French right-wing party leader Ciotti backs Le Pen alliance ahead of snap elections

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https://www.france24.com/en/france/20240611-french-right-wing-party-leader-ciotti-backs-alliance-with-far-right-ahead-of-snap-elections

French right-wing party leader Ciotti backs Le Pen alliance ahead of snap elections

The leader of France's main right-wing party on Tuesday said he backed an alliance with the far right of Marine Le Pen in snap legislative elections, triggering a crisis within his own party and fury from the government.

Issued on: 11/06/2024 - 14:26
Modified: 11/06/2024 - 15:04

By:
NEWS WIRES
The stunning announcement by the Republicans (LR) leader Eric Ciotti in a lunchtime television interview is the first time in modern French political history that a leader of a traditional party has backed an alliance with the far-right National Rally (RN).

President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday called the elections on June 30, with a second round on July 7, in a major gamble after the RN scored more than double the number of votes of his centrist alliance in the EU elections.

With less than three weeks to go before the first round, Macron is facing opposition alliances crystallising on the left and right amid warnings that his bet could backfire.

[...]

The forthcoming ballot has set alarm bells ringing across Europe, as it risks hobbling France -- historically a key player in brokering compromise in Brussels and support for Ukraine against Russian invasion.

[...]

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Commentary, which I find helpful as I'm not French

These numbers were published before the dramatic news broke on 11 June that Eric Ciotti, the leader of LR, had agreed to an electoral alliance with Le Pen’s party. On the face of it, that would put her in a stronger position than Macron imagined when he pressed delete. But traditionally LR regards Le Pen’s dynasty as a Vichy tendency, even if the two parties’ policy positions concur on immigration and law and order. Only three years ago, it was possible for a senior LR figure to describe RN as ‘the enemy of the Gaullist family for historical reasons, whose roots go very deep’. That figure, as it happens, was Ciotti.

Projecting from the Harris Interactive poll, you might think that a consensual alliance between LR and the RN would bring them in 40 per cent of the vote or more, but the consensus inside LR is being shredded as the party turns on its leader, accusing him of lies and treachery; some are calling for his head. Macron’s people may not have predicted this eventuality to the letter, but the ambient chaos that’s followed his announcement was surely part of the gamble. Alliance or no alliance, the explosive row inside LR will result in a debris of ballots landing in Macron’s camp as well as Le Pen’s. Ifop will inform us ahead of time how they might be distributed.

Le Pen has been waiting a long time for the extinction of the ‘Gaullist family’ and must be hoping this is the death rattle. She has ruled out an alliance with Reconquête! in a show of confidence and political hygiene, sensing perhaps that its share of the vote – 4.2 per cent in the first round of the 2022 legislative elections – would come her way in any contests outstanding on 7 July. According to Marion Maréchal, Bardella has told her that the RN wants no association, ‘direct or indirect’, with Zemmour. It isn’t clear that this new quarantine meets World Health Organisation standards.

Long before the European elections, a promising left-of-centre coalition had dissolved in a national parody of the ‘groupuscules’ which opted for internecine war in the nurseries of leftism during the late 1960s. Nupes, the new ecological and social union of the people, was formed in 2022. Its main components were Mélenchon’s LFI, the remnants of the Parti Socialiste broken by the presidential election of 2017, the Communist Party and Les Ecologistes. It failed to win a majority in the Assembly in 2022 but gained disruptive leverage over the parliamentary process in the absence of an absolute majority for Macron’s people.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2024/june/macron-en-feu

From the European Parliament results, further up in that article, the mid-point of French politics is between Macron's party and the Republicans. Which is quite worrying, since that's the American equivalent of the dividing line between a faction led by Larry Hogan and one by Mitch McConnell being the center of American politics - with the McConnell figure being fully on board with enabling not just Trump, but Taylor Greene too.

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2. I find that very helpful, too. Thank you. nt

[muriel_volestrangler]

3. Wow - "shredded consensus" and "calling for his head" were right - Les Républicains vote out leader Eric Ciotti

https://www.democraticunderground.com/10143255800

The Republicans' political committee had voted unanimously to oust Ciotti, MP Annie Genevard said, adding that the party "will present candidates to the French public with clarity and independence" at snap polls called by President Emmanuel Macron for June 30 and July 7.

"I am and remain the president" of the party, Ciotti retorted in a post on X, formerly Twitter, calling the committee's decision "a flagrant violation of our statutes" that was illegal and void.
...
He closed the party headquarters near the National Assembly lower house for the day after the political committee called an emergency meeting, saying there had "never been any meeting planned at the HQ this afternoon".
...
The politician from Nice in southeast France "was no longer president from the second he made this insane decision" to announce an alliance with the RN, senior lawmaker Aurelien Pradie had earlier told broadcaster France 2.

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4. Wow, indeed.

Looks like France's right wing(s) are tired of all other countries' whackadoodle right wings getting all the attention.

Thanks for the heads-up.