Lessons from the ‘election season’

Those of you who have viewed the latest Reality Unleashed podcast (available below) will have realised that it was produced before the second round of the French election, when the combined Left trounced the, until then, rampant Right.

This does not, I think, alter the analysis in the podcast. In fact, it is reinforced if one looks at the detail. In the first place, there was a large voter turnout for that second round in a poll that threatened the emergence fascism in the form of the long established National Rally (NR). Britain’s Reform Party and the MK Party in South Africa had only recently emerged and seemed to pose no real threat to state power.

The NR is a major player in French politics and, in the recent European parliamentary elections, showed that it had built a potentially leading role. It was this threat that almost certainly rallied many generally disillusioned voters to cast their ballots against what may have seemed the very worst of a generally bad or disappointing lot.

Yet, once again, there is little clarity about the way forward: the Popular Front of the Left does not have an overall majority and is a coalition of traditionally fractious political groups. President Macron’s Renaissance party emerged as a potential “new way forward” in 2017 at a time of widespread voter disillusionment. This was manifest in a record low turnout at the polls, with 8% of the ballots also posted blank or spoiled in apparent protest.

Renaissance and Macron have now also failed to live up to their promise and their hardly stable “centrist” coalition fell into second place behind the Popular Front. Will there be any unity by the time of the presidential election in 2027? Macron cannot stand, having completed two terms, so there could be intense — and damaging — competition among Left and Centre to decide on a candidate to challenge the NF.

PODCAST:
05/07/24: Global & Local Election Season: Getting the analysis wrong https://youtu.be/OQvz6oMVZxA?si=uQALpIkbSRFKAwNp via @YouTube