C'est Ouf!
"Enough to be happy in Warsaw".
1. The Guardian:
A leftwing alliance has become the biggest force in the French parliament after tactical voting held back the far right, but the shape of the future government remained uncertain after no group won an absolute majority.
The surprise result for the leftwing New Popular Front – which won 182 seats, followed by president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Together alliance on 163 and the far right in third with 143 seats – showed the strength of tactical voting against Marine Le Pen’s National Rally (RN). The far right and its allies had forged a commanding lead in the first round but were ultimately held back by massive tactical voting to prevent them winning enough seats to form a government.
Although the left alliance won the most seats, it was more than 100 seats short of an absolute majority. Amid a high turnout estimated at about 67%, no single group won an absolute majority of 289 seats and the ability to form a government. The parliament was likely to be divided into three blocs: the left, centrists and the far right. (Source: theguardian.com)
2. Graphic:
(Source: Ministry of the Interior, ft.com)
3. Le Monde:
The Republican front held. Confounding the polls, the left-wing alliance of the New Popular Front came out on top in the second round of the legislative elections on Sunday, ahead of the presidential coalition and the National Rally, at the end of a vote that strongly mobilized voters with a turnout of 66.6%, the highest since 1997.
But no majority has emerged to form a government. Jean-Luc Mélenchon has called on Emmanuel Macron to entrust a representative of the New Popular Front with the post of prime minister.
With 182 deputies, the left becomes the leading political force in the National Assembly, an increase compared to the 151 elected in 2022, under the banner of Nupes.
Another major surprise is the relative resistance of the Macronist camp, which will have 168 deputies, certainly far from the 250 elected members of the previous legislature, but well above what was announced by many polls.
Although the RN is far from winning the majority, it has made historic progress, with 143 deputies (including the LR-RN), compared to 89 in June 2022. But it sees the ambition of placing Jordan Bardella at the head of Matignon slip away.
Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced that he would present his resignation to Emmanuel Macron on Monday. He added that he would "assume [his] functions as long as duty requires." (Source: lemonde.fr/en)
4. Eurointelligence:
Three blocs emerged, but not in the order that any of the polls predicted. The left won these elections in terms of seats, but without an outright majority. Emmanuel Macron’s centrists achieved an honourable second place, and the RN was relegated to third. The strategic anti-RN alliance between the centrist and left parties in three-way races was successful. But this is due entirely to tactical voting. When it comes to the percentage of voters, the RN is still leading.
So how does one govern a country of right-wing voters from the left?
The latest results from the interior ministry show that the left-wing Popular Front won the second round with a total of 182 seats, including the ones already won in the first round, and with 25.3% of the votes; Macron's Ensemble got to an honourable second place with 168 seats and with 23% of the votes; while the RN won the popular vote in the second round with 32% of the votes, but only won 143 seats.
Emmanuel Macron wanted clarity with these elections. Last night brought none. No one seem to agree on anything, neither on what those results mean and how to move forward. (Source: eurointelligence.com)
5. Bloomberg.com:
The shock election win for the left in France will probably herald protracted uncertainty. If and when a government is formed, Bloomberg economists Eleonora Mavroeidi, Maeva Cousin and Jamie Rush see a “quite modest” impact on the public finances at first, but more worrying effects further out. They plot out two possible scenarios. One is a coalition that delivers a net fiscal giveaway of 0.5% of output that would keep the spread of French bonds over German equivalents at about 75 basis points, roughly the average since the snap election election was called. The other is a bigger giveaway totalling 1% of gross domestic product. They reckon this would widen the spread to 100 basis points — and swell debt as percentage of output to more than 118% of output. (Source: bloomberg.com)
6. The Times of London:
Until the very last minute they remained confident of victory but when the exit poll was published, the smiles of the National Rally activists suddenly switched to looks of stunned disbelief.
Gathered at an exclusive venue in one of Paris’s most picturesque parks, they had invited hundreds of journalists to witness what they believed would be a historic breakthrough for Marine Le Pen’s hard-right party.
“I just don’t understand it,” Éric Kozelko, 58, said. “The French have again been cheated by President Macron’s coalition with the left to prevent the National Rally from winning power.”
The mood remained downcast when Jordan Bardella, the party’s chairman and its candidate for prime minister, arrived but spirits lifted when he told the crowd: “The National Rally has achieved the most important advance in its history.”
Bardella blamed the result on a “an unnatural alliance of convenience” between Macron’s centrists and the New Popular Front, a leftist coalition. (Source: thetimes.com)
7. Ben Hall, Financial Times:
“Our victory is only postponed.” Marine Le Pen put a brave face on the defeat for her far-right Rassemblement National party in France’s parliamentary election on Sunday. In reality, third place for the RN, according to provisional results, is a bitter disappointment. The party thought it would finally have the opportunity to show the French people it could govern, giving the party a springboard for the more important 2027 presidential election. But French voters turned out in droves to stop them.
One reason was that the RN proved to be not so detoxified, fielding candidates with extremist backgrounds or a record of racist and antisemitic statements. But more importantly, France’s so-called republican front — the willingness of its centrist and leftwing parties to join forces to thwart the far-right’s rise to power — proved resilient. The RN depicts this as a cynical game by the political establishment to lock it out of power. Voters, though, went along with it.
That alone will allow President Emmanuel Macron to argue that his election gamble (his allies prefer to call it a rational strategy worthy of Descartes) in the end paid off. He can say he broke the populist fever gripping the country, interrupting the far-right’s seemingly inexorable rise. Furthermore, his Ensemble alliance of centrist parties has performed considerably better than expected, coming in a strong second place. That keeps the centrists in the political game when at one stage they appeared to be heading for a rout. (Source: ft.com)
8. Bloomberg.com:
The man of the hour is without doubt Jean-Luc Melenchon. Before other leaders of the New Popular Front — a makeshift alliance of Socialists, Communists and Greens — could get a word in, the far-left firebrand took center stage at a gathering of followers. “This is extraordinary; two weeks ago you might not have believed this would happen,” Melenchon said, pumping up the crowd with his oratory skills. Later he busted out into a rousing rendition of national anthem, La Marseillaise.
Melenchon often regales crowds with the evils of “extreme markets that transform suffering, misery and abandonment into gold and money.” This is probably the closest markets have come to taking his words seriously. Melenchon considers France a country “with huge wealth that is badly distributed.” He’s a fan of former Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro and like them launches into fiery speeches, often without a teleprompter and using his trademark mix of humor and anger. (Source: bloomberg.com)
9. The Guardian:
Polish prime minister Donald Tusk summed up the feelings of some in his post welcoming the defeat of Marine Le Pen’s far-right RN party at the polls, writing, “In Paris enthusiasm, in Moscow disappointment, in Kyiv relief. Enough to be happy in Warsaw.”
Le Pen has previously been friendly with Russian President Vladimir Putin and there had been fears in Kyiv that she may take a softer approach to Moscow and cut back on the military aid Paris has extended to Ukraine since the war began in February 2022. (Source: theguardian.com)
10. The Wall Street Journal:
Nigel Farage, a leading figure behind Brexit and a longtime supporter of Donald Trump, set out last month with what many political analysts thought was a long-shot aim: Win millions of votes, get a seat in Parliament and destroy the ruling Conservative Party.
On Friday, Farage was in London celebrating. His upstart party Reform UK had won more than 14% of the total vote in Britain’s election last Thursday on an anti-immigration platform. The 60-year-old, who built a career protesting against the establishment, will now sit in Parliament alongside four other Reform UK lawmakers—his first victory for Parliament in eight attempts.
His six-week campaign helped ensure that the Conservative Party lost scores of additional seats, suffering its worst defeat in its nearly 200-year history, and giving an even bigger majority to the center-left Labour Party, which was widely expected to win. (Source: wsj.com)
11. The Wall Street Journal:
New governments in Europe are being handed a poisoned chalice. They are being elected with mandates for change, but only limited means at their disposal to enact it.
Public debt is close to multidecade highs on both sides of the English Channel, where voters this week were electing new parliaments. In both France and the U.K., government spending and budget deficits as a share of gross domestic product are significantly above prepandemic levels. Economic growth remains lackluster, borrowing costs have surged, and demands on the public purse are rising, from defense to old-age pensions.
All that means fiscal restraint—less spending or higher taxes—will be necessary, economists say. But politicians haven’t prepared electorates for that. On the contrary, they have signaled bold new spending plans. (Source: wsj.com)
12. Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike secured a victory to lead the Japanese capital for a third term, providing some relief for struggling Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his ruling party that supported her. Koike beat a record 55 challengers with 42.8% of the vote, including Renho Saito who was backed by the main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party. Renho, who generally goes by her given name, came in third with 18.8%, while Shinji Ishimaru, a former mayor in Hiroshima who gained attention with a strong social media campaign and a slew of public appearances, took second with 24.3%, results posted by national broadcaster NHK showed. The governorship of Tokyo is one of the highest profile jobs in Japanese politics. The governor oversees a metropolis whose economy equaled that of the Netherlands in size in 2021, and whose 14 million-strong population makes it bigger than Belgium. Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party had unofficially supported Koike by not fielding its own candidate for the position. Kishida is battling a support rate at its lowest levels since he took office in 2021, and rivals are signaling they intend to challenge him in the party’s leadership race in September. The LDP took a hit by winning only two of nine seats in special elections for Tokyo’s municipal assembly, official results showed. (Sources: bloomberg.com, asia.nikkei.com, et alia)
13. There was a time when US President Joe Biden’s allies abroad would make allowances for his age, let the slip-ups slide, gently bring him back to the fold when he appeared to wander off. No longer. His calamitous presidential debate performance changed the calculus. The chorus of voices that want the oldest American president (he’s 81) to step aside is growing louder, not only at home but also among nations that in the past months and years made excuses for the president’s wobbly syntax and gaffes. That’s because the prospect of Trump returning to the White House was seen by Western capitals as the bigger threat. European officials are now saying privately — and more forcefully — that Biden should step aside for someone with a better shot at beating Trump and preserving allied unity on Ukraine and NATO, people familiar with the matter said. (Source: bloomberg.com)
14. Bloomberg.com:
Several influential congressional Democrats said privately on Sunday they want Joe Biden to step aside as the party’s White House nominee, as the US president enters a pivotal week for his teetering reelection campaign.
The latest defections include several Democratic leaders of House committees, a signal that even some party stalwarts in Congress want a new person at the top of the ticket following Biden’s stumbling debate against Donald Trump last month.
The defections include Jerrold Nadler and Joe Morelle of New York; Adam Smith of Washington; and Mark Takano of California, according to people familiar with the discussion. The members expressed their views in a private virtual call on Sunday afternoon organized by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. That amounts to a total of nine House Democrats who have called for Biden to step aside. (Source: bloomberg.com)
15. Jonathan Martin, Politico:
As the president fights for his political life this week, and calls grow from party leaders that he withdraw his candidacy, he’s counting on the support of African-American Democrats and his union allies as his last line of defense. It’s a playbook Biden has turned to in the past, portraying his detractors as mostly elite white liberals who are out of step with the more diverse and working-class grassroots of the party. That’s what propelled his nomination after a string of setbacks in 2020.
It’s his only path to survival now.
If Biden can retain his allies in labor and the Black community, he will have a chance to reframe the boiling debate about his candidacy along the lines of race and class that have animated every Democratic nomination fight for 40 years. Those clashes, of course, played out in primaries and caucuses. This battle is taking place in a more chaotic and truncated fashion, in the media and on group texts, conference calls and Zooms. (Source: politico.com)
Quick Links: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits Russia today for the first time in five years. Hungary's Orban huddles with Xi on Ukraine during surprise China visit. Hungary: Could Peter Magyar bring a future without Orban? Pope Francis warns of 'populists' and ailing democracy. Israelis take to the streets to call for new elections. Pakistan finance minister warns taxes must rise to break the bailout cycle. Botched coup attempt in Bolivia highlights deepening political dysfunction. GOP Veep campaign: (1) J.D. Vance endorses Trump’s call for a special prosecutor against Biden. (2) Marco Rubio is hard on Vance’s heels and happy to help. The Kamala Harris “coconut tree” meme. If you wonder why people are concerned about President Biden’s mental acuity, read this.