By Jasper Goddard
With French president Emmanuel Macron calling a surprise snap parliamentary election on Sunday after a stinging defeat by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party in the European elections, experts say Macron is putting the onus on the French electorate to push back against the far-right.
Sarah Holbolt, Professor in the Department of Government at LSE, addressed Macron’s decision in the opening session of a series of talks on power and politics in a year of elections at the LSE Festival.
“I think [how Macron] is going to want to frame this is on the one hand we have these centrist, pro-European, pro–democratic, sensible mainstream forces in politics and on the other hand we have this threat of the far-right. And now it is over to you, the people of France, to choose,” she said.
National Rally, which won 31 per cent of the votes, is one of a number of far-right European parties that made significant gains. In Germany, despite numerous recent scandals the right-wing AfD party increased its vote share to around 16 per cent, while Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party secured 28 per cent of the votes.
“We of course also saw this shift towards the right and in particular, in certain countries, a quite radical shift. In the sense we talk about France already, but also the AFD in Germany,” Professor Holbolt noted.
Despite the gains made by far-right European parties, Professor Holbolt added that the centre is still in control of the European parliament.
“Of course, the centre did hold and the centre did win, there weren’t massive shifts on the surface of it. We still have the biggest group being the Centre-right European People’s party, after that the socialist Social Democrats and after that, the Liberals,” she said.
Other talks at this year’s event, which runs until Saturday 15th June, include: 100 days to kickstart Britain: what should the government’s priorities be?, Authoritarian Populism and Media Freedom and Defending democracy: building solidarity with persecuted writers, journalists, and artists.
Feature Image: This year’s LSE Festival is focusing on politics and power around the world. Photo Credit: Jasper Goddard.