OPINION: Will the 'French Keir Starmer' save the country from the far-right? I doubt it
The centre-left Rapaël Glucksmann, running an unexpectedly successful European election campaign is being spoken of as France's answer to Keir Starmer - can he really succeed?
French and British politics rarely align. In 1979, Britain turned sharp Right; a year later, France turned sharp Left.
There was a brief exception in 1997-2002 when Britain elected a Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair and one month later France elected a Socialist PM, Lionel Jospin. They disagreed on almost everything.
There was a partial convergence a few years ago when the radical, once marginal Left simultaneously displaced the reformist Left on both sides of the Channel. Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Jeremy Corbyn met in Liverpool in 2018 and found that they spoke the same language - Spanish.
Keir Starmer now looks certain to complete the revival of the non-revolutionary Left in Britain by winning the general election on July 4th. But where is the Keir Starmer français?
Could it be Raphaël Glucksmann, who has led the French centre-left list in next month’s European elections to the unexpected pinnacle of 14.5 percent of the vote (and rising)? That may not sound very much but it is seven times more than the Parti Socialiste candidate, Anne Hidalgo, achieved in the first round of the presidential election in 2022.
Listen to John and the team at The Local discussing the European election in this week's Talking France podcast. Download here or listen on the link below
Glucksmann, 44, an essayist and son of a celebrated philosopher, even threatens to humiliate President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling centrist alliance by pushing its candidate, Valérie Hayer, into third place.
Marine Le Pen’s Far Right candidate, Jordan Bardella, remains far ahead of all the other contenders on circa 33 percent. He has increased his score in some polls despite being made to look vague and confused by the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, in their TV debate last week.
Why Bardella’s shatterproof popularity? He is a pretty and relatively new face. The nation has a seven-year itch to kick President Macron. Bardella has become the dominant anti-Macron candidate in an election in which many French people think (wrongly) that they have nothing to lose.
The high score will not necessarily carry over into a presidential election when the turn-out will be higher and national leadership is at stake.
The runaway score for the Rassemblement National is worrying all the same. If Lepennism is the main force of opposition, it is the potential, alternative government.
Macron’s camp has always liked it that way; they believed that they would always beat the Far Right in a two-way battle in a national election. Do they still?
For seven years French politics has been roughly split three ways between a radical-dominated Left, a pro-European, Macronist centre and an increasingly nationalist-populist Right.
A Left dominated by Mélenchon could not assemble enough votes to reach the two-candidate second round of the presidential elections in 2017 and 2022. Macron was elected (twice) because leftist and some centre-right voters ultimately voted for him rather than for Marine Le Pen.
If you do the sums on the opinion poll numbers in the European campaign, this tripartite politics scarcely exists any more. The Far Right has 40 percent; Macron has 16 percent; the mutually detesting tribes of the Left have just over 30 percent. The rump of the centre-right, which hates all of the above, has 8 percent at best.
Arithmetically, this suggests that the Left has a chance of reaching the second round against Marine Le Pen in 2027 – if it can find a unifying candidate who can gather around 22-25 percent of the first-round vote.
Hence the importance of the unexpected success of Raphaël Glucksmann. He has taken votes from the left-hand side of Macron’s centrist coalition – the pro-European, progressive, middle-class, urban voters, who switched to Macron in 2017 and stayed in 2022 because they detested Mélenchon.
This may be another example of mid-term, anti-incumbent feeling; or it could be the start of a permanent rift in Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance.
Could Glucksmann be the new messiah for the centre-left in 2027? It seems unlikely.
He has proved to be a convincing candidate in a European campaign because he is an articulate pro-European who speaks to a pro-European electorate which thinks that Macron has moved too far to the Right.
He has no track record and no electoral constituency in domestic French politics. He is not a member of the Socialist Party but founder of a party/pressure group, Place Publique, which tried and failed to unite the many factions of the Left.
His success has made him a figure of hatred for Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise and for the radical reaches of the Greens. They accuse him of being a social-liberal, “another François Hollande”, “disconnected” from the working class, “ungrounded” in real, domestic politics.
All the same, there could be a future for a more rounded and grounded champion of the centre-left: a French Starmer.
Rumours suggest that François Hollande might come back from retirement. Forget that.
Carole Delga, the Socialist president of the Occitanie region, is an impressive politician but has no national profile.
Bernard Cazeneuve, Hollande’s last Prime Minister, is said to fancy his chances. Few others do so.
It is more likely that the Left will be poisonously divided again in 2027 and unable to reach the second round for the third presidential election in a row. Ditto, the centre-right which is no longer a serious force in national politics.
My guess is that the next Presidential election will come down to another battle between Le Pen and the Macronist centre – without Macron. The former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe is favourite to lead the Centre but there is no machinery, other than opinion polls, to hoist him above the other centrist wannabes (Gabriel Attal, Bruno Le Maire, François Bayrou).
Next month’s European election will raise these questions but not answer them. It will boost Le Pen and Bardella's status as a government in waiting, offering a rag-bag of incoherent and destructive anti-European proposals rooted in misleading or mendacious assertions.
Does that sound familiar? France and Britain may rarely align but they do sometimes copy each other’s blunders.
After Brexit Britain in 2016, we appear to be stumbling half-awake towards a Far Right France in 2027.
Is that really what France wants? I doubt it.
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French and British politics rarely align. In 1979, Britain turned sharp Right; a year later, France turned sharp Left.
There was a brief exception in 1997-2002 when Britain elected a Labour Prime Minister, Tony Blair and one month later France elected a Socialist PM, Lionel Jospin. They disagreed on almost everything.
There was a partial convergence a few years ago when the radical, once marginal Left simultaneously displaced the reformist Left on both sides of the Channel. Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Jeremy Corbyn met in Liverpool in 2018 and found that they spoke the same language - Spanish.
Keir Starmer now looks certain to complete the revival of the non-revolutionary Left in Britain by winning the general election on July 4th. But where is the Keir Starmer français?
Could it be Raphaël Glucksmann, who has led the French centre-left list in next month’s European elections to the unexpected pinnacle of 14.5 percent of the vote (and rising)? That may not sound very much but it is seven times more than the Parti Socialiste candidate, Anne Hidalgo, achieved in the first round of the presidential election in 2022.
Listen to John and the team at The Local discussing the European election in this week's Talking France podcast. Download here or listen on the link below
Glucksmann, 44, an essayist and son of a celebrated philosopher, even threatens to humiliate President Emmanuel Macron’s ruling centrist alliance by pushing its candidate, Valérie Hayer, into third place.
Marine Le Pen’s Far Right candidate, Jordan Bardella, remains far ahead of all the other contenders on circa 33 percent. He has increased his score in some polls despite being made to look vague and confused by the Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, in their TV debate last week.
Why Bardella’s shatterproof popularity? He is a pretty and relatively new face. The nation has a seven-year itch to kick President Macron. Bardella has become the dominant anti-Macron candidate in an election in which many French people think (wrongly) that they have nothing to lose.
The high score will not necessarily carry over into a presidential election when the turn-out will be higher and national leadership is at stake.
The runaway score for the Rassemblement National is worrying all the same. If Lepennism is the main force of opposition, it is the potential, alternative government.
Macron’s camp has always liked it that way; they believed that they would always beat the Far Right in a two-way battle in a national election. Do they still?
For seven years French politics has been roughly split three ways between a radical-dominated Left, a pro-European, Macronist centre and an increasingly nationalist-populist Right.
A Left dominated by Mélenchon could not assemble enough votes to reach the two-candidate second round of the presidential elections in 2017 and 2022. Macron was elected (twice) because leftist and some centre-right voters ultimately voted for him rather than for Marine Le Pen.
If you do the sums on the opinion poll numbers in the European campaign, this tripartite politics scarcely exists any more. The Far Right has 40 percent; Macron has 16 percent; the mutually detesting tribes of the Left have just over 30 percent. The rump of the centre-right, which hates all of the above, has 8 percent at best.
Arithmetically, this suggests that the Left has a chance of reaching the second round against Marine Le Pen in 2027 – if it can find a unifying candidate who can gather around 22-25 percent of the first-round vote.
Hence the importance of the unexpected success of Raphaël Glucksmann. He has taken votes from the left-hand side of Macron’s centrist coalition – the pro-European, progressive, middle-class, urban voters, who switched to Macron in 2017 and stayed in 2022 because they detested Mélenchon.
This may be another example of mid-term, anti-incumbent feeling; or it could be the start of a permanent rift in Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance.
Could Glucksmann be the new messiah for the centre-left in 2027? It seems unlikely.
He has proved to be a convincing candidate in a European campaign because he is an articulate pro-European who speaks to a pro-European electorate which thinks that Macron has moved too far to the Right.
He has no track record and no electoral constituency in domestic French politics. He is not a member of the Socialist Party but founder of a party/pressure group, Place Publique, which tried and failed to unite the many factions of the Left.
His success has made him a figure of hatred for Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise and for the radical reaches of the Greens. They accuse him of being a social-liberal, “another François Hollande”, “disconnected” from the working class, “ungrounded” in real, domestic politics.
All the same, there could be a future for a more rounded and grounded champion of the centre-left: a French Starmer.
Rumours suggest that François Hollande might come back from retirement. Forget that.
Carole Delga, the Socialist president of the Occitanie region, is an impressive politician but has no national profile.
Bernard Cazeneuve, Hollande’s last Prime Minister, is said to fancy his chances. Few others do so.
It is more likely that the Left will be poisonously divided again in 2027 and unable to reach the second round for the third presidential election in a row. Ditto, the centre-right which is no longer a serious force in national politics.
My guess is that the next Presidential election will come down to another battle between Le Pen and the Macronist centre – without Macron. The former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe is favourite to lead the Centre but there is no machinery, other than opinion polls, to hoist him above the other centrist wannabes (Gabriel Attal, Bruno Le Maire, François Bayrou).
Next month’s European election will raise these questions but not answer them. It will boost Le Pen and Bardella's status as a government in waiting, offering a rag-bag of incoherent and destructive anti-European proposals rooted in misleading or mendacious assertions.
Does that sound familiar? France and Britain may rarely align but they do sometimes copy each other’s blunders.
After Brexit Britain in 2016, we appear to be stumbling half-awake towards a Far Right France in 2027.
Is that really what France wants? I doubt it.
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