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One week, it was “Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) on the doorstep of power”. The next, following the defeat of the far-right in the second round of France’s legislative elections, the tune had changed; the tune, but not the tone.
“Far right’s historic moment may have to wait” was the BBC‘s verdict, striking an almost regretful note, whilst the vast majority of mainstream British media predicted an era of instability and chaos in France following the success of the left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire and the better-than-expected, but still mediocre, showing of Emmanuel’s Macron Renaissance movement.
It did not seem to matter that the Cassandras had got it spectacularly wrong the first time round. The National Rally had made inroads in terms of its representation at the National Assembly, but had still come third in terms of the number of seats it had secured.
Seeing the consternation on the faces of would-be Prime Minister Jordan Bardella’s supporters when the first exit polls were made public told the actual story. The RN was nowhere near where it wanted to be, and certainly not “on the doorstep of power”.
It should not have come as such a shock to anyone familiar with the French electoral system and, more generally, with the fast-entrenched culture of “républicanisme”, which may well have been strengthened by the frightful prospect of a first far-right regime taking power since the dark days of Vichy.
The French electorate rejected it; and the strength of that rejection showed that, rather than a desperate last stand against the rising tide of populist, anti-immigration, nationalistic politicians throughout tired old Europe, this could be seen as an awakening, and even, for some at least, an expression of hope. This, perhaps, should have been the real shock.
The real surprise was to see seasoned political analysts push fervid scenarios borne out of the RN’s performance in the first round. Had they forgotten how the French system works? In the first round, you vote for whom you support – and against the people you can’t bear.
In the second, which only allows for candidates who have picked at least 12.5% of the valid votes to stand for election, you choose whoever is the closest to your convictions, or the furthest from what you don’t want to happen.
You can also stay at home if you prefer, but the French didn’t. The turnout of 66.7% in the second round was the highest recorded in French legislative elections since 1991. So much for a nation said to be disenchanted with politics.
As to the RN’s share of the vote, hasty comparisons were made with the 2017 and 2022 elections, forgetting two crucial factors. First, turnout in both of the 2017 and 2022 polls was about 20% less than what it was this time round. Both followed a presidential election, after which the French voters of the 5th Republic have invariably backed the candidates who would enable the new president to govern with a parliamentary majority, or stayed away, a unique trait of French political culture which seems to have escaped almost everyone, including political correspondents who’ve been based in Paris for years.
Then, the RN’s share of the popular vote in 2024 (33.2% in the first round, 37% in the second) was significantly less than what Le Pen had scored against Macron in the second round of the 2022 presidential elections (41.45%), despite Macron’s personal impopularity.
The RN appears to have hit a ceiling which its – not always convincing – attempts at gaining respectability cannot make disappear.
British Media Went Looking for the Same Story Elsewhere
The problem, at least for mainstream British media, is that these numbers, though perfectly logical when placed in a wider context, could not be framed in the accepted narrative: the far-right is on the rise in Western Europe, and its ascent and ultimate victory are inexorable.
Our democracies are faltering. The European dream is all but dead. So when the prophets of doom realised they’d got it wrong, they changed tack: the failure of the neo-fascists to secure power would precipitate a political crisis of such magnitude that, ultimately, Le Pen would benefit from her party’s failure. It is only a question of time. And if this were not the case, we would look elsewhere, as we have done every single time our nightmarish vision of a Europe dominated by ultra-nationalists has been contradicted by facts in the recent past. There is no shortage of examples of this.
One is how numerous English-speaking media suddenly discovered an interest for Finnish politics and devoted extensive coverage to the anti-immigration, anti-EU Finns Party after it won 20.1% of the vote in Finland’s 2023 general election.
This was immediately interpreted as a sure sign that Finland too was going the way of other Western democracies and lurching to the hard right. Yet barely any attention was given to the trouncing the same anti-immigration, populist movement received in the June 2024 European elections, where its share of the vote dropped to 7.6%, almost ten points behind the Left Alliance of Li Andersson – who personally received the most votes a Finnish legislative candidate has recorded in the country’s history. You won’t have read about this in too many places.
