President Emmanuel Macron was hoping the far-right National Rally party would win France’s elections in early July, allowing him the chance to appoint neo-fascist leader Jordan Bardella as premier.
It was part of a scheme, according to renowned French journalist Pauline Bock of the outlet Arrêt sur images, to win re-election for his centrist Renaissance party in the next presidential vote. Allegedly, Macron wanted to let the French people directly feel the pain of National Rally’s extremist policies for three years so that they would come scurrying to his party as their savior.
Having failed in his plot, however, the president is now refusing to appoint Lucie Castets, the candidate from the electoral coalition that actually did win the elections—the left-wing New Popular Front (Nouveau Front Populaire, NFP).
Give them a taste of fascism
Reporting on what is apparently common knowledge within the privileged discussions among the French political elite, Bock wrote in The Guardian Wednesday, “It is said that [Macron] hoped he would be able to anoint the leader of National Rally (RN), Jordan Bardella, as prime minister in a bid to discredit him in time for the 2027 presidential election.”
Whether Macron’s plan to subject the French people to neo-fascist rule was his original motivation for calling the snap parliamentary election or simply a next-best alternative cooked up after Renaissance lost at the polls is uncertain.
Regardless, by refusing to appoint the New Popular Front’s Castets as premier, the president is now showing the same disdain for democracy that the far right regularly exhibits. Using the Olympics as an excuse for his latest delay, Macron hopes to postpone the installation of a new government long enough for the left coalition to fall apart.
The New Popular Front is an alliance of the French Communist Party (PCF), France Insoumise (France Unbowed, the party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon), the center-left Socialist Party (PS), and Les Écologistes (a green environmentalist party).
Its name is a nod to the original Popular Front of 1936. With fascists taking power across the continent and threatening to do the same in France, the Communist and Socialist Parties formed a united front in the elections of that year. It was the first victory in the world of the new “people’s front” (or popular front) strategy that the Communist International had initiated a year earlier.
Today’s New Popular Front was forged as part of a broad effort to block the advance of National Rally, which won France’s EU elections in June. Formerly known as the National Front, the party was founded in 1972 by antisemite and Holocaust denier Jean-Marie LePen.
His daughter, Marine Le Pen, is now the ultimate power in the party. National Rally has tried to paper over its neo-Nazi roots, but it maintains virulent anti-immigrant positions, and members are frequently outed as racists in the press. It is allied internationally with Donald Trump’s MAGA movement in the U.S. and Viktor Orbán’s far-right government in Hungary. It has also long been associated with the Alternative for Germany (AfD), the ideological successor of Hitler’s original Nazi Party.
Bardella, whom Macron hoped to appoint as prime minister, is Marine Le Pen’s deputy. The young leader is seen as a fresh face for French fascism, someone who doesn’t carry the baggage of open neo-Nazism that goes with the Le Pen last name. He is expected to be Le Pen’s successor at the top of the presidential ticket next time. She came in second place, but National Rally hopes Bardella will be its chance to finally take power.
Despite media predictions it would win the parliamentary vote this time, National Rally only captured 143 out of 577 seats. Macron’s group took second place, with 163. Beating them both was the New Popular Front, which won 182 seats, the most but not an outright majority.
Coming in first gives the New Popular Front the right to form a government and propose a new prime minister.
The woman who should be premier
Lucie Castets, the 37-year-old nominated by the alliance, is a civil servant and long-time democracy activist. With degrees in political economy and public law, she has worked both internationally and within France in roles combatting financial crimes, tax evasion, and fraud.
As a financial advisor to the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, Castets currently oversees public investments focused on the transition to a green economy and social services. She has previously run as a candidate with the Socialist Party but currently has no direct partisan affiliation.
She is co-founder and spokesperson for the group Nos Services (Our Services), which fights against privatization and advocates for the funding of housing, transit, education, and healthcare. She is also a member of the National Observatory of the Far Right, a watchdog organization that tracks extremist activities.
According to Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the French Communist Party, “She ticks a lot of boxes.” He saluted her as an expert “committed to the fight against financial crime,” an advocate for public services, and a fighter against the extreme right.
Pierre Jouvet, secretary-general of the Socialist Party, said she “will be the prime minister of social and ecological progress.”
Castets said that when she becomes premier, her top priorities are the “repeal of Emmanuel Macron’s pension reform” (which raised retirement ages), “a major tax reform so that everyone, individuals and multinational corporations, pays their fair share,” and a boost for salaries and social security benefits to “improve purchasing power” in the face of inflation. She also pledged “an end to the decline in public services.”
Arguing that the people of France deserve to get the government they voted for, Castets declared it is “essential to give an embodiment to the result of the ballot boxes.” On Wednesday, she met with all of France’s national trade unions to hear their priorities on salaries, pensions, and social protection.
But Macron, with the support of big business, continues to stoke fears of the left, just as he did during the elections. But some conservatives, fearing a public backlash, are urging him to cave and name Castets as premier.
“When one political bloc ranks first in the vote…that bloc has won,” right-wing lawmaker Charles de Courson said recently. He called Macron’s refusal to appoint Castets “a negation of democracy.”
With the Olympic Games not scheduled to wrap up until Sept. 8, the president is making a new gamble, betting that the four parties which make up the New Popular Front will not be able to maintain their unity during his long forced delay. Macron calls himself “the master of the clocks.”
It may actually be his own time in power, however, that’s ticking away. Constitutional reform of the nearly dictatorial powers of the French presidency is another item on the legislative agenda of Castets and the New Popular Front.
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