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Will France’s left-wing parties manage to build an anti-Macron alliance?

France's left-wing parties are attempting to patch together an alliance ahead of June parliamentary elections which would give them a chance of thwarting newly re-elected President Emmanuel Macron.

Published: 29 April 2022 17:20 CEST

Will France's left-wing parties manage to build an anti-Macron alliance?

France's leftist movement La France Insoumise (LFI) party leader Jean-Luc Melenchon talks to the press (Photo by Christophe ARCHAMBAULT / AFP)

The left fielded a total of six candidates in France’s April presidential election, splitting the vote. All of them were eliminated in the first round.

The hard-left La France Insoumise (LFI) party, the Socialists, the Greens and the Communists are now attempting to agree a united front before a weekend deadline ahead of the June 12th and 19th polls.

“I’m very hopeful that these negotiations will come to a successful end in the next few hours,” the head of the environmentalist Green party, Julien Bayou, told the France 2 channel.

“We can agree on the fundamentals and much more,” he said, adding that “a deal was in sight” between his party and France Unbowed, known in French by its initials LFI.

The multi-party talks are being led by LFI chief Jean-Luc Mélenchon, who finished third in the presidential election and now the dominant figure on the French left.

The 70-year-old former Trotskyist has declared his aim of becoming prime minister under Macron in order to block the president’s reform plans which include raising the retirement age.

The Socialist Party, which is fighting for survival after winning less than two percent in the presidential election, indicated Friday that it could broadly accept 12 core policy proposals by Mélenchon.

These include raising the minimum wage, reducing the retirement age to 60 and rolling back labour market reforms.

But the party then suspended talks and called for a “guarantee” that all parties would be respected in the alliance and that Melenchon “ends any hegemonic way of thinking.”

Analysts say that any alliance will require left-wing parties to overcome historic rivalries and hammer out a tricky agreement to divide up parliamentary constituencies.

Restructuring

The talks are part of a restructuring of French politics following Macron’s re-election triumph over far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in the second round last Sunday.

With France’s traditional left- and right-wing parties pushed to the margins, three new dominant blocs have emerged – Macron in the centre, Le Pen on the right and Mélenchon on the left.

Former Socialist president François Hollande, who is known to be keen to re-enter politics, has warned the proposed left-wing tie up could amount to the “disappearance” of the Socialists.

But political scientist Remi Lefebvre told AFP that the party “has absolutely no other option” than the deal because it risks losing “most” of its MPs in June.

Melenchon, who scored 22 percent of the first-round presidential vote, has also been talking to the Communist Party, whose candidate Fabien Roussel scored 2.3 percent in the presidential vote. Roussel, however, warned on Thursday that talks were at a “standstill”.

On the far-right, Le Pen looks set to spurn a suggestion of formally combining forces with far-right rival Eric Zemmour with whom she has clashed repeatedly.

A recent poll by the Harris Interactive group suggested that her far-right Rassemblement National party could win 75-105 seats in the 577-seat national assembly without a Zemmour alliance.

Many centre-right politicians from the Republicans party of former president Nicolas Sarkozy are expected to defect to one of several centrist or centre-right movements backing Macron.

The 44-year-old head of state is preparing to name a new government headed by a fresh prime minister who will be “attached to environmental, social and productivity issues”.

“There will be some elements of continuity and new elements,” he said of his new government during a trip to the southern Pyrenees mountains on Friday.

The leftist candidates in the first round of the presidential election were; Jean-Luc Mélenchon (who achieved 22 percent of the vote) green Yannick Jadot (4.6 percent), communist Fabien Roussel (2.2 percent), Parti Socialiste Anne Hidalgo (1.7 percent), Trotskyist Philippe Poutou (0.7 percent) and fellow Trotskyist Nathalie Arthaud (0.5 percent).

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Azerbaijan vehemently rejects the accusation it bears responsibility for the riots that have led to the deaths of five people and rattled the Paris government.

But it is just the latest in a litany of tensions between Paris and Baku and not the first time France has accused Azerbaijan of being behind an alleged disinformation campaign.

The riots in New Caledonia, a French territory lying between Australia and Fiji, were sparked by moves to agree a new voting law that supporters of independence from France say discriminates against the indigenous Kanak population.

Paris points to the sudden emergence of Azerbaijani flags alongside Kanak symbols in the protests, while a group linked to the Baku authorities is openly backing separatists while condemning Paris.

“This isn’t a fantasy. It’s a reality,” interior minister Gérald Darmanin told television channel France 2 when asked if Azerbaijan, China and Russia were interfering in New Caledonia.

“I regret that some of the Caledonian pro-independence leaders have made a deal with Azerbaijan. It’s indisputable,” he alleged.

But he added: “Even if there are attempts at interference… France is sovereign on its own territory, and so much the better”.

“We completely reject the baseless accusations,” Azerbaijan’s foreign ministry spokesman Ayhan Hajizadeh said.

“We refute any connection between the leaders of the struggle for freedom in Caledonia and Azerbaijan.”

In images widely shared on social media, a reportage broadcast Wednesday on the French channel TF1 showed some pro-independence supporters wearing T-shirts adorned with the Azerbaijani flag.

Tensions between Paris and Baku have grown in the wake of the 2020 war and 2023 lightning offensive that Azerbaijan waged to regain control of its breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region from ethnic Armenian separatists.

France is a traditional ally of Christian Armenia, Azerbaijan’s neighbour and historic rival, and is also home to a large Armenian diaspora.

Darmanin said Azerbaijan – led since 2003 by President Ilham Aliyev, who succeeded his father Heydar – was a “dictatorship”.

On Wednesday, the Paris government also banned social network TikTok from operating in New Caledonia.

Tiktok, whose parent company is Chinese, has been widely used by protesters. Critics fear it is being employed to spread disinformation coming from foreign countries.

Azerbaijan invited separatists from the French territories of Martinique, French Guiana, New Caledonia and French Polynesia to Baku for a conference in July 2023.

The meeting saw the creation of the “Baku Initiative Group”, whose stated aim is to support “French liberation and anti-colonialist movements”.

The group published a statement this week condemning the French parliament’s proposed change to New Caledonia’s constitution, which would allow outsiders who moved to the territory at least 10 years ago the right to vote in its elections.

Pro-independence forces say that would dilute the vote of Kanaks, who make up about 40 percent of the population.

“We stand in solidarity with our Kanak friends and support their fair struggle,” the Baku Initiative Group said.

Raphael Glucksmann, the lawmaker heading the list for the French Socialists in June’s European Parliament elections, told Public Senat television that Azerbaijan had made “attempts to interfere… for months”.

He said the underlying problem behind the unrest was a domestic dispute over election reform, not agitation fomented by “foreign actors”.

But he accused Azerbaijan of “seizing on internal problems.”

A French government source, who asked not to be named, said pro-Azerbaijani social media accounts had on Wednesday posted an edited montage purporting to show two white police officers with rifles aimed at dead Kanaks.

“It’s a pretty massive campaign, with around 4,000 posts generated by (these) accounts,” the source told AFP.

“They are reusing techniques already used during a previous smear campaign called Olympia.”

In November, France had already accused actors linked to Azerbaijan of carrying out a disinformation campaign aimed at damaging its reputation over its ability to host the Olympic Games in Paris. Baku also rejected these accusations.