On the Latest Crisis of the French Fifth Republic

Last year, amid the protests against French President Emmanuel Macron's constitutionally dubious abuse of his emergency powers to force through a raising of the retirement age, the French magazine Marianne published a long interview with Emmanuel Todd, which I discussed at some length. As always, Todd had much to say of interest about the matter, displaying a good deal of insight into the character of neoliberalism (especially as it looks from the demographic angle), and the politics it had produced.

However, Todd struck me as less impressive in his discussion of what to do about the issue, calling as he did for an alliance between Marine Le Pen's far right National Rally (RN) and Jean-Luc Melenchon's center-left Unsubmissive France (Nupes) to save French democracy from Macron's dictatorial conduct. As I wrote at the time, "Being somewhere between 'faint' and 'facade' the two parties' supposed common opposition to neoliberalism is . . . no foundation for overcoming their perhaps irreconcilable differences," all as, far from their seeking to change the system in the manner Todd prescribed—pushing for the alteration of the voting system from the current "winner-take-all" version to proportional representation,

representation is the last thing that Le Pen and the RN want, precisely because of how, in 2002 and more significantly in 2017 and 2022, the lack of such representation lifted this party with a mere 15 percent of the seats in the National Assembly to that second round of voting in the presidential election—where in 2022 it got over 40 percent of the vote. Putting it bluntly, the RN's best hope for winning in 2027 may be that disgust with Macron, and the blocking of any alternatives to Macron but themselves, push them over the top and put Le Pen in the Élysée Palace.

Continuing I wrote,

Indeed, in making his call Todd can seem to be calling on Le Pen and the RN to link hands with their center-left rivals to help save France from . . . Le Pen and the RN.

As I had expected there was no such alliance, as, in the resulting circumstances, the electoral position of the RN has waxed, as seen in its advances in the recent European election.

The surprising bit is that Macron responded to the results of the European election by dissolving France's National Assembly (the lower, directly elected, house of its parliament), calling for a new election whose first round will be on June 30. Those insistent on seeing reason in Macron's conduct hold that this is a bold gamble intended to force a showdown with the far right that Macron hopes to win--but this course seems at least equally likely to stick Macron with a far-right-dominated National Assembly, and Prime Minister, via an RN enjoying a much larger share of the seats, in combination with smaller parties of the right and even parties of the center-right (Eric Ciotti, leader of the Gaullist LR, in a display of how in France as elsewhere the center has been moving rightward, calling for alliance with the National Rally).

I had taken it for granted that Macron's conduct would continue to provide opportunity for the far right to advance--but I had never imagined that he would give them so much opportunity so soon. But then again Macron is hardly the only head of a West European government calling for an election at a time profoundly inopportune for his party in conditions all too likely to see the far right make historic advances at his party's expense, in what seems a sign of the chaotic times.