With the collapse of centrist parties, voters are caught between the National Rally, a left mired in controversy – or abstaining altogether
It’s a choice between the plague and cholera. Millions of French voters are agonising at the prospect of having to choose between a candidate of Marine Le Pen’s hard-right anti-immigration National Rally (Rassemblement National – RN) party and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s hard-left France Unbowed (La France Insoumise – LFI) movement in parliamentary election runoffs on 7 July.
Barring a dramatic comeback by President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc in the 30 June first round, the second ballot in roughly half of the 577 constituencies will pit a representative of Le Pen’s illiberal national populists against a candidate of the New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire – NFP), a hastily cobbled-together alliance of leftwing parties dominated by Mélenchon’s radical leftists.
Paul Taylor is a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre
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Source link : https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jun/26/marine-le-pen-emmanuel-macron-france-voters-election
Author : Paul Taylor
Publish date : 2024-06-26 06:00:11
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