French President Emmanuel Macron’s announcement on June 9 that he was calling early legislative elections threw French politics into a frenzied mixture of purposeful resolve and turmoil. Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally sought to maintain the momentum it had gained from its overwhelming victory in the European Parliament elections that same day, projecting cocky self-confidence that in retrospect looks more like hubris. Parties on the left hurriedly but methodically cobbled together the New Popular Front alliance, which pulled off a stunning upset by gaining the most seats after the second round of voting on July 7, though it has since descended into acrimony and infighting. And Prime Minister Gabriel Attal and other leading figures in Macron’s centrist coalition expressed fury at the president’s grand gamble, which they expected would lead to serious electoral losses that in the end proved to be less disastrous than feared.
All of this drama contrasted with the comic absurdity of the scene that unfolded on June 11 at the Paris headquarters of the center-right party Les Republicains, or LR. The party traces its lineage back to the political legacy of former President Charles de Gaulle, and as home to France’s “republican right,” it has traditionally been hostile to France’s illiberal far right. In recent years, however, the rightmost faction of the party has increasingly adopted much of the RN’s rhetoric on immigration and French identity, a shift that was exacerbated by the defection of some of its leading moderate figures to Macron’s centrist movement.
So in some ways, it was not very surprising when party leader Eric Ciotti unilaterally declared without internal consultations that the LR would work with the RN in the snap elections to defeat their shared enemies on the left. But rather than uniting the right, Ciotti was forced to barricade himself in his office as other LR leaders expressed fierce opposition to any deals with Le Pen and forced their way into the building to regain control over the party’s database.