French Election Proves Elites Will Burn A Country Down Rather Than Let The Right Win

Hayden Daniel visit on Twitter @HaydenWDaniel

The recent French election illustrated that elites will happily ally with left-wing radicals just to prevent the right from winning.

After a promising first-round lead, France’s right-wing National Rally party came up short in the second round of the country’s legislative election. It ultimately came in third for seats in the National Assembly, France’s lower house, behind left-wing coalition New Popular Front (NFP) and French President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance, Ensemble.

More than 300 contests in the first round proceeded to a three-way runoff involving National Rally, the NFP, and Ensemble. If those three-way races had gone ahead, National Rally had a decent chance of winning a majority in the second round. In response to that threat, more than 200 candidates from both Ensemble and NFP withdrew from those three-way races ahead of the second round to prevent splitting the vote and giving the victory to National Rally. In some instances, Macron had to pressure Ensemble candidates to drop out to give the advantage to NFP candidates.

So the leftists and centrists colluded to game France’s electoral system and ensure the right-wing party had no chance at power.

No single party won an outright majority in this election, so the nation will require a governing coalition. The National Assembly requires 289 seats for a majority. The NFP won 182 seats, Ensemble 163, National Rally 143, and The Republicans (France’s center-right party) just 39.

Even though National Rally improved 18-plus points over its performance in the 2022 legislative election, there’s almost no chance it makes it into the new government. The level of cooperation during the election makes an NFP-Ensemble coalition almost certain.

But that cooperation comes at a price, and that price will most likely result in far-left and even outright communist parties becoming part of the new government. The NFP’s program calls for ramping up government spending to the point of profligacy, implementing price controls on basic goods (because that always works as intended), and a new government agency to open the floodgates even wider for foreign migrants.

Meanwhile, National Rally’s economic positions don’t differ much from Ensemble and even some of the leftist parties. But, just as in many other Western countries, the massive influx of foreign migrants into France over the past decade — 2023 set a new record — represented the issue of this election. And that’s where the party has run afoul of the French elite.