How elections debunked myth that France is lurching to the Right
The fact that a party that did not even exist just over a year ago has just won an absolute majority in the French National Assembly has inevitably excited surprise among commentators. But, argues Hubert Huertas, one remarkable aspect of the recent presidential and legislative votes has largely gone unnoticed: the death of the notion that French society was on some inevitable path towards the far right. This theory, which was enthusiastically adopted by Nicolas Sarkozy and exemplified by the Front National, has been comprehensively demolished, he says.
TheThe large Parliamentary majority won by President Emmanuel Macron's centrist LREM movement will, inevitably, pose major problems. This disparate and shapeless ruling party will find it hard to become a unified force. Made up of MPs who range from former Socialist Party members to survivors of the Sarkozy years, it will inevitably succumb to the law of political gravity. Moreover, how can one hope to bring together in one coherent group a mathematics genius from the south of Paris, an extreme homophobe from the French Caribbean island of Guadeloupe and an amateur astrologer suspected of tax fraud who was elected in the South of France?
