9:02 p.m., Sunday, June 9. France is plunged into a dizzying unknown, after the presidential announcement of the dissolution of the National Assembly. Since then, the campaign has been in full swing to elect the 577 deputies who will make up the National Assembly and who will shape the future majority that will govern the country.
This Wednesday, July 3, Jordan Bardella tries to justify himself as best he can regarding the failed investitures of the National Rally, which the editorial staff of 20 minutes describes it as a party with “fascist, xenophobic, racist, sexist, IGBT-phobic and anti-progressive ideas”. Freshly re-elected as a member of parliament for Pas-de-Calais in the first round, Marine Le Pen is accused of “manipulating information”. L’Express takes stock.
Today’s formula: The RN’s “black sheep”
They are a pebble in the hooves that must lead him to Matignon. Thus Jordan Bardella described as “black sheep” those candidates pinned for their controversial remarks or attitudes. At the beginning of the week, the RN candidate in Calvados Ludivine Daoud was seen in a photograph wearing a Nazi cap, thus joining a long list of Frontist lieutenants caught red-handed in anti-Semitism.
“Hitler may not have killed enough of them” is said to have said the mayor of Cholet, candidate of the RN-Ciotti alliance, about the Gypsies. “The gas brought justice to the victims of the Holocaust”, wrote Joseph Martin, Frontist candidate in Morbihan in 2018 on his X account. When it is not clearly assumed, anti-Semitism in the RN is mixed with conspiracy theories. In Côte d’Or, Frontist Sophie Dumont, for example, insinuated that Eric Zemmour’s party, Reconquête, was financed by Jews…
So to justify the investiture of “black sheep”, Jordan Bardella found a way around it: the candidate for the post of Prime Minister castigates journalists “whose job is to investigate all day long, on the candidates, the substitutes, the grandmother of the substitutes, the baker of the candidates’ great aunt”. And recalls the haste in which the investiture committees took place following the dissolution of the Assembly. He who nevertheless said his camp was “ready to govern” in the event of early elections…
Today’s outcry: the writing of 20 minutes comes out of the reserve
Faced with the danger of the extreme right, down with “neutrality”. This is the message that some sixty journalists working on the editorial staff of 20 minutes, supported by the SNME-CFDT and SNJ-CGT unions. Thus, in an open letter published Monday July 1 on the social network X, 64 journalists criticize a party that is “not like the others”.
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And for good reason, the National Rally “promotes fascist, xenophobic, racist, sexist, anti-Gbtiphobic and anti-progressive ideas”, list those who believe that “neutrality” must in no case “serve to trivialize or minimize the danger represented by the extreme right”.
This Tuesday, around a hundred employees of the Figaro also took up the pen in a letter sent to the management of the daily, concerned by the speech given by the publication director, Alexis Brézet, in his editorial published Monday July 1st. “The RN program is certainly worrying in many ways, but on the other hand: anti-Semitism, Islamo-leftism, class hatred, tax hysteria…” Leaving part of the editorial team hanging on the following question: “Le Figaro Does it still define itself as a liberal, conservative, pro-European newspaper opposed to the extreme right?
Today’s column: economists sound the alarm
Since the beginning of the campaign, each day has its platform. This Wednesday, July 3, they are three big names in the economy who have taken a stand in the columns of the daily newspaper The echoes. Professor at the Collège de France Philippe Agio, Emmanuel Macron’s former companion, Jean Pisani-Ferry and Alexandra Roulet, winner of the 2024 Best Young Economist Prize.
Those who had “sharply criticized the NFP’s economic program” before the first round are alarmed by a massive arrival of Frontist deputies in the National Assembly, and even a Jordan Bardella in Matignon. This is why, less than five days before the second round, “clear choices” are needed. Thus, they refuse to draw a line of equality “from a narrowly economic point of view” between the programs of the New Popular Front and the National Rally.
“With the NFP, we risk being called to order by the EU and the markets. It would be humiliating and costly, not tragic. But its different components will not agree to free themselves from Europe. On the contrary, with the RN, we risk embarking on a long, solitary journey, and methodically destroying the international solidarity that we have patiently built over the years”, the three economists explain, recalling “once again that the RN is a structured party and that it is armed with a very strong ideology made up of nationalism, rejection of foreigners, aversion to action for the climate and hostility to Europe”.
Today’s war of words: the executive accuses Marine Le Pen of manipulating information
Since the start of the legislative campaign, insults have been flying between the media. They occur as much between members of the same political family as between opposing camps. This Wednesday, after the last council of ministers before the second round, government spokesperson Prisca Thévenot gave Marine Le Pen a sermon: “We know that Marine Le Pen was lying, we now know that she manipulates information”. An abrasive response to the accusations made by the Pas-de-Calais MP re-elected this Sunday against the President of the Republic.
On Tuesday, Marine Le Pen accused Emmanuel Macron of engaging in an “administrative coup d’état”. The appointment of several senior civil servants less than a week before the legislative elections did not fail to irritate the former leader of the National Front deputies, who sees these last-minute assignments as a way to lock down the administration in the event of the National Rally coming to power. Proof, according to Prisca Thévenot, of the ignorance of the Constitution and the functioning of the institutions.
Today’s analysis: “Jordan Bardella’s new speech will not please Marine Le Pen”
While the leader of the RN had made the populist rhetoric “people against elite” her trademark and the recipe for her party’s success, these legislative elections on the contrary herald a return to the old left-right divide.
In an article published on the L’Express website, Thibault Muzergues, political advisor at the International Republican Institute, believes that the return of this division “could perhaps put an end to the populist crisis that we have been experiencing since 2010.”