French left begins discussions on selecting PM candidate

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00:00Senior figures from the four parties that make up the new popular front are meeting

00:04this Monday to talk what's next and decide on a potential candidate to put forward as

00:09Prime Minister.

00:10Well, we can cross to our reporter Sophie Lamotte, who's standing by at the France Unbowed

00:15Parties HQ.

00:16Sophie, then, is there any clues on how these parties plan to carve a path forward?

00:23Well, that's a big question, Carys, obviously.

00:27These are quite surprising results.

00:29As you've mentioned, these are going against all odds, all of the exit polls that we've

00:34seen before the second round of voting.

00:37The new popular front has now landed 182 seats.

00:40It's quite far from the 289 required for an absolute majority.

00:45That means they'll have to form coalitions in Parliament.

00:48Before that even happens, they'll have to find consensus within their own coalition,

00:53within their own parties.

00:54We're just outside the France Unbowed Party.

00:57We're expecting to see many of the party members come here, discuss what they're going

01:03to do next, essentially, how they're going to select a Prime Minister, who they're going

01:08to select as Prime Minister.

01:10As you know, the new popular front ran these elections without a figurehead.

01:15That's because it would have been a lot more difficult to find consensus with other parties.

01:20And formally, the choice of Prime Minister is that of the President, President Emmanuel

01:25Macron, who chose Gabriel Attal.

01:27Gabriel Attal is expected to give in his resignation today.

01:30He said he'd stay in a position as long as needed, but he'll essentially be vacating

01:35the job.

01:36And now the new popular front is expected to put a name forward as a new Prime Minister

01:41to replace Gabriel Attal.

01:43They'll have to work through a lot of disagreements in order to select that person, though.

01:49And it's not just the potential person that they're going to put forward as Prime Minister

01:54that these parties might have trouble agreeing on.

01:57These parties have typically had, you know, long held divisions over a number of issues.

02:03Can we see them overcoming this to unite?

02:07Absolutely, we've seen a foreign policy, especially be quite a divisive issue within the coalition,

02:17with each party having their own stance on things like Gaza, for example, France Unbound

02:23has notably been quite criticized for not, you know, denouncing Hamas as a terrorist

02:28group.

02:29We've seen some internal conflicts after the European elections with Rafael Gluzman, the

02:33head of the Socialist Party, really been taken, been criticized by all of his opponents.

02:41But here today, or at least in the upcoming weeks, we're going to be looking at internal

02:46conflicts.

02:47And the first one is going to be the method chosen to select a Prime Minister.

02:51Some of them are saying that there should be internal elections within the coalition,

02:57within parties.

02:58Even others say that the party that's got the most seats in Parliament should be the

03:01one to have their Prime Minister sit in that seat.

03:05So even the method of choosing a Prime Minister is up for grabs and we don't really know what's

03:11going to happen there.

03:12We'll have to see if they manage to find common ground.

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