Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, predicted the collapse of the French government shortly after President Emmanuel Macron called surprise legislative elections in July—before it had even had time to form.
The snap election, called in response to Marine Le Pen’s anti-mass migration, euroskeptic Nationally Rally (RN) party winning the European Parliament elections in France, left the National Assembly in shambles. The governing “Macronist” bloc comprised of globalists and progressives fell to third place in the popular vote and second place by share of seats. The RN placed first in the popular vote and became the single-largest party by seat share, but third overall. A hastily assembled coalition of far-left parties, the New Popular Front (NFP), placed second in the popular vote and first by share of seats.
No one party had enough seats to control the legislature outright, making an unwieldy coalition the only possible outcome. However, with the Macronists at odds with NFP as much as the populist right in many areas, any coalition seemed unlikely to be sustainable—as Kassam explained live from Paris shortly after the dust had settled.
“There are vast swathes of policy positions that all these separate parties that have pulled together this kind of unholy alliance of the left vehemently and violently disagree with one another on,” he said. “It makes you wonder, can there even really be any form of government here? And if there can’t, well, maybe we’ll see another election… We see this happen across Europe all the time—’We can’t get anything done, we have to go back to the people, we have to ask them to give somebody a mandate to govern.'”
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To cut out the far left, particularly the NFP’s leading party, France Unbowed, Macron ultimately chose to parachute in Michel Barnier, of the center-right Les Republicains (Republicans), to head a minority government. He appears to have hoped Le Pen would accept this as the least-worst option. However, she opted to bring down the government, alongside the likes of France Unbowed, after Barnier tried to force through a budget she opposed without a vote, using a controversial constitutional mechanism.
With no budget passed, France and the wider European Union could now be headed for a financial crisis. Macron’s next steps are unclear, as he will struggle to form another government with the legislature composed as it is, and there is some doubt as to whether he can legally call another snap election until 12 months have passed since the previous one.
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