In France, the left-wing parties have allied in a Nouveau Front Populaire, challenging both Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen. France Insoumise MP Clémence Guetté told Jacobin about its potential path to victory.
Le Pen’s closest competitor at this point is the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance, which brings together France’s leading left-wing parties (the Parti Socialiste, Les Écologistes, the Parti Communiste Français, France Insoumise, etc.). On June 14, they announced a broad program for democratic and social reform. In a more distant third place, Emmanuel Macron’s coalition could lose over half of its seats relative to the outgoing National Assembly — with many wondering if the president’s decision to dissolve parliament signals the final death knell of Macronism as a political force.
A France Insoumise MP in the dissolved National Assembly, Clémence Guetté is seeking reelection to her former seat in the suburbs southeast of Paris. She spoke to Jacobin’s Harrison Stetler about the snap election, the difficulties of forming a left-wing alliance, and its chances of rallying broad working-class support.
CLÉMENCE GUETTÉ
Minutes after the European election results on June 9, and the major defeat suffered by his own political camp, Emmanuel Macron announced the dissolution of the National Assembly and snap parliamentary elections for June 30 and July 7. The reactionary and racist far-right bloc had just won almost 37 percent of the votes cast in the EU elections. The president’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly at this moment was the final confirmation that Macronism is a stepping stone for the Rassemblement National. The far right, legitimized by a complicit media and the extreme center, has never been so close to seizing power as it is now.
The very next day, and in light of the urgency of the situation prompted by the dissolution, France Insoumise called for a meeting between the partners who formed the Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale (NUPES [a previous left-wing alliance]) and to engage in this electoral battle together. The Nouveau Front Populaire has been strengthened by the participation of collectives, associations, and unions and has been met with enthusiasm in all sectors of society. It has two aims: to prevent Marine Le Pen’s victory and to enable the popular bloc to win and govern.
The political situation shows that this is possible. Almost 32 percent of the votes cast during the European elections went to [the parties that later formed] the NFP bloc. This doesn’t count the reserve of votes among abstentionists, which totaled 48.5 percent of the electorate. Given the massive rejection of the Macronist center, the popular bloc is the only force that can defeat the far right. This is what has made this historic alliance possible and necessary. We reached an agreement in four days, providing for single NFP candidates in each constituency and a common program of government committed to a rupture with the existing social and political order.
CLÉMENCE GUETTÉ
France Insoumise has always been very clear: we refuse purely circumstantial electoral alliances. That we were able to rally around a governing program devoted to responding to the social and ecological emergency is what made this alliance possible. This program of rupture is also what makes an NFP victory possible: it is aimed at responding to the needs of the French people and there is massive support for the measures it includes.
The Nouveau Front Populaire has drawn up a plan for government if we win this election. The plan lays out the emergency measures to be taken within the first fifteen days, from price freezes on basic necessities and a hike in the after-tax minimum wage to €1,600 [a month] to the repeal of the increase in the retirement age to sixty-four. To respond to the ecological emergency, we are calling for a moratorium on megafarming. For international peace, we call for the immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood.
CLÉMENCE GUETTÉ
We’re not surprised by uproar caused by the NFP’s program for rupture among employers, the mainstream media, and politicians — in short, from a large segment of the French oligarchy. This response was to be expected. This has always been the case whenever the popular bloc is in a position to win, as was nearly the case during Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s 2022 presidential campaign.
What’s the main question in this election? It’s about whose money we should use in order to govern. For the past seven years, the Macronists have taken from the pockets of workers. Le Pen and her followers propose to scrape even further at the bottom of the barrel, attacking foreigners. Our program aims to find money where it’s in no short supply: directly in the bank accounts of billionaires. That’s what our ambitious tax proposal is all about. We want to tax corporate super-profits and reintroduce a wealth tax, strengthened with an environmental component.
This plan scares them. They’re less afraid of a financial crisis than of a societal rebalancing from capital to labor, from shareholders to employees. It also should be noted that the neoliberal paradigm that’s prevailed in France since the 1980s — supposedly designed to avert a so-called “national decline”— has done nothing to stop the outsourcing of our industrial base or revive economic growth or stem the consequences of inflation for the vast majority of the population. The Nouveau Front Populaire program is supported and defended by many economists, such as Julia Cagé and Michaël Zemmour. It represents an historic opportunity to respond to the economic situation facing France and the French people.
CLÉMENCE GUETTÉ
Let me start by returning to the program signed and supported by all the political forces of the Nouveau Front Populaire. We need to disentangle the media’s presentation of the Left’s allegedly numerous disagreements, which almost always entails a caricature of France Insoumise’s position on Gaza. For example, I often hear on TV that we don’t call for the release of Israeli hostages, even though we demanded that starting on October 7. Naturally, that demand is included in the program’s emergency measures, as is the call for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza.
There are no divisions in the Nouveau Front Populaire over the need to defend peace and support international legal proceedings pertaining to the ongoing genocide in Palestine. Similarly, I hear far too often that France Insoumise has an ambiguous position on the war in Ukraine. On the contrary, we condemned Russia’s violation of international law as soon as it invaded Ukraine. Our votes, particularly in the European Parliament, speak for themselves.
That being said, the visions for international peace defended by the various currents in the Nouveau Front Populaire are not perfectly homogeneous. We had to make compromises, faced with the urgent need to stand up to the far right, to restore peace in Gaza, the West Bank and Ukraine and stop the killing. France Insoumise is committed to a diplomatic and not a military solution to the border question in Ukraine. War with a nuclear power is not an acceptable strategy.
We call for a nonaligned international position and reject the notion of providing “unconditional” support for any nation. Our compass is and will remain international law and the defense of a strong and independent French diplomatic stance. Peace in Ukraine, as in Gaza, must be achieved by law, not by arms. This is not just a matter of principle: it’s how all conflicts have been resolved.
We have taken it upon ourselves to be the first and sometimes the only political force in France to demand a comprehensive peace in the Middle East. This consistency has opened us to unjustified attacks. But it has also allowed us to rally our partners in the Nouveau Front Populaire to our position, and to achieve concrete victories such as the European Parliament’s vote in favor of a cease-fire. We will continue along this path.
This alliance did not collapse because of “its divisions.” From June 2023, it was clear that some of our partners wanted to go it alone for electoral reasons. But with the Nouveau Front Populaire, we have an agreement for a program of government — as was the case with the NUPES — because we intend to win. We are accountable to our voters. And this time, the burden of responsibility is even greater: associations, citizens’ collectives, and trade unions have joined us. It’s up to all these forces to collectively defend this program and stand up to the far right.
I’m extremely proud that trade unionists like Céline Verzeletti and Marie Mesmeur — or representatives of citizens’ collectives like Amal Bentounsi and Aly Diouara, and the ER physician [the candidates who replaced the five deselected MPs] — will be carrying the banner of the Nouveau Front Populaire. It also ought to be reiterated that no one has a lifetime seat in parliament. It should also be obvious that our movement won’t run certain people who have stated a desire to no longer caucus with France Insoumise in the National Assembly. As always, the France Insoumise electoral committee opted for consistency, breaking out of the political vacuum by making room for admirable social-movement figures.
Those who’d like to bury Jean-Luc Mélenchon ought to be reminded that without him and his perseverance, our country would have gone without an alternative to fascism for quite some time now.
I’d like to thank him for leading us through this crisis for as long as he has. And to those who talk about him withdrawing, let me ask: Is Jean-Luc Mélenchon a candidate in any constituency? Has he defended anything other than the Nouveau Front Populaire in the last two weeks?
Let’s bring this debate back to earth. The task we face is to govern a country threatened by wars on several continents, while holding firm to the course of peace. France is facing major economic turbulence, and our project can expect stiff resistance from ultraneoliberal and reactionary segments in the state and in society. In a situation like this, it would be absurd to brush aside our most experienced political leader.
The emergence of new figures is precisely what’s happening! To think Mélenchon is crowding them out is paternalistic. Just take France Insoumise comrades like Mathilde Panot and Manuel Bompard, with whom I led the negotiations that allowed for the historic NPF agreement. There’s also our movement’s elected representatives in the European Parliament, such as our lead candidate Manon Aubry, or Rima Hassan, a Palestinian refugee and human rights jurist. Our force and movement are brimming with fighting figures who owe a great deal to Jean-Luc Mélenchon. We are all aware of the attention he has devoted to creating a new generation capable of continuing the fight.
I should also insist that a Nouveau Front Populaire government is bound by an agreement for a program of rupture. Whoever is at the head of an NFP government must apply this program without compromise or betrayal.
As for the functional specifics, the alliance accepted the proposal from Olivier Faure [secretary general of the Parti Socialiste] that the largest group within the majority in the National Assembly will get to put forward a figure for prime minister on behalf of all the forces of the Nouveau Front Populaire. It’s as simple as that.
CLÉMENCE GUETTÉ
There are several different possible readings of the June 9 results. What I see is a stagnation of the center-left bloc made up of Les Écologistes and the Parti Socialiste, coupled with a relative strengthening of France Insoumise when compared with the previous European elections. We won almost 10 percent of the national vote, or nearly 4 points more than in 2019. This represents around a million additional votes. Additionally, our movement retains the largest number of constituencies in the Nouveau Front Populaire agreement. The narrative of the strengthening of the Parti Socialiste also needs to be qualified, given its candidate’s score in the 2022 presidential election (mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo took just 1.75 percent of the vote).
We reached an agreement on a program of rupture precisely because we categorically refuse to return to the politics of the François Hollande years and the betrayal and retreat that they represented. France Insoumise would never have agreed to unite on a platform not grounded in a rupture with the anti-social and antidemocratic order that has sacrificed the French people for over fifteen years. We’re not afraid of going backward. We remain the driving force behind our bloc.
What’s true is that there’s a common feeling of abandonment in both areas. They both need to be addressed, especially when it comes to access to public services and healthcare. Seine-Saint-Denis [the dense suburbs north of Paris] is the biggest medical desert in France. We urgently need to unwind the tendency toward pitting geographical areas against each other. The difficulties encountered in both urban and rural France are very often similar or stem from the same root causes.
The result of the European elections shows that the Rassemblement National enjoyed higher turnout among voters who had supported the party two years earlier. Mass voter participation is therefore the key. We can secure this by providing an answer to popular anger and the demand for a better life.
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