Macron supporters love to dish out moral lessons to others. Indeed, you could even say that's how you can spot one. But often these lessons have a habit of rebounding on them, exposing such a level of bad faith than one could, without going over the top, describe it as something of an art form. On the evening of Sunday June 12th, as the initial projections for the outcome of the first round of France's legislative elections were announced, a significant number of senior 'Macronistas' gave full rein to their talent for bad faith. They told us that in the 58 out of 577 constituencies where the ruling Ensemble movement has been eliminated, they would advise voters whom to support between candidates from the broad leftwing alliance NUPES (Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale) and those from the far-right on a “case by case” basis.
The president of the National Assembly Richard Ferrand, who is facing a tricky re-election next Sunday against the leftwing alliance in his Brittany constituency, perhaps came up with the top performance of the evening when he explained that the decisive second round vote on Sunday June 19th would leave voters facing a “choice between values”. This was the very same politician who just two months earlier - when his boss Emmanuel Macon needed the 22% first round presidential vote of Jean-Luc Mélenchon in order to beat far-right contender Marine Le Pen in the second round – had boasted of the “common values” that he shared with the man who is the head of the radical left La France Insoumise and the architect of the NUPES alliance.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
Following on from his comments, several members of the government and Macron's ruling majority adopted the stance of “neither-nor” and lumped the far-right and what they stubbornly termed the “far-left” in the same political basket – with scant regard for history or political reality. Amélie de Montchalin, the minister for ecological transition and regional solidarity, who is also threatened by a NUPES opponent in her constituency south of Paris in the second round, put on something of a show of her own on Monday morning, when she said that society was “in the process of paving the way to chaos and disorder”.
She reached peak “Reds under the beds” hyperbole in record time when she warned on television new channel CNews about the “candidates who promise submission to Russia, to anti-Semitic ideas and the weakening of France”. The minister, who in June 2021 had condemned the Left for hesitating over whether to pull out of a local election contest in southern France to allow her centre-right movement to beat the far-right Rassemblement National (they did in the end), then added: “I call on republicans from the Left and Right to come out on Sunday and block the far-left and those who depend on it in some constituencies. Its real plan is disorder and anarchy, a permanent challenge to our institutions and the media.”
From a nuanced approach to outrage
The former education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer, who constantly opines about the “Republic's values” but who has clearly forgotten to remind himself of the definition of the word “decency”, has meanwhile suggested that the “far-left is just as big a danger as the far-right”. Eliminated in the first-round himself in a constituency south of Paris, the ex-minister said on Sunday evening that “radicalness is counter to the Republic and democracy”. Yet on April 24th, the day of the second round of the presidential election, he had said: “I wholeheartedly wish that whatever our political differences we can learn to be be more subtle in our approach.”
The time for a subtle approach has now gone, it seems, as was also shown by his former colleague in government Roxana Maracineanu. The former sports minister faces a tricky task getting elected in her constituency in the Val-de-Marne département or county south-east of Paris next Sunday against her NUPES opponent Rachel Keke. In her bid to win, Maracineanu has simply resorted to calling for a “Republican Front” - an informal pact among mainstream parties that is usually aimed at keeping out the far-right – to “block” her opponent. Keke, it should be noted, is a former chambermaid who led industrial action for two years against the hotel chain for whom she worked, and won her case.
On Sunday evening several leading figures in the ruling party explained to Mediapart that they draw a distinction between different candidates from NUPES, which is made up of the Greens, the Socialist Party, La France Insoumise and other groups from the Left. “There's no problem in voting for a socialist or an environmentalist. It's more difficult for Insoumise [candidates],” said one minister. However, in one constituency in the Pas-de-Calais département the candidate from Emmanuel Macron's Ensemble coalition is not even pretending to follow that line. Having been eliminated in the first round, Alexandra Pintus called on her voters to leave their ballot paper blank in the second round to avoid choosing between far-right leader Marine Le Pen and Marine Tondelier from France's green party Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV) who are part of the NUPES alliance.
A depoliticising effect
New government minister Stanislas Guerini tried, in vain, to change his party's course on this issue. Other figures in the government and ruling party, such as new education minister Pap Ndiaye, Europe minister Clément Beaune, and Maud Bregeon, the spokesperson for Macron's party La République en Marche (LREM) which is the dominant part of the Ensemble coalition, also all pointed out a few obvious facts to colleagues who have lost their bearings. “The fight against the far-right is not a principle you can simply adjust when you want,” Pap Ndiaye, wrote on Twitter.
But for 24 hours the comments made by a majority of 'Macronistas' showed what the movement was really like – and it did not make for good listening. Foundering in confusion and going back on what they said in April, the LREM leaders stripped any remaining meaning from the principles that they have wrapped themselves in for so long. “Those in the [rightwing Les Républicains] who call for 'neither-nor' [editor's note, in this case supporting neither Macron nor Le Pen] have neither courage nor honesty,” said leading LREM figure and Macron loyalist Christophe Castaner at the last regional elections. We could not have put it better ourselves.
As useful a ploy as it may seem electorally – and it has yet to be seen if it works – this strategy is utterly toxic from a strictly democratic point of view. As political specialist Samuel Hayat, a researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), Tweeted on Monday June 13th: “The defenders of capitalism underestimate the depoliticising effects of their outrage on people (describing NUPES as anarchists destroys the meaning of words and even the possibility of having a political debate) as well as the risk that the far-right poses.”
By putting the “extremes” all in the same basket and by refusing to deploy the 'Republican Front' – which worked well enough at the presidential election in April in keeping Marine Le Pen out of the Élysée – the ruling party is continuing to take part in an approach in which Marine Le Pen's party, ideas and leading figures gradually get accepted as normal. The ruling party is also going against what was said between the two rounds of the presidential election in April. At the time Emmanuel Macron invited everyone to join him on the right side of the fence, the republican side, in which Jean-Luc Mélenchon – whose “clarity” on the issue Macron paid tribute to – had a place at the time.
“While a third of voters have turned towards the far-right and its inward-looking project, a majority have chosen candidates who support projects of openness, of independence,” the president had declared in Le Point news magazine. But as political life in many way resembles a goldfish bowl, this situation did not last long. Indeed, it took just one tour of the bowl for Emmanuel Macron to forget that he owed his re-election to the republican choices made by leftwing voters in the second round of the presidential election. And for him to once again hold them in contempt.
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- The original French version of this opinion article can be found here.
English version by Michael Streeter