Skip to main content
Can the French left unite to take on Macron?
La France Insoumise, the Greens, the communists and the PS are seeking to forge a broad alliance for next month’s parliamentary polls, hoping to force the president into ‘cohabitation’ with a left prime minister. NICK WRIGHT sizes up the political landscape
Demonstrators hold a placard reading: ‘Down with work and its cops’ during a May Day march in Paris

THE rough outcome of the French presidential election was the differentiation of the French nation into three distinct electoral blocs.

President Emmanuel Macron is the figurehead of the nominally centre right, wedded to neoliberalism, the Atlantic alliance and the EU, often socially liberal but invariably invested in the the property-owning myths and trickle-down idiocies of modern capitalist ideology.

Macron assembled a media-managed machine to incorporate the neoliberal elite and thus rendered both the traditional Gaullist party, now rebranded as Les Republicains, and the Socialist Party (PS) redundant as instruments for the rule of capital.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
More from this author
Reform UK leader Nigel Farage. Photo: Danny Lawson/PA Wire
Immigration / 24 April 2025
24 April 2025

The left must avoid shouting ‘racist’ and explain that the socialist alternative would benefit all 

ANGER GROWS: Protesters demonstrate in Dover against migrant
Features / 10 April 2025
10 April 2025
The left must confront both far-right bigotry and the undeniable problems the exploitation of migrant workers by the ruling class creates — but there are few lessons from the global left on how to strike this balance, laments NICK WRIGHT
FACING THE RIGHT:
Anti-racist protesters
in Walthamstow, 202
Features / 27 March 2025
27 March 2025
Xenophobic hysteria over the statistically insignificant number of small-boat crossings deliberately conceals how capitalism manipulates population flows for profit — if we can explain that, we’ll beat the right, argues NICK WRIGHT
PREMONITION OF DISASTER: Anonymous photographer, Fallen Stat
Book Review / 18 March 2025
18 March 2025
NICK WRIGHT delicately unpicks the eloquent writings on art of an intellectual pessimist who wears his Marxism lightly
Similar stories
STITCH-UP: Newly imposed French PM Michel Barnier
Features / 7 September 2024
7 September 2024
Bill Greenshields and Mary Adossides speak to France Insoumise MP SYLVIE FERRER on Macron's anti-democratic antics and why the left needs a chance to implement its programme
A car drives past electoral posters, June 27, 2024 in Strasb
Features / 5 July 2024
5 July 2024
Can the conservative, centre and left of French politics work out a complex dance of candidates standing aside for each other to prevent an outright, far-right victory this Sunday? NICK WRIGHT assesses
A member of the France Insoumise (France Unbowed) party spea
World / 1 July 2024
1 July 2024
Over 300 constituencies could face three-way run-offs unless candidates withdraw by 6pm tomorrow
Marine Le Pen of the far-right National Rally and President
Features / 19 June 2024
19 June 2024
The snap election call has spectacularly backfired, with the right and centre furiously backstabbing itself into oblivion, and the left, from the communists to social democrats, quickly uniting into a New Popular Front, writes NICK WRIGHT