In France, the left is still united but far from victory

 In June’s legislative election, the united left won 151 seats and became the first opposition group to President Emmanuel Macron. Six months later, the alliance seems stuck.

Left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon launching the Nupes in Aubervilliers (France) on May 7, 2022 (Photo by Hugo Rota / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY-SA 4.0)  

In the midst of an energy crisis across Europe, the National Assembly is currently debating a bill to develop renewable energy. To pass this bill, Emmanuel Macron’s government, which does not have an absolute majority in parliament, will need support from the left. But not all the left-wing parties will vote in the same way.

While the moderate Parti Socialiste (PS, Socialist Party) and the environmentalist Europe Écologie-Les Verts (EELV, Europe Ecology-The Greens) will support the bill under some conditions, the radical La France Insoumise (LFI, France Unbowed), which favours a 100% renewable energy mix, will vote against it or abstain. The Parti Communiste (PC, Communist Party) will also reject it for not taking enough into account the consequences it will have on energy bills.

The debate over this bill is symptomatic of the different philosophies and approaches within the left-wing alliance. In June’s legislative election, the four parties joined forces to propose a single candidacy in every constituency. The electoral deal was surprising, as six left-wing candidates had run against each other in a bitter presidential election just a few weeks earlier.

In April, the centrist president Emmanuel Macron was reelected, beating again the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen. In the first round, the latter obtained 23.1% of the vote, behind Macron’s 27.8%. In third place, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the charismatic candidate of the radical left who ran on the idea that ‘another world is possible’ received 21.9% of the vote.

The French electorate thus broke into three blocks, and the other candidates, especially on the left, fell far behind. The Parti Socialiste candidate, mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo, scored only 1.7% of the vote, the lowest ever for her party, and came in behind the communist candidate (2.2%) and the Green candidate (4.6%). 

Mélenchon was thus able to attract leftists aspiring for an alternative to Macron's policies, as well as people strategically voting for him as he was the best-placed left-wing candidate in the polls. But this was not enough for Mélenchon to reach the second round.

A month and a half later, the left united into the New Ecological and Social People’s Union (Nupes). Mélenchon called the legislative election the third round and promised to become prime minister if the Nupes won an absolute majority. Despite the momentum, the left-wing alliance only won 151 seats out of 577. Macron’s party won 245 and the far-right Rassemblement National (RN, National Rally) a record 89. For the first time in decades, no political party had won an absolute majority, resulting in a hung parliament. Macron, just reelected, had to negotiate with the opposition and build compromises to pass his bills. 

The Nupes was a godsend for many leftists, who saw the left’s division as the main reason for its electoral loss. For the past five years, following François Hollande’s heavily criticised presidency, only 60 left-wing MPs had sat in the National Assembly. "The Nupes managed to make up for the left’s catastrophic presidential election, apart from Jean-Luc Mélenchon, and to allow the PS and EELV to move on from their candidates’ terrible failure", said Bruno Cautrès, a political expert at Sciences Po’s research centre CEVIPOF. 

For Cautrès, six months later, the Nupes is a bit of "a mixed bag". On the one hand, the left is a strong opposition in Parliament. When Macron’s government introduced a bill to limit benefits for the unemployed, the Nupes firmly criticised it. And when prime minister Élisabeth Borne used article 49.3 of the Constitution to adopt next year’s budgets without Parliament – a legal yet criticised prerogative – the Nupes replied with a vote of no confidence, that failed to overthrow the government, but signified the existence of a vocal opposition.

"Whether it is the reform on unemployment benefits, which blames the unemployed for their situation, the budgets, that are not enough to fund public services, or the upcoming pension reform, which will make people work until they are 67 or 68 years old… The Nupes will always be there to point out the devastating consequences that Macron’s policies have on the working class", said Samia Bennani, a political activist for La France Insoumise in Paris.

But the Nupes is not a homogeneous union. With Mélenchon’s success in the presidential election and a group of 75 MPs, La France Insoumise has a greater influence than the other parties. This often creates tension, given the different parliamentary styles that make up the union. The Parti Socialiste is reformist, whereas LFI defends a revolutionary approach and a vigorous opposition style.

"These differences are deeply rooted in the history of the left", said Bruno Cautrès. "LFI is in its role by being unbowed, and the socialists have always preferred reasonable criticism and a culture of government."

Still, LFI’s political and media attitude is not well received by everyone on the left. "Their strategy is to make noise, to be ubiquitous and restless in the media", said Anthony Gratacos, a local elected representative and general secretary of the Gauche Républicaine et Socialiste (GRS, Socialist and Republican Left) a left-wing movement outside of the Nupes. "Going from 17 MPs in the previous legislature to 75 today, I expected them to be more structured, to work more seriously and to make better use of parliamentary tools. It is disappointing, and I am not sure that it is what left-wing people want", he said.

Alexandre Thomas, a supporter of the Parti Socialiste in Paris, shares Gratacos’ frustration. "I fully support the Nupes. Without it, the PS would be dead. But the frequent outbursts and controversies created by LFI tend to discredit the entire alliance in the eyes of many French voters", he said.

Several LFI MPs and spokespeople have caused anger and outrage in the past few months over certain statements. On the 80th anniversary of the Vél d’Hiv Roundup – a mass arrest of Jewish people by French authorities in 1942 – MP Mathilde Panot was accused of disrespecting the memory of the victims after tweeting: "Do not forget these crimes, today more than ever, with a President who honours Pétain and 89 RN deputies!". In October, her colleague Danièle Obono invited her haters to "eat their dead", a slang expression considered unworthy of the function of an MP by other elected officials, both on the left and right.

More serious scandals have broken out as well. In September, LFI’s national coordinator, MP Adrien Quatennens, admitted that he had slapped his wife and was later accused of psychological violence. Jean-Luc Mélenchon and other LFI politicians defended him, causing turmoil inside the Nupes.

Tension has also emerged over disagreements on certain issues. Unlike the other left-wing organisations, the Parti Communiste is a fierce defender of nuclear energy and secularism (laïcité), resulting in frequent clashes with LFI. The latter is a critic of the European Union, unlike the PS, which supports it. 

These differences raise a central question. Did the Nupes win all the left’s votes? It only received 25% of the vote in the legislative election, and if President Macron decided to dissolve the National Assembly, as he has the power to do, the left would not gain more voters, according to a poll released in November. Only Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National would win more seats.

"The Nupes is not what voters expect. People don’t want the sum of the left-wing parties. They want the left to actually work on its platform and to come up with concrete solutions," says Gratacos.

Cautrès stresses the influence of political parties' geographical and social roots. "The implanting of the Rassemblement National in certain regions and in the working class is very solid," he said. 

Marine Le Pen benefits from significant support in the north of France, a former bastion of the left, and in rural or peri-urban areas across the country, far from big cities and suffering from deindustrialisation. In the Eure region of Normandy, four out of the five MPs are from the RN. 

Several left-wing politicians have called on the left to reconnect with this part of the working class, which votes each election more and more for the far-right. For François Ruffin, a journalist turned LFI MP, the left cannot reach a majority without this electorate.

“The left is not dead, largely due to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. He has rallied young environmentalists of the inner cities, which brings hope”, he said in an interview for L’Obs. “But there are big holes in this landscape: the France of the sub-prefectures, of the "yellow vests", of the industrial areas, workers who only make 1,500€ a month, people over 60... We have to expand the popular base.”

Ruffin argues that to win this electorate back from the far right, the left must present an alternative and cannot only rely on a moral discourse. It must deal with the issues that most French people worry about. "We must speak to the suffering people of France. In 2002, I participated in the demonstrations against [the then far-right candidate] Jean-Marie Le Pen, but I doubted that screaming "F like fascist, N like Nazi" would have any electoral effect. At the same time, the company Whirlpool stopped its production of washing machines in my city of Amiens and relocated it to Slovakia", he said. 

Rebuilding the French industry, financing public hospitals and schools, and preserving the forests are major issues that Anthony Gratacos believes must be defended. "The left is very vocal on societal issues, like feminism and antiracism. They are not less important, but they cannot be our only fight", he said.   

Between now and the next presidential election in 2027, the left still has a long way to go. With the creation of the Nupes, it has gathered and strengthened an important electoral base, but also put all its eggs in one basket. If it does not try to reach outside of itself to diversify its electorate, it could very much be its own enemy. 

Aurélien Tillier