The French connection
Popular concerns about immigration and inflation have fuelled the rise of France's far right, which scored a win in the first round of the country's election. Leaders of other Western democracies should take note.
The rise of the far-right in France is the latest example of a trend sweeping across many western democracies: a backlash against incumbent governments fuelled by anti-immigration sentiment and frustration over persistent inflation. Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton will both be taking notes.
At the weekend, Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (RN) received more than a third of the national vote in the first round of France’s parliamentary elections. The exact composition of the French parliament won’t be determined until after the final vote this week. But France is now heading towards months of political turmoil, with centrist President Emmanuel Macron’s clout to be seriously diminished.
As the markets have already suggested, the result in France matters well outside the country's borders. As a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council and the world’s seventh biggest economy, the far-right’s grip on power could have ramifications for the war in Ukraine and the geopolitics of the Indo-Pacific, where the country has significant territories such as New Caledonia and French Polynesia.
The far-right has been on the march in Europe for some years, but the surge of RN, which was once confined to the fringes of French politics, has been brought about by its focus on mainstream issues. Le Pen more than a decade ago dialled back the extremist rhetoric of the party founded by her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 1972. She distanced herself from the antisemitism of her father, who she would eventually expel from the party in 2015, in favour of a platform focusing on cost-of-living concerns.
