EU elections results in France: Earthquake or all too predictable?
The European Union woke up with yet another hangover after the weekend’s elections. Every five years, the same campaigns centring far right issues are run and the same results occur, albeit a little worse every time. Every five years, no lessons are learnt, the circus moves on until the lights come on again and it all starts again, as if for the first time.
So once more, we all wake up to dramatic headlines about the ‘inevitable’ rise of the far right, governments falling, fear and panic over what seems like an inescapable future that can only lead to more authoritarianism, right-wing turns and further pain and exclusion for otherised communities.
This time, France is one of the headlines. Last time, it also was. And so was it in 2014. That year, I wrote about the dangers of exaggerating the results of the EU elections or taking them out of context. I stressed what should be obvious to any commentator: these are second order elections. Turnout will be low and protest vote high. Many voters do not entirely understand the impact of their vote. They feel it is less important than a national election or that Brussels is too far from their day to day concerns.
For the far right, this setting is a boon. Low turnout gives the impression of much better results. Their anti-EU discourse makes their message a lot easier to spread than more complicated arguments about the need to reform a deeply dysfunctional system. Furthermore, considering the current state of polycrisis, it is no surprise that mainstream parties and institutions are first in line for the anger of voters, making them unlikely options at the ballot box.
In 2014, I pointed out that the results were a disaster for the mainstream and their strategy of mainstreaming far right politics. In France, five years of Sarkozy presidency had meant much of the then Front National discourse had been normalised in an attempt to bring voters back to the mainstream right. It is thus no surprise today to see his heir offer an alliance with the RN. The election of Socialist François Hollande in 2012 did little to change course as the mainstream left proved unwilling to address issues core to people’s concerns and instead attempted to fight the far right on its turf.
Unsurprisingly then, a refreshed party under the leadership of Marine Le Pen, a much more palatable leader than her father, meant yet another push for the far right. Yet again, this should have been put into perspective and that when turnout was taken into account, there was not so much a rise in the far right vote as a collapse of support of mainstream parties, something we had been witnessing in France since 2002 and the first ‘earthquake’ created by Le Pen father reaching the second round of the presidential election. At the time, his vote share had been stagnating since 1988 and he was only able to qualify for the second round because of the deep unpopularity of mainstream government parties (see figure below). No lessons were learnt about the crisis of democracy. Instead, Le Pen became ever more central to public discourse.
Back to 2024. Another earthquake! Another record vote for the RN! But is it? As shown in the figure above, when turnout is taken into account, the RN’s 31.5% of the vote turns into 16.5% of the registered vote. Its share of the registered vote rose by 4% compared to 2019 in incredibly fertile circumstances. There is no doubt this is far too high and incredibly concerning, but there are two ways to look at it: one out of every three voters voted for the RN or 85% of registered voters did not. Regardless, the RN wins, which is bad news. Yet the way we discuss these results matters greatly as this is what then goes on to shape the discourse that will inform the upcoming campaign. The first reading, framing the RN as central and popular gives it the ability to set the agenda. The second reading could help us refocus on the people’s actual concerns when they think of their day-to-day lives, rather than those mediated by a public debate eager to tap into moral panics about immigration and borders.
In 2022, Emmanuel Macron had promised he would be a bulwark against the far right. Both his mandates so far have proven he has in fact been an enabler. Whether it has been through the centring of far right issues, through passing an immigration law which Le Pen claimed as an ‘ideological victory’ or through fuelling moral panics about ‘Islamo-leftism’. His decision to call a snap election is yet another gamble that is only likely to lead to further mainstreaming of far right politics.
Macron’s political project was already exhausted when it started in the ashes of the former governments from the centre left and right. His so-called ‘neither left nor right’ approach has offered no solutions to the many crises plaguing France, Europe and the world. This is why much of his energy has gone towards hyping the far right as a worse alternative to his leadership and delegitimising the left as a viable alternative. The current political settlement is one that rests on this contradistinction: we are bad, but they are worse.
Macron is the epitome of what has gone wrong. The rise of the far right is not inevitable. In fact, it remains deeply unpopular despite decades of mainstreaming. Yet we can no longer afford to place blind faith in the status quo, as is too often demanded from us. Countering the far right cannot be done by absorbing or mimicking it. It requires focusing on issues core to people’s concerns, away from the far right’s turf. Yet this demands radical change which the status quo will not welcome. The solutions are there, but the appetite from our elite isn’t as they know they have much to lose. As always, there is no mainstreaming of far right politics without the active role played by the mainstream elite.
It is thus time to admit that the strategy of accommodation and faith in the status quo of the past few decades is no longer tenable. In this, the agreement on the left to form a ‘popular front’ is good news. However, it will only be so if this front is accompanied with a clear break with the past. The only way out is an uncompromising opposition to the far right, a shift away from the moral panics on which it feeds and a focus on addressing the many crises that require radical change. Any less will lead us ever closer to a fascist future.
