Broad-left coalition politically deadlocked before the first meeting of new National Assembly

By Monica Sestito

Little over a week after its electoral victory over the far-right party Rassemblement National (RN), the broad-left New Popular Front (NFP) has replaced celebrations with acrimonious internal arguments over their preferred Prime Minister candidate.

The coalition, which formed hastily after President Emmanual Macron’s shock decision to call legislative elections in June, is primarily united on what they oppose: the rise of RN. Beyond this, political parties within the NFP possess disparate programs, strategies and track records––from the moderate Socialist Party, with its history of austerity governments, to the far-left France Insoumise, the only party within the French political landscape to resolutely oppose Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The task of forming a government has only forced these existing political divisions into the foreground, where the goal of defeating RN had previously overshadowed them.

Both the Socialist Party and France Insoumise rejected each other’s proposals to nominate leaders from their respective ranks for Prime Minister, with the former promoting its strong results in the European elections as well as its significant increase in votes in the latest French elections, and the latter pointing to its strength within the NFP.

An agreement appeared within reach over the weekend, after the Communist Party proposed Huguette Bello as candidate for Prime Minister, supported by France Insoumise and the Greens. Bello is the president of the overseas French territory of La Réunion and at the helm of a broad-left coalition there. She also supported France Insoumise in the 2022 French presidential and 2024 European elections. The Socialist Party refused to endorse her, effectively killing her candidacy.

In response, France Insoumise announced in a bitter press release that it would suspend all further negotiations until the Socialist Party “gives up on its refusal to accept any candidacy other than its own.” It also accused the Socialist Party of sabotaging the NFP’s capacity to form a government, playing into the hands of Macron’s Ensemble alliance and anticipating collaboration with them.

As the press release read, “Is the Socialist Party playing for time to allow the NFP to crumble and abandoning the programme on which it was elected? We will not allow this stalemate to facilitate presidential manoeuvres.”

The Socialist Party, for its part, subsequently announced that it had found “a common candidate from civil society” approved for the role of Prime Minister by the Greens and the Communists: academic and architect of the 2025 Paris Climate Agreement, Laurence Tubiana.

France Insoumise leaders met this proposal with scorn, viewing Tubiana as an ally of Macron. “If this is the profile our partners are working on,” national coordinator of France Insoumise, Manuel Bompard, told French media on Tuesday morning, “I’ll fall off my chair.”

For Bompard and his collaborators, the notion that the NFP should use its electoral strength to rehabilitate the political centre, turning their backs on the support their left-wing program obtained in the legislative elections, is politically unconscionable. Meanwhile, the most conservative wing of the Socialist Party has made no secret of their desire to form a coalition with Macron. As Il Manifesto reports, socialist MP Philippe Brun yesterday took to radio to declare their desire to form “a contract of coalition” with the President.

This political fault line only stands to deepen tomorrow, with the new legislature’s inaugural session and planned election of the president of the National Assembly––equivalent to the role of the Speaker.

This role is elected through three rounds of voting. If no candidate emerges with an absolute majority in the first or second round, then whoever has the most votes in the third round is appointed president of the Assembly.

The NFP, as the biggest grouping within the legislature, stands to have someone from its own ranks appointed, if only they could agree on a candidate. Failure to do so would further undermine NFP’s capacity to present itself as a cohesive force in French politics and sharply pose the question of a split on left-right lines over how to relate to Macron’s centrist block.

The CTG union federation has already announced plans for railway workers to rally tomorrow in front of the National Assembly in Paris and seats of state power across the country, demanding that the NFP be allowed to form government.

France Insoumise leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon has lambasted Macron for equivocating on the broad-left coalition’s governing capacity. “It is the return of royal veto over universal suffrage,” he decried. “[Macron] must bow down and call on the NFP. That is simply democracy.”

Unfortunately, for Mélenchon, the moderate forces within the NFP seem more inclined to bow down before Macron than France Insoumise. And without an absolute majority in the legislature, any pathway towards a left-led government is littered with compromises and reckonings that stand to problematise beyond repair the NFP’s very existence.