The New Popular Front alliance looked like the best hope the left had against Macron and Le Pen. But after months of internal conflicts, it’s on the brink of collapse.
The New Popular Front alliance looked like the best hope the left had against Macron and Le Pen. But after months of internal conflicts, it’s on the brink of collapse.
The “reasonable left”, the PS, wants to say that they still play ball, that they can be part of a government, that they’re not here to destroy the country, that they can work to keep the institutions working. But they never get any compromise going in their favor, and when they say “see, we tried” it’s already too late, and nothing they do gets anywhere, after they’ve killed anything the actual left tries.
This is not reasonable. This is collaboration. We have proof of where that goes with the Democrats in the US. Only the right wing calls them reasonable because they allow the right to pass everything they want. Reasonable means you sign off on everything and get nothing.
Many European democracies are rather different than the one in the US, though. They harbour the possibility for more than two relevant parties. The Democrats hold such a varied spectrum of opinions and views that it could consitute of three or four parties in itself, but they communicate as one. So I think it is difficult to really make assumptions from US politics that could be easily copy-pasted on most of the political systems in European countries.
In recent years the left was quite insignificant in France, but now they hold some cards. Especially since RN is widely considered unreasonable. It is a delicate situation, maybe the left could now have some demands if the government sees a necessity for them, but so far the government has just managed to get through with their plans (with some dubious shortcuts). I doubt making the government collapse and forcing new elections will help much. Especially now that security is an important aspect, which often is not a strong platform for left wing parties (as voters make assumptions)(also since LFI wants France to leave NATO). And what does the left do if they are in the lead to form a government, but no other parties are willing to form a government out of spite?