This week France has drifted from surprise to confusion and panic as Sunday’s second round vote approaches. The bien-pensant centre-left weekly Nouvel Obs’ cover says it all. Black lettering on a red background menacingly warns: ‘Avoiding the Worst’; ‘The National Rally at the gates of power’. Yet the National Rally is an officially recognised legitimate mainstream party. France is not staring into the abyss. But if we were to indulge in such gloom-ridden musings what would be France’s post-electoral worst case scenarios. Let us begin gently.
Marine Le Pen called this ‘an administrative coup d’etat’
In the event the National Rally cannot form a government on Monday, moves are already afoot by Macronist troops to cobble together a broad coalition that would stretch across the political divide from right-wing Republicans to the left, but exclude the National Rally and the radical-left France Unbowed party. Policies would of necessity incorporate expensive left-wing manifesto pledges certain to worsen France’s atrocious public finances and frighten the markets.
The 5th Republican constitution was neither designed for, nor does it possess, a coalition culture unlike continental Europe. Given the large numbers of National Rally and France Unbowed deputies that will be elected after 7 July, the wobbly Macronist coalition would be perpetually at the mercy of no confidence votes. Were Macron able to keep it afloat, it could pass legislation enabling a change of the electoral system to proportional representation. Mindful of the National Rally’s high-water mark 33 per cent vote share, that would stymy an National Rally outright majority as soon as elections could be held anew from 8 July 2025.
But in the likelihood of such a coalition collapsing, France would lapse into chronic instability and policy stalemate for a year until the president was able to dissolve anew. The impact on financial markets would be Liz Truss-like.
The L’Opinion newspaper wrote this week that the French cabinet, chaired by the president, discussed calling an emergency cabinet meeting for Monday, in the event of an National Rally outright majority. The aim would be for the president to take advantage of his constitutional privilege to appoint key senior civil servants, police, military, and thereby assure himself of the counter-signature of his last tame prime minister. Marine Le Pen called this ‘an administrative coup d’etat’. It would be guaranteed to ratchet up tension with the incoming government.
The nationwide febrile atmosphere has today provoked the Interior Minister to draft in 30,000 police across France from Sunday. Already radical left politicians are talking of ‘resistance’ if the National Rally forms a government. Trade unions have pledged to continue the struggle. Ultra-left professional rioters will provoke destruction and violence at public demonstrations and then blame an National Rally controlled police. The greatest fear is banlieues involvement.
Should French institutions be threatened the president could invoke article 16. One of the most powerful instruments of the constitution, it grants him emergency powers that are so far reaching as to be described by one constitutional historian as being as absolutist as those of Louis XIV.
The worst of all scenarios would be revolution or coup d’état. It is no secret that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a devotee of the ruthless French Revolution leader Robespierre, favours radicalising French politics to provoke upheaval. French revolutions were, after all, a laboratory for Karl Marx and inspiration for his writings on class struggle.
Never far from revolution is the prospect of a disgruntled military staging a coup d’état. Barely two years ago, senior retired and serving officers warned in a collective letter about the state of France and how they would be the final recourse should things turn sour. The coup d’états that have punctuated French politics since the Revolution do not just belong to the distant past with Napoleon 1 in 1799 or Napoleon III in 1852. In 1958, at the height of the Algerian War during the stalemated 4th Republic, the so-called ‘coup d’état du 13 mai’ rocked France. Army officers took control in Algeria – then an integral part of France like Northern Ireland for the UK – and paratroopers seized Corsica, threatening to take Paris. Their aim was to force the 4th Republic’s president to accept General de Gaulle’s return with powers to draft a new constitution, the 5th Republic. But nor was the 5th immune. In 1961, generals staged another coup in Algeria. And at the height of rioting and strikes in 1968 General de Gaulle secretly disappeared to Germany to garner support from the commander of the French army on the Rhine.
France is a modern, mature democracy. The National Rally should be allowed to come to power legitimately if the 10.6 million first round French voters confirm their choice on Sunday. Using subterfuge to deny popular will is a greater danger.
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