Left-wing parties form “Popular Front” to fight against national rallies

French left-wing parties said they have united to form the “New Popular Front” to compete head-on with the far-right forces in the parliamentary elections to be held at the end of this month.

French President Emmanuel Macron announced two rounds of voting after Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardera’s anti-immigration National Rally (RN) scored a landslide victory in last Sunday’s European elections.

The latest poll on the Le Point website showed that RN received 29.5% of the vote in the first round of voting on June 30, while the Left Alliance received 28.5%, pushing Macron’s Renew to third place with 18% of the vote.

This has prompted each party to claim it will form a “block” to prevent other parties from winning power in the National Assembly.

With just over two weeks left before French voters go to the polls, the sense of uncertainty surrounding French politics is already reflected in the Paris stock exchange and bond markets.

The CAC40 index has had its worst week since March 2022, falling 6.2% since Monday and falling 2.66% on Friday alone. French government bonds were also affected, with the spread between 10-year French and German bond rates widening to the widest since 2017.

The pace of the campaign has been intense and the three main groups have launched direct attacks on their opponents.

France’s fragmented political landscape and two-wheel system encourage alliances, That’s why the Socialists agreed to join forces with the Greens, the Communists and Les Insurgents (Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s far-left party).

The former presidential candidate alienated many left-wing voters by focusing on criticizing Israel over the war In Gaza, his party fell behind Raphael Glucksmann’s Socialist Party in last Sunday’s elections.

However Mr. Glucksmann Thinking the risk of disappointing center-left voters is worth taking.

“The only thing that matters to me is that national rallies cannot win elections and cannot govern the country,” he told France Internationale, adding that Jean-Luc Mélenchon would not lead a left-wing movement.

“We cannot leave France to the Le Pen family,” he said. While Marine Le Pen leads the parliamentary party, she is now backed by her niece Marion Marechal, who was expelled from a rival far-right party for calling on voters to vote in support of a national rally.

Sophie Binet, president of the powerful left-wing CGT union, said that 200 protests will be held across France this weekend: “It is our responsibility to stir up a popular wave and stop the far right.”

Minutes later, national rally leader Jordan Bardera gave a television interview, declaring that he was “the only one capable of stopping Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the far left”. He called on “all the patriotic forces of the republic” to unite to prevent the danger of the left winning the election.

Opinion polls showed for the first time that the national rally had a chance of winning the vote, but fell short of an outright majority.

Mr Bardera has vowed to push for an immigration law that would allow “criminals and Islamists” to be deported if he becomes prime minister. He also promised to cut energy costs.

A poll for Le Point-Cluster 17 on Friday night showed the new left-wing coalition was not far behind Mr Bardera’s party.

It suggested that the RN could win 195-245 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, while the New Popular Front could win 190-235 seats. Macron’s centrist coalition will be reduced to a maximum of 100 seats.

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire has warned that if the far right or left wins the election, it could trigger a financial crisis. “sorry, [National Rally] There is no ability to afford these costs,” he said.

In the outgoing parliament, the left-wing party led by the French Insurgent Party proposed to repeal the Macron government’s pension reform, increase the retirement age from 62 to 64 years old, and lower it to 60 years later, and also plans to Raise the retirement age.

The finance minister condemned the plan as “utter madness” and said it would breach EU Stability Pact rules.

Under the Popular Front agreement, France’s Insurgents party may have the loudest voice yet, fielding candidates in 229 of France’s 577 constituencies, while the Socialists fielded 175 candidates, the Ecologists fielded 92 candidates, and the Communist Party 50 persons.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal warned that the left’s plan would be very bad news for the French people, “whose taxes will rise again”. Ecologist leader Marine Tondelier hit back, accusing him of leading an “anti-Robin Hood government” whose reforms took money from the poor and left the rich alone.

Conservative Republicans appeared to be dropping out of the race altogether, collapsing this week when leader Eric Sciorti called on the party to align with national rallies.

His colleagues subsequently expelled him from the party, and for a time he refused to leave the party headquarters in central Paris.

“It has all turned into a farce,” Mr. Sciorti accurately stated after the Republican Party (LR) convened a new conference to confirm his expulsion.

A Paris court will meet on Friday to consider whether Labor’s decision to oust its leader complied with party rules. The decision was supposed to be made in the evening.

Jordan Bardella claims 70 RN candidates will run jointly with the Republicans, but LR disputes that number.

However, Republicans in the western suburbs of Paris have struck a local agreement with Macron’s party to form their own coalition.

Attal said candidates in the Hauts-de-Seine had agreed to “stop the extremes of the right and the left and create a republican arc”.