RN opponents race against time to keep far right out of power

French centrist and left-wing parties raced against time on Monday to keep the Rassemblement National from power, despite the far-right party’s victory in the first round of parliamentary elections.

The RN’s opponents on the centre and the left have until Tuesday to decide whether to pull candidates out of hundreds of election run-offs, and have begun limited electoral co-operation against Marine Le Pen’s party.

France’s blue-chip Cac 40 stock index rose 1.6 per cent, as investors bet that the second round next weekend would deny the far right or far left a majority in the National Assembly.

The euro gained 0.3 per to $1.075, despite the prospect of a possible hung parliament, which could result in legislative gridlock.

The RN came top in Sunday’s first-round election with 33.2 per cent of the vote, ahead of the left-wing New Popular Front on 28 per cent and President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble alliance on 22.4 per cent.

The result represented a political earthquake, with projections suggesting the RN will still win the most seats in the run-off. But its vote share combined with allies was lower than some opinion polls had predicted last week.

“The result is probably better than feared, but not as good as the status three weeks ago pre-elections,” said Mohit Kumar, an analyst at Jefferies.

The gap between benchmark French and German 10-year borrowing costs, seen as a barometer for the risk of holding France’s debt, narrowed on Monday to 0.75 percentage points, after last week hitting the highest level since the Eurozone debt crisis in 2012.

Ensemble and NFP candidates who finished third in their district are now under intense pressure to withdraw and avoid dividing the anti-RN vote in the election’s second round on July 7.

The first round produced more than 300 three-way run-offs, according to Financial Times calculations, an unprecedented number, although the final figure will depend on how many candidates drop out.

By Monday afternoon, some candidates on the left and from Macron’s centrist party had begun dropping out in an effort to prevent the RN from winning their constituencies.

Agnès Pannier-Runacher, a former energy minister under Macron, thanked a Green party rival who had come third for dropping out of the run-off in the Pas-de-Calais region, where the far right is particularly strong.

Similar moves took place across the country. In his Somme constituency, prominent NFP candidate François Ruffin was set to benefit from the withdrawal of the Ensemble candidate.

But there were also bad-tempered exchanges as some third-placed candidates, particularly centrists, refused to withdraw.

Dominique Faure, a minister in charge of local authorities under Macron, said she would not pull out to favour the Socialist candidate who came first in her area near Toulouse.

Faure said she “couldn’t see how she could give [people] a vote between the RN and the far left as their only choice”. Her decision was sharply criticised by the left. 

On Sunday night, Macron’s Prime Minister, Gabriel Attal, who faces being ousted from his post, said in an address: “The lesson tonight is that the extreme right is on the verge of taking power.

“Our objective is clear,” he added. “Stopping the RN from having an absolute majority in the second round and governing the country with its disastrous project.”

On Monday, German foreign minister Annalena Baerbock expressed concern over the RN’s success in the first round. “You can’t be left unmoved when a party that sees Europe as the problem and not the solution is in the lead in a country that’s our closest partner and our best friend,” she said.

According to FT calculations, with nearly all districts counted, the RN finished first in 296 constituencies out of 577, while the NFP led in 150 and Ensemble in 60. There will be about 65 constituencies with the RN and NFP in two-way run-offs. A party needs 289 seats for a majority.

By Sunday night, all the parties in the left-wing NFP — from the far-left La France Insoumise to the more moderate Socialists, Greens and Communists — said they would drop out of races where their candidate was in third place.

However, parties in Macron’s Ensemble alliance issued slightly different guidance, creating confusion.

Macron’s Renaissance party said it would make case-by-case decisions based on whether a left-wing candidate was “compatible with republican values”, but did not specifically exclude LFI. 

French stock and bond markets tumbled after Macron called snap elections three weeks ago as investors fretted about a possible far-right victory or political gridlock with populist forces dominating parliament after the July 7 run-off vote.

In previous second-round elections, French voters have often acted to create a so-called front républicain — backing candidates they would otherwise reject to lock out the RN. But it remains to be seen whether such voting customs still work with the far right in the ascendancy.

Le Pen said on Sunday that the first-round results had “practically erased” Macron’s centrist bloc. “The French have expressed their desire to turn the page on seven years of a government that treated them with disdain,” she told supporters in her constituency in Hénin-Beaumont, northern France.

If the RN wins a majority, Macron would be forced into an uncomfortable power-sharing arrangement, with Le Pen’s 28-year-old protégé Jordan Bardella as prime minister. 

Mathieu Gallard, a researcher from polling group Ipsos, said whether the RN won an outright majority would depend mainly on the strength of the front républicain and how many left-wing and centrist voters made it a priority to counter Le Pen’s party.

Steeve Briois, a senior RN official, dismissed the idea that tactical manoeuvres or voting advice would stop them from winning.

“[That] the other parties should call for an anti-RN front — it actually just annoys people and motivates them to vote for us,” he told the FT in Hénin-Beaumont, an RN stronghold. “The glass ceiling, the idea of a front républicain — that does not work any more.”

On Monday, the RN renewed its efforts to paint the left as it main rival. In a letter published on social media, Bardella called the NFP “an existential threat for the French nation” that would “open the floodgates to immigration”.