France facing 'troubled times irrespective of the outcome of this election'

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00:00Welcome. We start here in France, where a record number of candidates have dropped out

00:07of the race for Parliament. 221 politicians, most of them from the centre and from the

00:12left, pulled their names from Sunday's ballot. The aim is to deprive the far-right national

00:19rally of an absolute majority by not splitting the vote. Oliver Farrie has this first report.

00:29France's so-called Republican Front against the far-right hold up. Dozens of candidates

00:34have stepped aside from Sunday's second round to make it happen. According to Le Monde,

00:38the second round will now have 95 three-way races, three times fewer than expected. There

00:43will also be only one four-way race instead of five. In all, 221 candidates have withdrawn.

00:51132 of them are from the left-wing New Popular Front and 83 from the ruling Ensemble Coalition.

00:58The two groups were the only ones to call for candidates to withdraw in the event of

01:02possible far-right wins in their races. There have been a few exceptions in the government

01:07camp. In three constituencies where the national rally came first, Ensemble candidates who

01:11finished third stayed in the race. But will voters heed the endorsements for the second

01:17round? While candidates withdrawing could thwart the national rally in its quest to

01:21get the required 289 seats, it needs to get an overall majority. A reluctance by some

01:27voters to cast a ballot for candidates they disagree with could also benefit Marine Le

01:32Pen's party.

01:33Well, I'm pleased to welcome to the programme now Rainbow Murray. She's a politics professor

01:41at Queen Mary University to you. Hello, thanks for joining us today.

01:45Thank you for having me.

01:47So as we saw in that report, over 200 candidates have stood down ahead of the second round.

01:52How likely in the light of that do you think it is that the national rally will be able

01:57to achieve an absolute majority?

02:01Never say never, but I think it has significantly decreased the likelihood that the national

02:06rally are going to get the magic number of 289 seats. We already saw that they performed

02:11slightly less well on Sunday than some of the polls had suggested they would, 33% rather

02:17than 37%. If you now add on the efforts that the other parties have made to avoid splitting

02:23the vote against them, it looks like they're going to face an uphill challenge now to get

02:28an absolute majority. So now the question is, will they be able to govern with a minority

02:33or will the other parties be capable of uniting against them to form an alternative government?

02:38Yeah, and I want to look at some of those scenarios with you. But first of all, let's

02:43talk about those candidates dropping out in a bit more detail, because they have told

02:49their supporters in effect, vote for whichever party is not the far right one on Sunday.

02:55But voters, of course, are independent minded people. They may not do what they're told.

03:01Do you think there is a big risk that there will be quite a few people in France on Sunday

03:06who stay home because there's no candidate on the ballot that particularly appeals to

03:11them?

03:13Yes, that's the great unknown. What will the people who no longer have their preferred

03:17candidates on the ticket choose to do instead? Will they bite the bullet and vote for a candidate

03:24they don't like in order to block a candidate they like even less? Or will they simply stay

03:28at home? We've even seen a couple of candidates who've refused to withdraw and have stayed

03:34in a three way race, saying that they're doing so because they're doing so in the interest

03:38of democracy and boosting turnout and giving their voters a true choice rather than forcing

03:51them to choose between two unpalatable options. So we saw really high levels of turnout last

03:56Sunday and I think that will go down this Sunday. But the extent to which it does is

04:00unknown and that's one of the great uncertainties of this election.

04:04Right. So let's look then at some of the possible scenarios if, as you say, the most likely

04:11reality unfolds, which is that the national rally don't get that absolute majority. Parties

04:16are going to try and form coalitions. But who's going to have the numbers to actually

04:22do that? Because if we look, first of all, just at the president's bloc, even if they

04:28pull together the Greens, the socialists from the left, Les Republicains from the right,

04:36it's not that many seats, is it? And Emmanuel Macron, the president, saying today he won't

04:43be working with the hard left party, France Unbowed.

04:47I think we can say with a certain degree of certainty that if the national rally don't

04:51get an absolute majority of seats, no other formation will. The real sticking point is

04:57La France Insoumise, the far left bloc. If it were theoretically possible to include them

05:05in an alliance with all the other parties left of the far right, then if the far right don't

05:11get a majority, technically the other parties could. The problem is that the far left cannot

05:17work with the other parties. They can work with some of the ones on the left, but they

05:21can't work with the centre and certainly not with the right. And we've already seen Macron's

05:26party saying very clearly that they are not willing to work with the far left and the

05:30feeling is mutual. But the far left are likely to get enough seats to prevent the other parties

05:35from being able to do very much without them. So even if we saw some kind of unity government,

05:42technical government, coalition of, you know, grand coalition of sorts, the absence of the

05:47far left from that formation means that it would still be operating as a minority government,

05:53which means ultimately this election won't have solved the problem that it was initially called

05:58to solve, which was to get past the minority government we've had for the past two years.

06:02Is it not possible that the national rally could cobble together a coalition of its own

06:07with some people from Les Republicains, some people from the extreme right as well?

06:12They're certainly going to try. And they'd said until yesterday or today that they weren't

06:19willing to govern without a majority. And today Marine Le Pen has conceded that maybe

06:25if they don't quite get the seats but could persuade other people to come on board with

06:29them, that would also be OK. Can they get other parties to join forces with them on the extreme

06:34right? I would say yes. From the Republicans, it's a bit more complicated because the party

06:39has already split the dividing line being those who are willing to join forces with the far right

06:45and those who weren't. So those who haven't already joined with the far right and maybe those

06:50who are reluctant to do so, whether the temptation of being in power might be enough to sway them,

06:55it remains to be seen. But the real question, of course, is whether even with their support,

07:00the far right have enough seats to do it. And we won't know that for certain until the final

07:05ballot is in. Absolutely. A couple of questions for you on the scenario that nobody's able to

07:12form a coalition government and we have a hung parliament in France. What does that look like?

07:17What gets done then, if anything? It's going to be a big mess. It's been a mess for the last

07:23two years and the government has really struggled to pass its agenda. But at least in the last two

07:29years, there have been two saving graces. One is that the government was of the same party as the

07:34president. So we didn't have a scenario of cohabitation. And the second was that up until

07:39recently, the Republican Party on the right have been effectively propping up a centrist government.

07:46If those two things change, if we end up with a government that isn't propped up enough to

07:52be able to maintain a vote of confidence, and if it isn't supported by the president,

07:56then we hit a real situation of stalemate, where it's going to be very difficult for anything to

08:01be achieved. And France is basically going to limp on until such time as it's able to call another

08:06election. So I think we are seeing some quite troubled times irrespective of the outcome of

08:11this election. And just a final question for you, something that's been floated here in France over

08:16the past couple of days is that a technocratic government of sorts could be formed. We've seen

08:22similar scenarios in other European countries after inconclusive elections. Could that happen?

08:28What might that look like, do you think? It's certainly an idea that's been floated. And as

08:32you've correctly noted, it's something that has been tried in a few other countries such as Italy.

08:37These governments tend to be relatively short lived. I think the biggest challenge that it

08:43would face would be the perceived lack of a democratic mandate, that it wouldn't necessarily

08:49be seen as a very legitimate government. So I think as a stopgap to see France through a period

08:58of uncertainty and ensure that government still functions, it might succeed. But it's not going

09:03to be a long term solution, because I think people are going to recognise that it doesn't have

09:08the benefit of a popular mandate in the way that I think government would wish to do.

09:14Rainbow Murray, great to talk to you. Thanks very much.

09:16Thank you.

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