When French President Emmanuel Macron called for this snap election, he was taking a gamble that the drubbing his alliance received in recent European elections would not be repeated. HE WAS WRONG!
emeatribune France is firmly in uncharted territory after President Emmanuel Macron’s snap elections gamble backfired and saw the opposition far-right National Rally (RN) party surge to a dramatic win in Sunday’s parliamentary first-round polls, analysts say.
Led by Marine Le Pen and her young protege, Jordan Bardella, the RN looks set to take the biggest chunk of the 577-seat lower house having come away from the first round of voting with 33 percent of the vote, nearly double the 18.9 percent share it won in the last parliamentary elections in 2022.
If its position in the polls does not shift in the crucial, second round of voting on July 7, this election could deliver the country’s first conservative prime minister since World War II.
SKY News Marine Le Pen and her National Rally Partyhave a ‘radical’ agenda that includes policies such as slashing immigration, ending birthright citizenship and creating a “national preference” for French citizens
on social housing and welfare programmes. Imagine that!
A new political reality has been revealed in France, it has a new face and a new name – 28-year-old Jordan Bardella. Frontman for Marine Le Pen, he has helped propel National Rally to a clear-cut lead in the first round of parliamentary elections.
Bardella, the party’s choice for prime minister, stands on the brink of power if National Rally secures a majority in the second round of voting. Right-leaning National Rally has been re-engineered by Marine Le Pen as she has worked to make it electable – and acceptable – to the public.
They were challenged from the left by the New Popular Front, a hastily organised alliance of socialists, communists, greens and hard-left grouping France Unbowed, but they failed.
A key part of that scheme rests with Le Pen’s fresh-faced prodigy. Bardella told the media that a National Rally government would respect the country’s traditional republican values. “I will always be the guarantor of your rights and freedoms and our republican values which unite us all. I promise you freedom, equality and fraternity,” he said.
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