Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is on course to take power

Emmanuel Macron suffered the biggest humiliation of his presidency on Sunday evening as his Renaissance party was beaten into third place in the first round of the parliamentary elections. Exit polls confirmed what the opinion polls predicted last week: that Marine Le Pen’s National Rally is now the dominant force in French politics. It surpassed the 31 per cent score in the European elections on June 9 – a victory that prompted Macron to call a snap election – winning 34 per cent of the vote.

The left-wing Popular Front coalition was second with 29 per cent, and Macron’s centrist Renaissance party trailed in third on 22 per cent. The turnout was 69 per cent, the biggest participation since the 1986 election. The second round of voting takes place next Sunday but Le Pen’s party is on course to take between 240 and 270 seats in the National Assembly. This would fall short of the 288 seats required for an absolute majority in the 577-seat Assembly.

A jubilant Marine Le Pen addressed her supporters minutes after the exit polls results, addressing them from a lectern emblazoned with the words: ‘The changeover begins’. Exhorting voters to return to the voting station for the second round, Le Pen also urged people who hadn’t voted for her party to do next Sunday. Failure to do so might allow the far-left Jean-Luc Melenchon to become Prime Minister, leader of a left-wing coalition Le Pen described as ‘anti-Semitic and anti-Republican’. Her party, in contrast, she called an alliance of ‘liberty, security and unity’.

Melenchon crowed over the defeat inflicted on the president, saying it was ‘heavy and indisputable’. It meant the second round was a choice: ‘Either the New Popular Front or the RN’ said Melenchon. ‘We must give an absolute majority to the New Popular Front because it is the only alternative.’ Behind him on the podium stood some of his candidates wearing keffiyehs around their necks.

The dilemma facing centrist votes in the second round is whether to vote for a Melenchon candidate or a Le Pen one. The once mighty centre-right Republican party, which polled nine per cent, confirming their status as a fringe party, said it would give its voters no advice how to vote. But its leading light, Francois-Xavier Bellamy, has said he will choose the National Rally because ‘the danger facing our country today is the extreme left’.

Melenchon forecast that the days leading up to the second round will be ‘exceptionally tense’, and already there were reports on Sunday evening of crowds of his supporters taking to the streets to protest against the victory of the ‘fascists’

Jordan Bardella, the 28-year-old president of the National Rally, used his victory speech to also emphasize the importance of next Sunday’s second round vote: ‘The choice is clear and there are two paths open to France.’ he told the party faithful. ‘The alliance of the worst, which will lead to ruin, or national unity, which will restore security and defend work’. It would be, he declared, ‘one of the most decisive in the history of the Fifth Republic’.