The Eurointelligence Podcast
French menu choices
Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Monchow, and with me, as is Anna Monchink and Jack Smith. Today, we will talk about the French elections. Jack, can you take us through what happened on Sunday? Yeah, so what happened on Sunday? I mean, it was a big surprise for, I think, most of us, including the pollsters, although the Resomble Monassian al, so that's the party, Marine Le Pen leads, finished in first with the Vogue Share on Sunday's second round of French elections with 37% of the vote. Tactical voting against the Resomble Monassian al worked very effectively to put them into third place in terms of the seat count. So, the left, which, you know, they run as an alliance. The new Vogue home popular won 180 seats. The centrists, an annual Macron's faction, en sombre, they won 159 seats, and then Resomble Monassian al came in third with 142. That was the result of basically number one strategic choices that the left and center parties made in the lead up to the second round of the vote and number two, their voters actually going along with it. What happened in the first round of the election was that turnout was extremely high compared to a normal legislative election. For instance, in 2022, the turnout for the French legislative election was about 47%. Last week, it was about 67%, 20 points up. Now, what that turnout did was that meant that there were a larger number of three-way runoff contests ahead of the second round. So, for any of the uninitiated, France's elections work in a two-round system where the first round determines who goes to a runoff round a week later. There were a number of three-way runoff contests heading into this week because of the high turnout in the first round. Now, what the centrist and left-wing parties did in response to that was they decided to pull out a number of their third place candidates in order to maximize the vote against the far right. The question leading up into the second round was basically, "Are voters going to go along with this? Are they still going to turn out?" And for the most part, they did. Turnout in this round was almost as high as last week. Most of the voters for either the left or the center party voted for whoever the non-resumble on that's in how candid it was. That element actually did go to plan and that, well, I mean, to be honest, it went to plan probably better than either the left or the center expected. So, now you're in a position where both the left and the center together could form a majority, but neither party has a majority. Right. Is it going to be very easy that the left and the center forms a majority's design? You wrote about coalition options this morning. We got the sense that it may not be so easy. The momentum is on the left. They didn't see this coming and it was your ablation and there is this passionate drive to actually force the cohabitation on the president. Jean-Luc Milanchon, who is the leader of Le France-Arcy-Mies, the party, the left party that got most of the seats, was the first actually to come out after the election since as we have been voted on the program. We will implement nothing but the program and we will be the one in power and to propose a government to the president. That is easier said than done. First of all, they don't have one leader. It's not like a typical ablation scenario like we had under François-Mitterrand or under Jacques Girac, where the opposition party actually got elected with a majority of votes and had a clear lead candidate to become the next prime minister. Here we are now in completely uncharted waters. There are four parties who came together for an alliance just short time before the elections with an election program that was put together in three days. They don't even have a designated prime minister yet. They said they were going to deliver one in a week's time and so they will have to work through their internal divergences and there are many problems that they don't have a majority. For a left government only, they will not have enough. If you take all the left together, they probably come maximum 203 seats in parliament which is short of the 289 that is necessary for an outright majority. Would the centre and the left together have a majority? Yes, of course. You have a 450, I think 158 from the Macron's camp. People see counts vary, but I think the most reliable one is 180 for the left and 159 for the centre. So that's clearly about 300 that you have and that would be very confortable. But the problem is, first of all, that the left campaigned against the centre, against Emmanuel Macron. One of the main elements of their programme is actually to roll back the reforms that Emmanuel Macron's government imposed, in particular the immigration reform as well as the pension reform. So how these two could actually come together with such a completely opposite agenda. The left commit to power with an agenda that basically understands everything that the government did in the last year. That seems a far-fetched idea of yet you have the circumstances and the fact that there are three blocks where none of them really has a majority to govern on their own. But you will have some form of coalition building necessary in order to move anything. But this will be relevant to test it once it comes to the budget. I mean, you can say maybe Macron who has to appoint the prime minister in the end, so they can't come up with a completely ridiculous or outrageous candidate for the prime minister's job. But even if they were to agree in one, you could say he might have the summer for a pause and we have the Olympic Games coming along on August. So there are reasons to believe why it might actually be good to give them a time to work out their differences and work out what are the possible scenarios for moving forward. But after that, and then when once it comes to the budget, there are some critical moments where the power of the president would actually be pitched against the power of the assembly to impose one or another. Yeah, I mean, the first thing that needs to happen, of course, is that the left needs to nominate their prime minister candidate, which they've said that they're going to do at some point in the next week. There's already quite a bit of competition going on within the left to see who will actually become that candidate. Well, the first thing, as you said, Suzanne, is that they can't propose somebody completely ridiculous. The left are pushing, you know, left-on-somees are pushing for one of their own to be a candidate. But the question is whether Macron will accept that, which he would have to. And so, yeah, you're really at that point, we'll be able to see better where the left might stand on this. But it's very difficult to see how this kind of we want to implement our program idea is going to hold one way or another, right? Because number one, the left doesn't have a majority in the national assembly. Number two, they only got to the position that they're in in the first place, thanks to tactical voting from centrist voters. And number three, the balance between, I guess, the central left parties and La France and somees is much more even than it was previously. In fact, the socialists and the Greens, you know, they say, "Hello, those two parties have more seats combined than the France and somees." So it's a very different dynamic from the left alliance in 2022, which was really Jean-Luc Melanchon and friends. It's much more evenly balanced this time around. And the role that tactical support from centrist voters played in that result is much clearer. Would there be a majority for a centrist coalition? I mean, this is sort of the big trend in European politics that the parties of the center, right, the center left and the center, all form these huge majorities leaving the radicals in opposition. Arithmetically, this might be a majority. Would this work politically, too? Arithmetically, I mean, it depends on how do you define it. I mean, if you do. You could include the socialists, the Greens, maybe. You would include, they would probably come. Well, that's sort of a growing coalition in a classical sense, yeah. If you have the traditional parties, like the socialist, the echolos, and some of the other, and, of course, the centrist, the ensemble parties, you do have a majority. However, the problem is that the parties of the left alliance cannot agree with any government solution, which basically means that La France or Cimise and Jean-Luc Melanchon conclude it's either everything or nothing. And if there is no agreement on everything, then they might actually withdraw from the well we better stay out, which would then give the socialists and the Greens, Cimise, actually, the possibility of reconsidering their positioning, whether or not they will follow this extreme, either or positioning, or whether they would be open to unwilling to engage in a grown coalition. There are clear risks following the debates between Arphale Goulocksmann and Francois Coupe, from the Leer Pippica. That was quite an intense exchange between the two, definitely the two parties, there's history there. It's not so easy to forge them into an alliance with the centrists. You could also imagine a smaller coalition of the willing where the centrists would pick particular MPs from the left and from the right. And in large, the center, as such, was the scenario from Emmanuel Macron in 2017. But we are no longer in that scenario where the center has the gravitational force, it's more the other way around, or the center, yes, did not as badly as was predicted by the Poles, but on the other hand, it also only won the seats because of tactical voting, because the left supported them in these constituencies where there were three way rounds. This alliance of everything but the ensemble norm nationale, that was the factor that actually brought them all together in the second round. Yet this is not enough for governing because you really have to go through the program. If you look at the program points, where would there be a majority in the assembly? You could say there is a majority in the assembly for, for example, the abolition of the pension reform. But are these the allies you actually want? Because then the left would actually have an ally in the assembly, which is probably not the one you want to, after you were fighting them in the elections, and now you're actually packing with them on your program. That might not be the wisest choice for your first battle. So there, again, for the left, they will have to decide what battles they want to battle and which ones they want to keep for later or even giving up. Will the RN, which is obviously in opposition now, now they've got 37% of the votes, which will be very jokingly remarked. This is more than the Labour Party cut. Now, we're saying that second rounds, you've got to be very careful with extrapolating from second round vote totals because parties run in different numbers of constituencies. No, absolutely. But it is, I mean, they got like 33 in the first round. So they're basically, you know, that's basically the, if you take just that vote, it's approximately a third, they got a third of the electorate, and that's pretty much what Labour got. And yet the outcome could not be more different. But the strength of support that RN had is a fact of political life. It doesn't, it's not reflected in the numbers, but it will inform the position of other centaurite people because if the centaurite were to enter into an alliance with, say, the socialist, and you've mentioned how difficult this already is, it would presumably drive more voters from the centaurite to the far right. This is an additional factor, the sort of the idea of Le Pen breathing down your neck with a third of the population behind her. I would assume that must be a factor, sort of a hidden factor in all of these conversations that are going on in France. Yes, definitely. The right, Badella has a strong narrative here to say, we have been deprived of our victory and moving forward towards 2027, the presidential elections that is definitely a strong poll in this narrative. We could also say that this is one of the reasons how Emmanuel Macron could temper the left, saying, look, if you go really so far left, you polarise to the other side. So in that sense, you have a soup now of various different tastes, and it's the question of the balance and whether or not not only Macron, but everyone involved, can find the balance that enables the assembly and the government to move forward with an agenda that finds the majorities in the assembly. And yet, a response to what the voters actually are expecting. It's not only to block the other. If you build only on the idea that you block the other, that is not necessarily an image or it's not a politics for a society, it's not a programme at all. Getting back on to the actual government scenarios issue, and the question of whether there is something outside of an alliance between the left and the centre, the problem with anything that splits up the left in the centre is that these groups fundamentally rely on boats from each other. That means that there's a political risk for anybody, for either of these groups who stabs another one in the back. If you're the party sociades, for instance, or if you're laissez-cordo, look at the Greens, do you really want to be in a situation where you break up this left-wing alliance again? Because the last left-wing alliance collapsed. If this left-wing alliance collapses, is there going to be a third left-wing alliance in 2027 or whenever the legislative elections come around after that? Who knows? And if you're in a position where you have to run in urban districts against La Fonse and Samise, then you're splitting the left vote. Then, similarly, well, if you're a centrist, okay, well, now you rely on tactical voting from left-wingers in the second round. That's very much how you got to the position that you're in. And again, if you stab these people in the back, are those voters going to opt for you the next time around? Similarly, it works the same way with the left versus the centre, perhaps even more so. So that's the difficulty with this, right? Is that actually, the voters have turned out to be quite fluid between all of these different groups. So you have this kind of scenario where everybody would, whoever really kind of breaks that pact would risk losing out. This is from each player's perspective. It is sort of assuming that there is a possibility to find a majority. But what if there is not? What if the responsibility of instability in the country is actually then the price you're willing to pay in order to save your electorate or to save of not being punished later? I mean, it's all about, at the moment, it's still about blaming, who's to blame for this scenario, at the moment, all fingers point towards Macron. Also, to think in terms of what is the best insurance that I'm not going to be blamed later on, but how the left alliance could break up, it really depends on how it breaks up. As I mentioned earlier, if you were to have La Fonse and Samise, if they were to conclude that they're not going to be part of a compromise and a compromise, it has to be because they don't have an outright majority. So if the La Fonse and Samise were to decide on not doing that and being unbowed, which is part of their name, and being true to their name, that would free up the other parties. And that would be a split that is much more clean than any other messy split or fracture that would have been caused by the socialists betraying La Fonse and Samise. So I think if it were to come about, it has to come from La Fonse and Samise letting the others say, "I'm not part of it, your choice." I mean, that still contains risks for the Fonse and Samise because they could lose some of their voters to other parties, but who knows? That's a calculation they'll have to make, or if not a calculation, who knows how calculating some of these people or maybe they're not. La Fonse and Samise, it's actually feeling very energised by this whole chaos. It's not necessarily the same for the socialists. I think you could see really see in terms of body language and in terms of how they responded in these interviews that stability has a different value for these two parties on the left. The question is how threatening this stability scenario for the nation is. Yeah, the other consideration if you're the Fonse and Samise is that you rely pretty heavily on French Muslim voters. There are then risks, if you do anything that's seen as getting a window in Fervassemble or Nacional. It's very complex and it's very difficult. It's also worth saying that, of course, we've talked a lot about programs or agendas, but this is also to a great extent about personalities. You mentioned the kind of blame against Macron. One way of interpreting certainly the first round result is that it really was French voters expressing their anger with Macron on a personal level, quite aside from anything that he did in his political agenda, just his personality, his style of government, everything like that. Similarly, on the right, the kind of key, I guess, that the demon has been Jean-Luc Melanchon. It's, in that sense, also about these figures and how French voters actually feel about them. Then another question, especially if you're the centrists and to a certain extent, if you're the left to, is how do you bring forward people who are going to be able to bridge that divide in a way that the more divisive figures in your parties are not? I think for the left, that's already been quite clear and they've mostly relegated Melanchon to a bit more of a backseat role. In the center, then it's kind of like, "Okay, well, Macron still needs to actually nominate the prime minister. There's a process of having to figure out political alliances. If he doesn't take center stage, who does take center stage?" So Zana, in your article this morning, you mentioned another possibility that of a technical government like Italy had, the Mario Draghi option, because if there isn't any resolution and it looks like from our discussion that it's not going to be easy to find some kind of a something that works politically. So technical government is always a possibility where nothing else works. Now, obviously, for the round, any sort of obvious choices, could we see Jean-Claude Triche or some other central background? Christine Lagarde was the first one that came to mind if you were talking about I'm doing Draghi a la Francie. Absolutely. So you'll have Lagarde or Triche or somebody, somebody who is basically away. I mean, Triche is just a joke here, but it's more of a person. France has in its sort of immense international network of people with international experience and also expressed international institutions, more than a fair share of people who could do this. So is this an option? What would that mean? Would the French political system work with this? I mean, Draghi worked with pretty much everybody, the Italian political spectrum. Only Maloney was in the opposition. Everybody supported him. Well, they supported him until they didn't support him. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. That's the nature of technical government. It's meant to be as a bridge. And three years to bridge is a long time. I completely agree with that. The classic case in Italy, it would usually last a year and a half, two years at the most. That usually people got very tired of them. Even the Draghi government was running out of steam in the end and it was running out of support. Would that be an option or would this French really struggle with it? But that would be the first time ever that the French Fifth Republic would have a technical government. It's definitely not a preferred option. I think this would only come forth if everything else is failing or even risking even more instability for the nation economically and politically. Since it's uncharted waters, it's not clear what it means. I mean, some names have been dropped like Christine Nagar, but also people from the military. I think it's not only a question of who's going to be leading the as prime minister, but also the whole cabinet defined personalities from the judiciary, but also from the army, from the economics profession, central banking, all those who cannot be accused of any political maneuvering and who are palatable to a broader range of parties to be acceptable. Whether or not Christine Nagar would be accepted from the left. If you have enough people on the left and the right, you might have enough of a majority. Whether or not it will last for three years until 2026, not clear. The minimum it will have to last is for another year because that's the earliest that Macron can call for another dissolution of the parliament and to have elections. That would be the minimum, unless he could trigger something of a major crisis over the budget because some of the articles and the constitution allow him to do that to the nuclear option. But that would actually require that France is in serious, I mean, serious trouble that would have to be confirmed by the constitutional court. Yeah, no, I think I think the most reasonable assumption to make is that something will have to happen for at least like a year. It lasts a year and then you call a new election. I guess it's another question if you decide, okay, do we want this to go on to three years? It's also worth pointing out that the French system is not one where parties have to vote confidence into a government. It is one where parties would have to specifically decide to vote against a government. The politics of those two things are quite different. Passively letting a government do things while basically blocking all of their votes in the assembly is one thing, which is to a certain extent what happened over the past several years with Macron's previous cabinet. But then deciding that you actually want to support a central motion and topple the government is another. And you don't actually need much, I mean, to put forward a sense of motion against the government, you only need 10% of the vote of the MPs. So that's really, that's a threshold that is quite easily achieved. So that's why also these minority governments beat on the left or the center or on the right won't work because they have the threat of the sense of motion permanently around the neck. Now this is a scenario. If you look at the options, we just kind of discuss the options that are available. There will probably be a few ones that come up as well. But this is not a scenario in which international investors or international investors would put a lot of money into the French economy with all the uncertainty hanging around, you're having a government that is not stable, potentially new elections in a year's time, reshuffle the cards. Again, our end would have another chance to win. The more chaos, the better this will happen in 2027. So there could be some self-fulfilling dynamics going on. The economy weakens, the budget is going to be in much more difficulty because they're not going to do austerity into a political situation that we are facing today. But they will need to, if growth were to fall, the current fiscal aside would not be sustainable. So there is potential for quite some serious disturbance going on. I mean, at the extreme end, that could be a sovereign debt crisis, which is always a possibility. It can be triggered by anything. But if people conclude that this is not sustainable and they may not conclude that today or in a year's time, but they may at some arrive at that conclusion, that could really produce some extreme volatility, political volatility and also economic volatility. Yeah, I suppose. I mean, we kind of had a preview of what that looked like in the UK, where the political instability leads to weak investment, which leads to more political instability because you don't have the growth and so on and so forth. And everybody's first reaction is to actually sit around pointing fingers at each other and blaming each other for the poor situation that they're in. So then they launch palace coups against each other and so on and so forth. Yeah, so that's definitely a cycle that a vicious cycle that you can end up getting into. But in the UK, your choice will always be between someone like Stalin, someone like Sunak, whereas in France, the political choices are different. No, no, they are different, right? Yeah, and this is just it too, right? Like, ultimately, what broke that cycle in the UK was voters basically get basically Starmer and the Labour Party getting a decisive mandate. Somebody with control over his political party managing to win a clear majority in those elections. So yeah, and as you say, it's different because you have on the one end the kind of hard left and on the other end in France, you have Marine Le Pen. And then right in the middle, you have Macron, who nobody else really seems to like anymore. Even some of the people in his political alliance are clearly losing patience with him. In France, the power comes with projects. We could say Emmanuel Macron was a project. He came to power on this premise and neither left nor right. And there's a center, a pro-European center with which he can build a new political force by destroying basically the traditional left and right. Now, it seems to come to haunt him. The revolution he promised is now setting up his own children and himself included in the sense that there's this backlash against him personally, but also because of the lack of ideological or a strong underpinning of what he is standing up for, but seems also to leave all the rest of his potential successors trying to find out their own kind of groupings or outlets, what this future could look like. You could also say that the left coming to power is a project. It was a project built around a strong economic program of redistribution about the idea, everything, but the far right. These are the two ideas that were quite mobilizing in the selections and led to record levels of turnout. So France is very driven by these projects and unless you have a clear project that carries enough votes or enough people with them ideologically, you will have troubles to move forward. And at the moment, it's really like finding out how to move at all. Yeah, and the difficulty is that your voters on each side of the political spectrum do want a project, but at the moment, you can't get a majority of them to agree with the project they want. It's a little bit like elsewhere in Europe, and in that sense, I find it ironic that France has been the exception for such a long time, and now it seems to be joining other European countries as well as the European Parliament in the experience of building coalitions case by case, and I'm trying to figure out how on earth you can build majorities in the assembly where no clear majority is given. What is the to round us off now? What is the timetable ahead? And now that's going to be the Olympics and the holiday season starting. France usually doesn't do much in that period. Will there be a government before the Olympic Games? And if not, how will it pan out? We don't know yet what the left will come up with, what candidate they will come up if in a week's time, and also what programme they insist will have to be implemented if we don't know yet. That's next week, that's at least what they said. Beyond that, it will be difficult if you don't have a candidate that possibly could take over. I think that Macron will then ask Atal to stay to ensure that there is a stable government and no radical change in the last minute whilst the Olympic Games are taking place. I was supposed to say they probably have until the end of the summer to work this out realistically, because by the autumn you need to be working on the budget. I think if you're working on the budget, you're already not talking about just a placeholder government until the new one takes over, but that would be a conversation about whoever is going to be there until the next time you can dissolve the assembly in a year's time. Okay, on this note, thank you for listening. Until next week.