LONDON (Bywire News) - As France avoids its regular dance with the far-right, Emmanuel Macron finds himself in a surprisingly strong position of being the first incumbent to win the election. With his winning margin also being bigger than expected, he might be forgiven for feeling a little pleased with himself. However, even a quick look at the polls suggests the real picture is not quite so rosy.
Le Pen’s supporters might be licking their wounds, but they will look back on an election which saw the far-right secure its highest proportion of the popular vote ever. With the far-left candidate also performing surprisingly well in the first round, the majority of voters gave Macron a resounding thumbs down.
Looking ahead to the next challenge – the legislative elections in June, the signs are that he may struggle to win a majority. Whether or not he does, and which parties perform well will shape what his second term looks like and wherein the political spectrum he positions himself.
Macron is the centrist of centrists, which means when in doubt in his first term he leaned toward the right. His calculation appears to have thrown a little bit of red meat towards the right-wing and hope the left sticks with him as the better of a bad choice.
As the polls narrowed in the run-up to the election that looked increasingly like a bad choice. Le Pen’s shift to the centre detoxified her image while dissatisfaction with his performance saw him shed votes in both directions.
During the election, Macron pivoted back to the left in an attempt to force himself over the line, but the reality is that this election was a close call which – had it not been for Le Pen’s associations with Vladimir Putin – might have been closer still.
How he positions himself now will determine whether or not he scrapes a majority or if he has to come up with a workaround. That might include a coalition or a cohabitation arrangement which would see him pick a Prime Minister from the opposition.
Cohabitation would dramatically scale back what he can do. Tensions in such governments usually run high with the President’s influence largely restricted to foreign policy with much of the day-to-day policy making being ceded to the government.
That raises the possibility of something which would make many centrists go weak at the knees. Someone from the far left or the far-right being Prime Minister. The left, emboldened by the performance of Melenchon who was only narrowly excluded from the runoff sees this as the ‘third cycle’ of the election.
In his victory speech, Macron acknowledge that large parts of his majority came from people who were only lending him their votes to keep the far right at bay. With legislative elections up for grabs, the fight is back on. Melenchon positioned himself in the election as the country’s next Prime Minister and could be developing his own coalitions to achieve that goal. His La France Insoumise Party (France Unbowed) is pushing for an unprecedented left-wing alliance with the communists, the Greens and the Centre-left Parti Socialiste.
Negotiations are said to be quite advanced with the Greens but there is thought to be some resistance from the socialist ranks many of whom would object to Melenchon as their flag bearer.
Le Pen also faces her own challenges. She was defiant in defeat but faces a challenge as the flag bearer of the right from Eric Zemmour and her niece, Marion Marechal, who defected from her aunt's camp weeks before the vote.
Zemmour is pushing for an anti-Macron alliance, but many in Le Pen’s party are looking to close the door. Zemmour’s poor performance in the election will have done nothing to boost his leverage.
Last, and very much least, there’s what used to be one of the biggest parties in France, the centre-right Les Republicans who are just trying to keep their head above water. They are brutally split with some members wanting to align with Macron, others with Zemmour and a few deciding to stay put and hope all the fuss of these new political parties blows over.
And just to throw one further spanner into the works, Macron’s former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has decided to form his own party – Horizons.
One thing’s for sure, June’s elections will have a massive say in what France under Macron 2.0 looks like.
(Writing by Tom Cropper, editing by Klaudia Fior)