The left has stepped aside for interior minister Gerald Darmanin, who has rammed through the most racist laws of the Macron regime, in the second round of the French elections (Picture: Jacques Paquier)
France’s New Popular Front (NPF) is showing that it is fully immersed in an old and failed set of politics.
The left wing coalition has withdrawn candidates running against vile and reactionary government figures in the second round of France’s elections.
The excuse is that this is worthwhile and necessary to block candidates of the fascist RN party. But the result will be to rehabilitate proven enemies of the working class from president Emmanuel Macron’s neoliberal and repressive regime. This will lay the basis for a further surge of fascist support.
The NPF is supporting precisely those who smoothed the path for fascist leaders Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella.
In the British context, it would be like a left party not running against Rishi Sunak and Suella Braverman in the hope that they win and stop fascist Tommy Robinson.
In the 6th constituency of Calvados in northern France NPF candidate Noé Gauchard came a close third in the first round of the French elections. He has pulled out in favour of former Macron prime minister Elisabeth Borne.
Borne was one of the authors of the attacks on pensions that put millions on the streets last year. She has repeatedly attacked the conditions of unemployed workers. She backed the cops as they brutalised protesters after the police murder of Nahel M a year ago.
Gauchard is a member of one of the most left elements in the NPF, Jean-Luc Melenchon’s LFI party. As he stepped down from challenging Borne, he noted the “responsibility” of the government “which has pitted the far right against the humanist and progressive left”.
At the same time, the LFI’s Leslie Mortreux stepped aside for interior minister Gerald Darmanin. Darmanin has rammed through the most racist laws of the Macron regime. His name is associated with repeated racist and Islamophobic crackdowns.
Darmanin once wrote for publications close to the antisemitic and royalist Action Francaise and may have attended one of its summer camps
Giving credence to Borne, Darmanin and others repeats the idea that these supposedly centrist figures are a dam against the RN. It is the same terrible strategy that thought Macron would block Le Pen.
Nobody should trivialise the threat from the RN, or the importance of defeating it. Everyone has to fight for “Not a single vote to the RN”,
But the left should by now have realised that Macron’s onslaught against migrants and Muslims, the relentless removal of rights, and support for the cops’ savagery legitimised Le Pen’s views. It let the fascists say, “Choose the original not the copy”.
So once again giving these figures a hand-up is disastrous. It may not even work in electoral terms. The RN seized on these withdrawals to mock the left and lump all its opponents together as members of an undemocratic caste. It lets the fascists say that, although they have rows, Macron and Melenchon both scorn ordinary people.
“Melenchon is supporting Madame 49.3 to beat the RN!” the fascists crowed. It’s a reference to Borne’s use of Article 49.3 of the constitution to force through the pension attacks without support from MPs.
And the left has now surrendered any hope of being the majority in parliament. The NPF withdrew 134 candidates out of the 415 who qualified for the second round. That leaves 281 in the running—less than half of the 577 seats up for election.
As the Le Monde newspaper comments, “It’s certain that neither the left nor Macron’s camp can win an absolute majority.” The “best hope” now is a left/Macron alliance. The RN will feast on such a government that will not even contemplate radical measures.
Above all this fixation on electoral manoeuvres takes the attention from the organisation on the streets. That will be necessary to block the fascists now and push back against them in the future.
There is also guaranteed to be turmoil after the French elections. Bardella could be prime minister. Or if no party has a majority, Macron might appoint a “technocrat”—European Central Bank chief Christine Lagarde has been mentioned in some reports. The outrageous lack of democracy and the implementation of austerity will simply build the fascists.
There are even suggestions Macron might resort to Article 16 of the constitution which gives the president “exceptional powers” in a time of acute crisis. He could rule without parliament.
Whatever manoeuvres there are at the top, the mobilisation at the base will be the decisive issue to check the fascists and begin to hurl them back.
The left and the anti-racist movement are not weak. On the weekend of 15 and 16 June around 800,000 took to the streets against the RN. Mobilising those people, and the many more horrified by the most recent RN vote, is crucial.
The “Republican front” of mainstream parties against fascism has failed. The NPF is dangerously wrong to renovate it.
The RN has not yet won but what is certain is that Macron has regained control and the NPF has already lost.
By withdrawing everywhere—even calling for a vote for Darmanin—the NPF has just denied what was its only option to fight fascism—an alternative programme.
It can no longer have a majority and is ready to vote for Macron. The RN can present itself as the only anti-system force.
The NPF is dead, it will be torn apart from 8 July and will be permanently subservient to Macron’s argument—”vote for my policy or else it’s the RN”.
In these conditions, more than ever, everything depends on the construction of our organisations of struggle, solidarity and self-defence.
Denis Godard
Home secretary has met with Italian fascists
They are demanding accommodation from the council
Police clamped down on Traveller chilren
Ukip leader Nick Tenconi attacks meeting
