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Most people think the only French election that matters is the Presidency: the man (they have all been men so far) who enters the Elysée. But France’s parliamentary elections are as

important as Congressional elections in the US. A French President, like his US counterpart, loses much of his power if he does not also control the National Assembly. And in France Emmanuel

Macron is worried that his control of who becomes a minister and what laws are passed may slip away from him in the two-round National Assembly elections that take place over the next two

Sundays. Two of his predecessors — François Mitterrand and Jacques Chirac — had to live with a National Assembly controlled by the opposition. The French Socialists won a majority in June

1997. The first five years of Tony Blair’s Labour government coincided with five years of French Socialist government. At the time of this double Left victory in Britain and France I urged

Labour ministers to seek out projects of cooperation with their French comrades. “What can we ever learn from the French?” sighed the new Culture Secretary, Chris Smith, thereby proving that

English disdain for our nearest big power neighbour is not a Right-wing trait. Today the wish which is father to the thought of the Paris elites — including most Anglo-American commentators

on France — is that French voters, having rejected the hard-Right Marine Le Pen and the Corbynite Leftist Jean Luc Mélenchon in April’s presidential election, will give the re-elected

President Macron a parliamentary majority too. If voters follow the 2017 French election pattern, when Macron first won the presidency and then parachuted in devotees who won most seats in

the National Assembly, that is a reasonable assumption. But supposing in 2022 they do not? Old parties and old politics were rejected five years ago, but what replaced them is no longer new.

Macron has named a woman Prime Minister, Elizabeth Borne. She is a respected civil servant who has worked for the state all her life — a French Sue Gray, if you like. Mme Borne is a tough

can-do manager who was a functionary for the last Socialist President of France, François Hollande. Macron’s spinners are using this fact to present her as a woman of the Left. I worked

reasonably closely with French socialist ministers, deputies, MEPs and party officials over the last 25 years. I never heard her name mentioned. It is far from clear that naming Mme Borne as

PM will pull in a single Left voter for Macron. The problem for Macron is that there are hardly any Socialist voters left. The Socialist presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo got just 1.8% of

the first round vote. There are 11 constituencies reserved for 1.5 million French voters living overseas. In contrast to Britain, France (like the US) believes its citizens abroad should

keep the right to vote in their own country. They have already voted in the first round while mainland France will vote on Sunday. In 10 out of these 11 seats, the Left — now formed into a

loose alliance of Mélenchonites, Communists, Greens and a few Socialists — came a close second to the pro-Macron candidates. Now a brief, boring but necessary note on French elections. There

are 577 deputies in the National Assembly, elected using a two-round system based on single-member seats. If a candidate gets at least 25% of all eligible voters and a majority, he or she

is elected in the first round. Few manage this and to go into the second round you need 12.5% of eligible voters. Macron has abolished normal party politics and weakened intermediary

organisations like political parties, trade unions, regional or city leaders. So there are no interlocuteurs between the Elysée and _la rue_ — the street. The streets and especially

roundabouts are where the gilets jaunes, anti-vaxers, and now nurses and doctors have mobilised, causing him so much trouble in his first presidency. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leading figure

on the Left, has insisted he should be made Prime Minister and form a government because he came third to Macron in the presidential contest. It is an odd argument — especially as Mélenchon

is not even running for a seat in the Assembly. The main question is who gets though to the second round. The two far-Right candidates, Marine le Pen and Éric Zemmour, will split their vote.

The centre-Right Les Républicains — the sister party before the arrival of Boris Johnson of our Conservatives – got just 4.8%. They may hope local factors or personalities will help them in

these National Assembly elections. But the chances are that next Sunday night, those who hate Macron — and there are many of those in France — will have to decide whether to hold their

noses and votes for the Left-Green-Communist alliance headed up by the 70-year-old Mélenchon — a demagogic Gallic combination of Jeremy Corbyn and George Galloway. If voters really, really

hate Macron they may decide to make his second term impossible by refusing to give him a majority. He is talking vaguely about holding endless citizens assemblies and creating a National

Council to Refound France, using the language of wartime. In 1944-45 the National Council of Resistance helped shape the early politics of post-war France. But that was headed by General de

Gaulle, France’s Churchill, and Macron is no De Gaulle. He has lost his status and authority in Europe. When he addressed the European Parliament last month and urged an abolition of the

national veto in key EU decision-making on foreign policy and defence, he was instantly repudiated by 13 EU prime ministers who signed a joint letter opposing his ideas. Macron is not

popular with the London establishment and especially its commentariat. The EU is (falsely) seen in England as under overbearing Parisian influence, if not full control. But a France without

a strong government and without stable political institutions, including widely representative political parties, will soon be Europe’s loose cannon. France remains a major pillar of the

western community of Euro-Atlantic democracies and rule-of-law values. These National Assembly elections could leave la rue deciding French policy, rather than broader national and

geo-political interests. A MESSAGE FROM THEARTICLE _We are the only publication that’s committed to covering every angle. We have an important contribution to make, one that’s needed now

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