Abandon all hope, ye who vote in America

[Octavious]

So, France happened again. Quite what happened is hidden behind a truly stunning amount of smoke and mirrors, but here's a summary.

The election, in stark contrast to the UK's, had a massive turnout. The people really cared.

The party that got the most votes, by a long way, was the far right National Front (or National Rally as they call themselves these days) with 37% of the vote. A smidge larger than what the British Labour government achieved in their historic win.

In a distant 2nd place was the cobbled together New Popular Front, on 26%. This front is largely made up of the far left populist and anti EU France Unbowed, and the remnants of the old mainstream left Socialist Party, with a handful of Greens and Communists making up the numbers . Together they fell short. Individually they would have been slaughtered

Nearly matching the New Popular Front, and achieving 3rd place in vote count, was Macron's centrist alliance, Ensemble, which managed 25%. If this was a single party it would be Tory levels of disaster, but it's an even bigger mess of a coalition than the New Popular Front.

A country mile away was the party that used to be the mainstream centre right, Les Républicains, on 6%

Due to the fun way the French do democracy this clear win for the National Front translated into 3rd place in terms of seats. So whilst it's perfectly fine, and feels rather good, to celebrate the National Front being kept out of power, it was done in the kind of way that looks painfully unfair (even by UK and US standards), and is the sort of thing that makes people understandably angry.

The anti-far right fudge has also left France in a complete paralysed mess that makes the UK post Brexit Parliamentary deadlock look like a trivial matter.

How they resolve this is beyond me... We wait and see... But standing on the sidelines and largely immune from the fallout of the shit storm Macron has created will be the National Front. France is in a potentially very dangerous place

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I've been following what's going on in France casually and I wonder if it's all that bad?

Voters are tired of centrist technocrats so they opted for left and right parties.

Now they have to do the hard part of democracy and come up with a compromise. The most likely outcome is a reluctant left-ish coalition. The next most likely outcome is a centrist coalition not unlike the current government. France always seems to get rowdy about its politics — is political violence much worse this cycle? It seems as though the country will accept whatever coalition emerges.

I think it's lamentable that National Rally did so well, but I sense some hyperbole in how the media talk about their policy platform, which is largely nationalist and populist and not especially Nazi-esque or anti-democratic. Le Pen and her dad are awful people, but they're popular because they're willing to promote widely-held contrarian views on immigration, support for Ukraine, France's relationship with the EU, etc., not because every NR supporter is a rabid anti-Semite. To a lesser extent, it's also regrettable that France's far left has gained in prominence, but that feels like par for the course in France — if they want to kill their own economy by, for example, undoing pension reform then they're really only hurting Coalition government might be very useful to temper the excesses of these parties' policy proposals.

[Octavious]

France is historically not very good at governments. The forth republic after WWII saw around 20 different administrations in a decade. The student uprising in 68 saw barricades in the street and the President fleeing to Germany. There's been a few decades of calm, but absolute chaos is well within living memory.

I'm not at all confident that calm heads will triumph. You could feasibly form a centre ish government if you broke up the New Popular Front, chucked out the Communists and crazy leftie populists, and had Macron's centists allied with the traditional centre left Socialists, the Greens, and the Republicans... But that is welding together the entire surviving old establishment with Macron's anti establishment Centrists and, aside from the fact that they can't stand each other, the people will hate it

[Esquire Bertissimmo]

I guess I just don't see a period of divided government as a bad thing if it really reflects the will of the people.

Macron's radical centrist pitch has run its course and failed to deliver what many French people want.

Now something will have to give. The centre will need to give a bone to the far left and/or the left will be forced to actually reconcile their dogmas with political reality.

If the result is political chaos and/or ineffective government then maybe that's what's needs to convince recalcitrant voters about the need for compromise. It would also be a catalyst for a new crop of leaders to emerge / parties to change their approach. People hating the outcome is not necessarily a bad thing if it reflects hard compromises and drives political innovation.

If instead the result is persistent civil unrest and a total gridlock of government then I'd of course stop being so sanguine. But if that's the case then it would point to France's politics already being rotten to the core — and there again, a period of dysfunction might be the only thing that can spark positive change.