Leaders of France’s radical and moderate leftwing parties are wrangling for the fifth day over their choice of would-be prime minister in the face of a refusal by President Macron to accept any new government that includes their radical wing.
The four squabbling parties, bound in an improvised alliance called New Popular Front, are eager to present a government after winning top place, but far short of ruling majority, ahead of right-wing and centrist blocs in snap parliamentary elections on Sunday.
Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s Unbowed France, the populist revolutionary party that narrowly scored the highest number of left-wing seats, is deadlocked with the centre-left Socialists, led by Olivier Faure.
The Socialists argue that a government dominated by the radicals would alienate other parties so strongly that it would fall at the first parliamentary no-confidence vote. The smaller Greens and Communists are putting forward their own candidates as a compromise.
President Macron, whose centrist Renaissance bloc took second place in the elections, told France on Wednesday that the only acceptable coalition would be drawn from the moderate parties of left, centre and right. He excluded both Unbowed France and the anti-immigrant hard-right National Rally, led by Marine Le Pen, which took a surprisingly poor third place in the second round run-off.
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The plans of the radical left to inflict punishing taxes of tens of billions of euros are deemed “insane” by Macron and his team. With three years left in office, the president wants to avoid having to “cohabit” with a government in full opposition. A coalition including his centrist Renaissance bloc would give him a degree of control.
To create an overall parliamentary majority, at least 289 seats out of the 577-seat parliament, a “moderates” coalition would need to include the Socialists, Renaissance and a large section of the centre-right Republicans. However, both Socialists and Republicans have ruled out any such pact.
Gabriel Attal, President Macron’s prime minister, promised today to “safeguard the French people against any government that contained ministers from Unbowed France or the National Rally”.
Attal, 35, a former Socialist who has fallen out with Macron over his decision to stage the election, is leading a caretaker government but may leave to return to parliamentary activities when the new National Assembly convenes on July 18.
The deadlock produced by Macron’s shock election has created deep uncertainty two weeks before the Paris Olympic Games and may continue until well into the autumn, in the view of politicians and analysts.
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Marine Tondelier, the Greens’ leader, said on Friday that France did not want to “wait all summer” and called Attal’s government illegitimate.
The Socialists are ruling out any break with the radical left to join a Macron-inspired coalition and insisting that the left must lead a government in opposition to the president. Some of Mélenchon’s lieutenants have softened their demands and said their party could accept a Socialist leading a left-wing government.
Sixty per cent of the public is unhappy over the confused outcome of the elections, a situation that had never occurred since the modern presidential Fifth Republic was created by Charles de Gaulle in 1958 to end a decade of parliamentary paralysis, according to a poll for Le Figaro.
The least unpopular solution would be a government alliance between Macron’s centrists and the moderate left, excluding Unbowed France, the Odoxa survey found. The most popular potential prime minister, the polls found, is Raphaël Glucksmann, a moderate allied to the Socialists whose name is not on the table in the left-wing negotiations.
Who could lead France’s new government?
The Socialist party
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Olivier Faure, the 55-year-old party leader, the son of a French tax inspector and a Vietnamese mother, is a self-effacing party operative with a background in local and national politics who is seen as a safe pair of hands.
A calm though uninspiring speaker who wears suits and ties, unlike most his colleagues, he would represent a reassuring presence for a coalition that includes an insurrectionist fringe with tax and spending plans that frighten much of the country. He is distrusted by moderate Socialists for being too pliable in dealings with the radical left of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the left alliance dominant partner. “I’m ready to take on this role,” Faure said this week.
Boris Vallaud, 48, the Socialists’ parliamentary leader, is seen as a consensual figure on the left and good party manager. A former classmate of President Macron at the Ecole Nationale d’Administration, the elite civil service college, he has made his mark as a heavyweight thinker firmly anchored to the left rather than the centre-ground embraced by Macron.
The head of state has not forgiven him for putting him down as a “little president” in a media interview. Vallaud served on President Hollande’s staff a decade ago and is married to Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, who was education minister.
Raphaël Glucksmann, 44, a journalist and film-maker before entering political life, is the most popular figure from the left in the eyes of the public after a successful campaign leading the Socialist slate in European Parliament elections last month.
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A Figaro opinion poll this week showed him to be the top choice for prime minister, among all politicians. Glucksmann, is, however, is an outsider who leads Place Publique, a small movement allied to the Socialists that he founded in 2018 as an MEP.
A specialist in international affairs, the son of André Glucksmann, a fashionable late 20th century philosopher, is more moderate and liberal than the present Socialist camp, therefore distrusted by many of his more doctrinaire colleagues.
La France Insoumise (Unbowed France)
Jean-Luc Mélenchon, 72, the irascible firebrand speaker who leads the radical party Unbowed France, has been a fixture of frontline politics for a decade since he broke away from the Socialists, with whom he served as a minister. A three-times presidential candidate who came a close third in the 2022 election, is, in the eyes of both his moderate Socialist partners and dissidents in his own party, a bully with a tyrannical side that frightens much of the country.
Macron says Mélenchon, a Trotskyite who talks like an 18th century revolutionary, is dangerous as Marine Le Pen on the hard right, but he inspires strong loyalty on the hard left. Mélenchon wants to become prime minister, but many of his colleagues acknowledge that his image is far too too divisive.
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Clémence Guetté, 33, from the eastern Paris suburbs, has emerged as a compromise Unbowed France candidate for prime minister, promoted by Mélenchon as the attractive face of the new French left radicalism.
Little known outside the party, Guetté managed Mélenchon’s 2022 presidential campaign and is popular with party staff and fellow MPs.
“She is a woman, young, calm and dynamic who is a master of our manifesto,” said Alma Dufour, a Normandy MP.
Europe Ecology The Greens
Marine Tondelier, 37, has become a regular fixture of political talk shows and street demonstrations since 2022 when she was elected leader of Europe Ecology The Greens, the often fractious party that emerged from the political environmentalist movement of the 1970s.
An “intuitive environmentalist”, according to a colleague, Tondelier devoted herself to campaigning against palm oil, diesel, soil pollution and other blights as a student in northern France. She still lives in the old industrial rust belt, where she serves as a regional councillor.
Sharp-tongued and articulate, Tondelier is a fierce debater despite a rapid-fire student-style diction that undermines her gravitas. A fierce opponent of Macron’s centrist bloc, she is casting herself as a possible compromise figure, outside the Socialist and Unbowed France orbit.
