French election descends into madcap reality TV

PARIS — We’re only four days into France’s election campaign and the vendettas are already boiling over in a melodramatic flurry of grab-your-popcorn vaudeville acts.

Humiliated in the EU election, President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday called a national parliamentary election, hoping to stem the tidal advances of the far right.

His rivals tried to seize on the historic moment to set enmities aside and unite — but things haven’t gone as planned, to put it mildly.

In the country’s main center-right party, the besieged leader barricaded himself in party headquarters claiming he was still in command, until a rival turned up with a spare key to demonstrate that was no longer the case.

On the far right, two prominent figures descended into open warfare, with one accusing the other of setting “the world record for betrayal.”

Meanwhile, on the left, a co-operation agreement has been struck and parties seem intent on putting their differences behind them — but tensions still crackle between two star figures, in terms of both personality and issues including Ukraine and Gaza.

Opinion polls and analysis of last Sunday’s results suggest a united left and a strengthened far-right National Rally could wipe the pro-Macron coalition off the map — meaning that the president’s only chance of avoiding a crushing defeat is to bet on divisions among his opponents.

French elections are conducted over two rounds — this one will be held on June 30 and July 7. To succeed, political forces must be able to club together, especially as smaller parties are weeded out in the first round.

In Sunday night’s EU election, 38 separate lists of party candidates went head-to-head in France. Now, as panic courses through the French political class, leaders on the left and right are scrambling to get that figure down to three for the parliamentary elections.

Conservative lockdown

The prize for absurd antics goes to the conservative Les Républicains.

Leader Éric Ciotti triggered an internal coup by proposing that the party cooperate with the far right to beat Macron. Many of the party faithful were gutted to hear such a stance from a leader of the party of Jacques Chirac who, in his last speech as president in 2007, urged his supporters to “never compromise with extremism.”

The uprising against Ciotti was led by party Secretary-General Annie Genevard, who called an extraordinary meeting of the party’s political committee Wednesday despite Ciotti’s protests that she had no right to do so.

President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday called a national parliamentary election, hoping to stem the tidal advances of the far right. | Pool Photo by Christopher Neundorf via Getty Images

Then Ciotti did what anyone in their right mind would: He locked himself in party headquarters as his colleagues sought to expel him.

The political committee was forced to meet in a separate venue — but ultimately voted unanimously to expel Ciotti. His opponents insisted they would get him out in the end: “We’ll call an ambulance” if needed, party Vice President Florence Portelli joked.

Genevard then showed up at Les Républicains headquarters with a spare key to show Ciotti his stunt wouldn’t scare her off.

The barricaded leader made a sheepish appearance at his office window the next day to tell the press he was still at work. Asked whether he had full access to party facilities, he replied: “Almost.” Which almost certainly meant “no.”

Doubling down, Ciotti posted a video of himself in his office set to an epic soundtrack, claiming he was going “back to work for France.” Several French commentators on social media compared his defiance to Al Pacino’s bloody last stand in the movie Scarface.

However it pans out, Les Républicains seem to have suffered a fatal schism.

Family over party

It’s getting pretty testy in the far-right camp as well. And like so many intense dramas, it comes down to family ties.

After Macron called the snap election, Marion Maréchal of the Reconquest party discussed creating a united far-right front with Jordan Bardella of the National Rally. That would have been a major coup — bringing Maréchal, who is the niece of National Rally presidential candidate Marine Le Pen, back into her aunt’s tent.

It would also have boosted the far right’s numbers, allowing Reconquest to add its 4 percent support to National Rally’s 33 percent.

But the initial tie-up failed over the personality of Reconquest founder Éric Zemmour, the wildcard former pundit who has been convicted of hate speech multiple times.

Tensions between Maréchal and Zemmour became obvious during the EU campaign, with Zemmour repeatedly attacking Le Pen’s party while Maréchal refrained from lashing out at a family member.

Ultimately, something snapped: Maréchal, the prodigal niece, has now abandoned Zemmour and called on her supporters to vote for candidates backed by an alliance of National Rally and Les Républicains.

Marion Maréchal of the Reconquest party discussed creating a united far-right front with Jordan Bardella of the National Rally. | Miguel Medina/Getty Images

Zemmour, for his part, accused Maréchal of setting “the world record for betrayal.”

“I am disgusted and hurt,” Zemmour added while pulling out the violins in a TV interview Wednesday evening, announcing that Maréchal would be expelled from Reconquest. “When it’s over, it’s over. When I am hurt, when I am betrayed, I remain silent and heal my wounds,” the spurned Zemmour lamented.

Corneille and Racine, eat your hearts out.

Marriage of leftist convenience

On the left, the parties appear more willing to leave their quarrels behind — at least for now.

Two years ago, the four main left-leaning parties — the Communists, Socialists, Greens and Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s France Unbowed (LFI) movement — agreed to run a united left-wing front, allowing them to more than double their total in the National Assembly and block Macron from securing a majority.

But the alliance did not survive, and each constituent force ran separately in the European election, disagreeing over the wars in Ukraine and Gaza and on EU integration. The coalition imploded after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack against Israel, when LFI’s three former partners said they could no longer work with the leftist movement due to its reluctance to label Hamas as a terrorist group.

The key friction is between hard-left firebrand Mélenchon and social-democrat Raphaël Glucksmann, who led the Socialist-backed list in the European campaign.

Glucksmann vowed there “would be no going back” to working with Mélenchon after the EU election, stressing his rejection of the latter’s divisive politics.

Unlike the pro-Macron camp, led by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, the left is avoiding the question of leadership for now. | Miguel Medina/Getty Images

But even divisions painted as unbridgeable less than a week ago seem to have lost their importance with the prospect of bagging seats in the National Assembly. The French left has now agreed once more to field single lists of candidates in each electoral district in mainland France.

Unlike the pro-Macron camp, led by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, and the National Rally, which is backing Bardella to head the government, the left is avoiding the question of leadership for now.

It may be the only fraternité France’s fractured political landscape is still capable of generating.