Far-Right fails to win France

The surprise results in the French National Assembly elections have given a big boost to the Left-wing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP or New Popular Front) and a leg up to President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble, a centrist group while inflicting an unexpected defeat on the far-Right National Rally led by Marine Le Pen. Macron had called for snap polls after an upsurge by the far-Right in the recent European Parliament elections. The fractured verdict complicates the picture in Paris as no party has managed a simple majority in the Assembly. The NFP, an alliance of the Socialists, Communists, Greens and France Unbowed, cobbled together just ahead of the elections, is itself a divided front that needs to cohabit with Ensemble to produce a government. However, the defeat of the National Rally and the recent landslide victory of the Labour Party in the UK will have an immediate impact on the course of politics in Europe.

There are multiple takeaways from the Paris results and the pan-European response to it. First, it suggests that a significant section of the population sees the racist, anti-migrant, inward-looking conservatism of the far-Right as a threat to the foundational values of the nations. These sections, as in France, may force parties with divergent political agendas to form united fronts to prevent a far-Right takeover of the government. Second, the far-Right (in the UK and France) has still made substantial gains, which have bled the traditional conservative parties. For instance, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK won 14% of the votes. Third, the non-Right may be winning more on a negative vote against the Right rather than on an endorsement of its own agendas. The current British Labour, for instance, has neither the energy of the Tony Blair- and Gordon Brown-led New Labour, nor the radical even if disastrous edge of a Jeremy Corbyn leadership; it got voted in more because of the implosion of the Conservatives. Fourth, it may still require a united front to staunch the far-Right, as Le Pen pointed out after the results.

There is some truth in this claim. Liberal politics, including its Left-of-centre variant, will have to confront complex issues such as migration, its potential impact on employment, and cultural anxieties that the far-Right feeds on to win new constituencies in more constructive ways. A new liberal deal on addressing the social and economic crises confronting Europe is called for. How these platforms evolve will have a major impact on Europe’s relations with the rest of the world. Delhi, having invested in building relations with the major European nations, will have to wait and watch how the game plays out.