French President Emmanuel Macron has dissolved the French National Assembly and called for snap parliamentary elections at the end of this month and the beginning of next month, following a major victory for his right-wing rival, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in the European Parliament vote.
Le Pen’s party came first in the EU ballot with 31% of the French vote. But Macron is betting that those votes are in protest against him, and that they will not hold up in France’s election.
On Monday, George Szamuely, a senior research fellow at the Global Policy Institute and author, sat down with Sputnik’s Fault Lines. Szamuely suggested that while French elections are complicated - with previous elections failing to help the National Rally translate their parliamentary success into success at France’s national assembly elections - France's right appears to be making strides.
“The polls are showing that the National Rally is doing well. This boat vote has fallen since the European election,” said Szamuely. “However, we should take a deep breath and recall that the National Rally won the European parliamentary elections in 2019. National Rally also won in 2014. And the National Rally was unable to translate that into any substantial vote in the subsequent French National Assembly election.”
Szamuely added that while the National Rally was unable to gain any substantial vote in the French National Assembly election, their votes have increased since that time.
“Macron is a deeply unpopular politician. He's personally intensely disliked. He represents a kind of global managerial elite,” said Szamuely. “He's a banker. His policies have been kind of neoliberal policies. He's raised the retirement age, he's cut public expenditure. It certainly doesn't show any real interest in improving the lives of ordinary people.”
“He only got elected really because twice he was against Le Pen and the name Le Pen has had a very toxic reputation in France,” he added. “If you do have a name like Le Pen, it's going to be hard to win an election.”
“The French are beginning to express their intense dislike of him. And, ultimately, you can't go on playing the Le Pen and the National Rally card and just hope that, 'oh, they're always going to come around and support me because they're so terrified of Le Pen,'” the author said. “Macron is seen as someone who doesn't care about the plight of ordinary people, that he is primarily interested in his banker friends. He's interested in the EU bureaucracy. He's interested in this little globalist agenda. He's someone who is out of touch.”
On Sunday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said he was “concerned” about the ongoing elections in France. Meanwhile, Scholz’s party, the center-left Social Democrats, scored their worst results ever with just 14% of the vote, said Politico.
“I am concerned about the elections in France,” Scholz told public broadcaster ARD. “I hope that parties that are not Le Pen — to put it that way — are successful in the election. But that is for the French people to decide.”
"I just think it's just bizarre,” said Szamuely of Scholz’s comment. “He’s just got an absolutely horrific drubbing in his own country. You know, kind of a record low for the Social Democratic Party, never in its history. And in fact the German Social Democratic Party has a very distinguished history."
"It's one of the oldest social democratic parties in the world. He got its lowest vote ever. He will almost certainly be defeated next year. He may even have to be forced to resign later this year if the provincial elections turn out to be a total humiliation for him. So, an endorsement from Scholz, it's nothing to brag about.”
Sputnik’s Jamarl Thomas asked Szamuely for his take on what the French right are seeking in their policies.
“I think that the big issue for the right in France and really for the right throughout Europe is immigration. That basically that immigration is out of control and therefore France is out of control and so basically France will just be lost,” the analyst said, adding that the French fear that in a few years France will bear “no resemblance” to what people have been accustomed to.
“I think that the right and, in some ways, the left do want to somehow get the French economy moving. The French economy really is in the doldrums. I mean, there's just no economic growth at all; in fact, it's a negative growth when you count inflation. So they want to somehow return to some form of Keynesian spending and, again, there's a similarity in some ways with the left there."
"So, I think, get out of the economic doldrums and address the issue with immigration. But in both cases, they're going to come head to head with the European Union because the European Union doesn't tolerate deficit spending and it doesn't tolerate countries simply locking down their barriers to immigration.”
Thomas then noted that “Macron was allowed by the European Union” to essentially “deficit spend” during the Yellow Vests Protests - during which protestors said they couldn’t afford fuel price hikes because they live in rural areas where driving is strenuous. “If they don't spend money, there's no way for France to be able to control this group of people,” Thomas added.
“The European Union has wedded itself to this policy of the national debt to be a certain percentage of the GDP. The budget deficit also has to be a particular percentage of the GDP. Now, they do have a certain flexibility when it comes to leaders that they favor and I think Macron is someone that they favor. And so they gave him a certain latitude. They wouldn't give any kind of latitude if you had a National Rally government or even if you had a leftist government,” he said.
“Macron pursued essentially an EU agenda. The EU agenda was the Green agenda. The Green agenda was obviously on the backs of working people. They had to suddenly pay a hell of a lot more for their fuel. The Green agenda was on the backs of farmers. They also had to pay a lot more for their fuel.”