The party suffered a setback, but now is in a position to professionalize and consolidate.
French voters on Sunday night denied the Rassemblent National control of the National Assembly, dealing a severe blow to the RN’s ambitions—and the certitudes of the pundit class. The commentariat (this author included!) had been largely convinced the party’s hour was at hand. I predicted in these pages that the far-right party could have a chance to secure a governing majority in the National Assembly via an alliance with Les Républicains. French voters dashed that thesis to bits a mere two days after press-time. Ah, well.
Despite having gained the greatest number of votes in both the first and second rounds of the legislative elections—32 percent in the former and 37 percent in the latter—the RN (143 seats) emerged as the third-largest faction in the French Parliament’s lower house, behind the left’s Nouveau Front Populaire (181 seats) and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble (163 seats). The mainstream parties’ front républicain—in which the NFP and Ensemble made common cause to defeat far-right candidates in the run-off—had once again barred the RN’s route to power. Macron had himself been preparing for a divided government with Jordan Bardella, the RN’s chief, as prime minister. Now, the premiership will probably be offered to a leader of the NFP. France, which in recent decades has trended rightward, might soon have a left-wing government.
For some backers of the populist right, the election results were an occasion for despair. Jordan Bardella himself fumed against “the coalition of dishonor” that had thwarted the popular will through backroom deals.
But the RN’s setback is in reality a victory. The party increased its number of deputies by half (from 89 to 143), consolidated a near-exclusive hold on the regions of Picardie and Provence; and decimated rival parties to its immediate left and right (LR and Eric Zemmour’s Reconquête). Even if the RN cannot govern, it has demonstrated its ability to prevent anyone else from doing so—France is at the moment hurtling toward the political crisis of a generation because neither the center or left bloc has a mandate to run the country.
France’s populist right still has a promising future. The problems fueling the RN’s rise—the cost of living crisis and the mass migration wave—are long-term, structural ailments for the entire Western world. The neoliberal consensus of open markets and open borders has not resolved them and cannot do so.
Contrary to the RN’s carping, France’s political class did not violate the rules of the game in forming a republican front—strategic voting and electoral alliances are banal features of democratic politics. The republican front is nonetheless showing its age—the constituent parties have nothing in common aside from treating the RN as anathema. France needs a functional parliament. The republican front—running the gamut from communists to moderate conservatives—will not be able to agree on a budget, let alone a strategy to right the country’s crumbling finances while addressing social unrest. The RN stands to benefit from the frailties of what it derides as “the uniparty.”
RN officials have much to learn from the letdown of these elections. The party repeatedly committed unforced errors, the worst being a slapdash process for candidate selection. The RN had a large task cut out for itself in choosing 577 individuals to run for the National Assembly. The time crunch and the party’s lack of professional cadres made this even harder. The predictable chaos ensued; the media began to dig through the histories of RN candidates and swiftly hit pay-dirt. A candidate was forced to withdraw after an image of her in Nazi regalia surfaced on social media. Another was disavowed by the party after the discovery of a Facebook post in which he had written that “the gas had rendered justice to the victims of the Holocaust.”
Others were simply poorly suited for high office. One had served prison time in the ’90s after having taken the mayor of her town hostage. Another was ultimately ineligible for election because he was mentally ill and under a conservatorship. A particularly inept RN nominee melted down on a live television debate and admitted that she had not prepared for the event.
And then there were “the phantom candidates,” who did not bother to run a campaign, refused to appear on local television for the customary debate, and sometimes did not even put their own image on election posters. French voters mostly select candidates on the basis of party affiliation, but even here politics is local: Being a native son or daughter can put someone over the top. The RN’s historical pariah status means that it has been slow to develop local networks in many areas of the country, and thus has had to rely on carpetbaggers with no name identification. The party thus forfeited dozens of races that might have been winnable.
The RN’s brass will need to drastically improve the candidate selection process, recruiting potential office-holders who are rooted and respected in their community. The party will also have to ruthlessly cull the ranks of those who compromise its desire for respectability and normalization. According to a source close to the RN, the party did not even conduct background checks on the candidates it fielded in these parliamentary elections. Bardella and Marine Le Pen have vowed to rid the flock of “black sheep.” Let them start by doing some basic research on their own subordinates.
Part of the RN’s negligence till now might be attributable to its shabby financial state. The party has perpetually careened on the edge of bankruptcy, which no doubt has inhibited attempts at professionalization. French political parties receive most of their funding from public monies doled out on the basis of each faction’s vote share. The RN’s performance in the parliamentary and European elections means that it will now come into tens of millions of extra euros. The RN’s gains in the National Assembly also will grant it access to more cash to hire staff. The party’s potential to accede to power might additionally attract the well-educated and well-heeled staffers who until now have snubbed it.
The RN must embrace this process in order to convince the French public it can be trusted. And now, relieved of the burden of government, the party has three years in the opposition to do so. There is manna in the political desert.
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