elisabeth in this excellent overview and introduction to French legislative elections:
Emmanuel Macron knew most of his votes came from those who saw him as the least-worst alternative in a miserable choice, and cast their ballots with clenched teeth. He wanted to erase the merest suspicion that he expected to enjoy a honeymoon.
The only question now is how the most fractious nation in the Western world will vote in June’s legislative elections. Our presidential races start with a cacophony of voices and end in binary language, zeros and ones. Our parliamentary elections are what you get when you layer a number of traditions, not all French, to reach optimal complexity, especially as old ones are rarely cancelled. Political parties that have disappeared from existence at national level for a century still explain local results and alliances today. …
France has again rejected the UK and US’s self-harming populism. For the second time in five years, France had its own Brexit-Trump moment—and for the second time the voters rejected populism. But this doesn’t mean that the country is not deeply fractured or that Macron is facing an easy ride, writes John Lichfield.
Also by John Lichfield: Macron has won—and now his real problems begin:
… the old French Right-Left system has mutated into a muddled pattern of three broad tribes: the scattered Left and the Greens; a pro-European, consensual Center; and a nationalist-populist, anti-migrant and anti-European Right.
The geology of this new electoral landscape is unstable. The boundaries can be drawn in different ways. (Should all the remaining Pécresse be counted as part of the Center?) Each camp or tribe is internally divided. Each tribe contains parts of the “elite” and parts of “the people.”
🎧 What’s next for France now that Macron has won? The Talking France podcast—with Ben McPartland, Emma Pearson, and John Lichfield—breaks down the results and looks ahead at the next few days, June’s parliamentary elections, and the five years of Macron’s second term.
Here’s a panel discussion about whether Putin has killed populism. Anne-Elisabeth argues the French are becoming more, not less populist, as shown by the windshield-wiper vote from Jean-Luc Mélenchon in Round One to Marine Le Pen in Round Two. (If you’re in a hurry, you can just read the transcript.)
Macron’s next quest is to keep his parliamentary majority. The president-elect's most immediate challenge will be to fend off his vengeful opponents in the June legislative elections, writes Le Monde columnist Gilles Paris.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon has a plan to become Emmanuel Macron’s main opponent. The radical left leader is hoping his party sweeps the legislative elections in June. Labor Day protests on May 1 will be the the left’s first show of strength.
There is no such thing as one-party democracy. Alternation in power must exist as a possibility. While Emmanuel Macron’s decisive victory on Sunday was unequivocally a victory for French democracy, it nevertheless raises a problem. For the time being, the French electorate is divided into three major blocs. There is one bloc on the extreme left, another on the extreme right, and a third in the center. The farther one moves toward the left of the spectrum, the more intolerable a victory of the far right becomes, and vice versa. Hence by default the center will win every election, even if a substantial majority of voters are unenthusiastic about its policies or even hostile to them. A presidential system is more compatible with a bifurcated electorate than with a tripartite one, which tends to create an artificial dominance of the center. This is the perverse equilibrium with which France has been left by the convergence of the center-left and center-right in the “ni droite ni gauche, mi-figue mi-raisin” politics of Macronism.
The legislative elections are unlikely to disrupt this equilibrium entirely. We haven’t yet got much data, but what we have suggests two possible analyses. …
French pensions, food bills or EU: What’s top of Macron’s to-do list? The newly re-elected president Emmanuel Macron once said that he was “not made to lead in calm weather” and that's fortunate because he’s likely to face some storms ahead.
Laurent Berger: “Monsieur le Président, you will not be able to meet these challenges on your own.” The leader of one of France’s main trade unions urges Emmanuel Macron to heed the voices of those who voted for him but do not necessarily support him. He suggests a “great summit on social issues” to involve as many people as possible in the president's decision-making.
A new French left has been reborn from the ashes. While Jean-Luc Mélenchon is trying to build a left-wing coalition before the first round of the legislative election in June, his prospects of becoming the future prime minister are unlikely, writes Le Monde columnist Gilles Paris.
Defeated French far-right presidential candidate Marine Le Pen will stand in parliamentary elections in June, her party announced on Thursday, underlining how she intends to remain in frontline politics.
Join us today at 5:00 pm Paris time to discuss all things French and political. Here’s your time zone converter.