How France’s far-right National Rally plans to secure its absolute majority in parliament

Buoyed by its resounding success in the first round of the snap legislative elections, France’s far-right National Rally party (RN) is hoping to secure an absolute majority in the second round on July 7. Before it can achieve this however, NR’s President Jordan Bardella will have to fend off both the leftist New Popular Front and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble coalition.

The question on everyone’s lips ahead of the second round of the snap legislative elections on July 7 is: will France’s far-right National Rally (RN) party win an absolute majority in the National Assembly?

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The RN – backed by some members of the right wing Republicans party – won the first round of the legislative elections with 33.1% of the vote, followed by the New Popular Front (28%) and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble coalition (20%). A clear favourite to win the second round, the NR could nevertheless lose if the leftist coalition and Macron’s party work together and withdraw their respective third-placed candidates in order to block the far-right. The New Popular Front has withdrawn more than 130 of its candidates and the presidential camp more than 80 in constituencies where the RN has a good chance of winning.

Determined to counter this threat, the RN is maintaining its strategy of positioning itself as the sole defender of democracy and the people against the “chaos of the far-left”.

The ‘Mélenchon problem’

During his guest appearance on the French newschannel TF1 on Monday evening, RN’s President Jordan Bardella appeared surprised when the presenter asked him about his opponents’ strategy for blocking his party from securing an absolute majority in parliament. “The somewhat unnatural alliance between Mr Mélenchon and Emmanuel Macron is very surprising,” said Bardella, criticising “the president of the republic for collaborating with a violent far-left movement”.

Earlier in the day, Bardella had proposed holding a debate in between the two rounds of voting with Jean Luc Mélenchon, founder of the far-left France Unbowed party. Mélenchon responded to him on X, saying that the “New Popular Front has not yet designated a candidate for the position of prime minister”. Marine Tondelier, leader of the Ecologists, also joined in the discussion, informing them that it was now her party’s turn to debate, as Olivier Faure had already debated on behalf of the Socialist Party as had Manuel Bompard for France Unbowed. This debate order, said Tondelier, had been agreed upon between the members of the New Popular Front.

J’ai bien compris que @J_Bardella ne souhaite pas débattre avec moi.

Et pourtant je ne vais pas lâcher l’affaire.

Sinon les femmes et l’écologie continueront d’être invisibilisées dans cette campagne, ce qui est un vrai problème.

Mais comme tout le monde l’a bien compris ça… pic.twitter.com/wK4k9Yp4ke

— Marine Tondelier (@marinetondelier) July 1, 2024

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The RN’s tactic is to present Mélenchon as the leader of the New Popular Front, as they know that many voters have strong reservations about him.

Bardella and his supporters are pretending to be unaware of the fact that Mélenchon, who has taken somewhat of a back seat in this campaign, is a divisive figure even within the New Popular Front, which also includes the Socialist Party, the Ecologists and the Communist Party. Some of its members, such as Tondelier and Faure, have stated that in the event of victory, Mélenchon would not be appointed prime minister as the candidate would have to be chosen unanimously.

However, the RN remains adamant. “It’s a choice next Sunday between Mr Mélenchon as prime minister and us,” Bardella said repeatedly on TF1 on Monday evening.

Vicious attacks

Throughout this campaign, Bardella’s colleagues have targeted members of France Unbowed, as evidenced by several comments made on election night on Sunday.

“On one hand, you have those who love France and on the other, those who love Hamas,” said RN spokeswoman Laure Lavalette during an interview on the French news network BFMTV, drawing the ire of Raquel Garrido, one of the outgoing France Unbowed MPs for Seine-Saint-Denis, a suburb north of Paris and France’s poorest department. “Be loyal, be honest”, said Garrido, who a few months earlier had described the October 7 attack perpetrated by the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Israel as “an absolutely despicable act of terror”.

Clémentine Autain, the France Unbowed MP who was re-elected to a different constituency in Seine-Saint-Denis, was subjected to the same treatment. “What is the Republic that Madame Autain defends? The Islamic Republic” said Julien Odoul, the RN MP re-elected in Yonne, located about 2 hours south of Paris, forcing BFMTV presenter Benjamin Duhamel to come to the feminist activist’s defence.

Clémentine Autain face à Julien Odoul pic.twitter.com/SrepfT5kSz

— L’oeil Medias (@LoeilMedias1) June 30, 2024

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During a debate on the TV channel France 2, Lavalette accused Éric Dupont Moretti, the minister of justice, of being “lax” in criminal matters while Moretti said the RN uses heinous crimes as a “stepping stone”.

The Republican front of ‘dishonour’

Another tactic being used by RN is to criticise what it sees as the contradictions of the republican alliance formed between Macron’s coalition and the New Popular Front.

“To come out and say, as the president of the republic did a fortnight ago, that ‘Nupes 2’ [the new left-wing alliance] is anti-parliamentarian, anti-Semitic, communitarian and then today […] to say that they are better, that they are more reasonable than Jordan Bardella, than Marine Le Pen […], it makes no sense,” said Marine Le Pen, former leader of the RN, during an interview on the France Inter radio station on Tuesday.

Macron on Sunday called for the formation of a “broad, clearly democratic and republican alliance for the second round” to prevent the RN from securing an absolute majority.

The RN representatives also strongly criticised France Unbowed’s Noé Gauchard when he withdrew from his race in one of the constituencies of Calvados, in the Normandy region in northwestern France, in order to not split the vote against the far-right with former prime minister Elisabeth Borne.

“France Unbowed has made the choice to withdraw its candidate and call on people to vote for Madame Borne, who implemented the pension reform using article 49.3 [which allows a prime minister to pass a law without a parliamentary vote],” said Bardella on Monday, denouncing an “alliance founded on dishonour on both sides”.

Bardella’s criticism is somewhat inconsistent, given that his pension reform would see some French people working until the age of 66, two years longer than the current limit.

Defending the people

By levelling these criticisms at the so-called Republican alliance, the RN is questioning the integrity of the Ensemble coalition and the New Popular Front. For instance, Jean-Philippe Tanguy, the RN’s MP for the Somme department in northern France, denounced this “scheming” aimed at “conserving seats”.

🔴 Législatives 2024 ➡️ “Depuis hier, on voit, ajouté aux mensonges, les magouilles, tout pour sauver les sièges : quand je vois que la gauche va soutenir madame Borne […] ça me désole”, dénonce Jean-Philippe Tanguy, député Rassemblement national dans la Somme. pic.twitter.com/49ttfrxDNo

— franceinfo (@franceinfo) July 1, 2024

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The RN has thus positioned itself as defenders of the people and critics of supposed efforts to infantilise voters.

“This election is about the emancipation of the French people,” Le Pen said on Tuesday. “This is precisely what the people have come to say: ‘Stop giving us lessons in morality, stop telling us where we should vote, how we should think’. That’s what they said in the first round, and I hope they’ll say it in the second round too, because that’s the key to changing the policy they’ve been enduring for seven years now.”

While Bardella says he is “confident” he will become prime minister, he is nevertheless aware that French society still has strong reservations about his programme, which his detractors describe as xenophobic and racist. “I will be the prime minister who guarantees the rights of all French people,” he says, calling on voters to “choose a responsible break with the past”.

In an interview with the French daily Le Parisien published on June 17, Bardella warned that he would only become prime minister if he won an absolute majority, i.e. at least 289 of the 577 seats in the National Assembly. His close supporters, including Le Pen and Sébastien Chenu, have made more tempered declarations however.

“Once we hit, for example 270 MPs, we will need 19 more,” said Le Pen in the National Assembly on Tuesday, suggesting that further alliances could be reached with “various right-wing, left-wing and LR (the Republicans) MPs” in order to form a majority.

Although the RN is leading the race and seems likely to win an absolute majority, nothing is yet set in stone. In the first round, Bardella’s party and its allies won 39 seats, compared with 32 for the New Popular Front. It will need to win 250 seats in the second round to take control of the National Assembly.

This article has been translated from the original in French.