Left alliance celebrates as France’s far right faces surprise defeat

France’s far-right National Rally was widely expected to win this snap election, but instead they were beaten into third place.

A left-wing alliance called New Popular Front won the most seats, after a highly charged and abbreviated election called only four weeks ago by a weakened President Emmanuel Macron.

National Rally (RN) won the first round of this election, and all the opinion polls since then predicted victory in the run-off round.

Instead, France now faces a hung parliament with no party having anything like a majority.

RN leader Jordan Bardella blamed “unnatural political alliances” for stopping their rise to power.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who was appointed by President Macron only seven months ago, said he would hand in his resignation in the morning, although he pointed out that his Ensemble alliance were on course to win three times the number of seats that had been forecast.

That was in part because 217 candidates, mainly from the left alliance and the Macron camp, had dropped out of the race to help their political rivals defeat RN.

Plenty of people were unhappy about it, but it meant that voters who had backed the centre or the left in the first round then pivoted to a rival party a week later, with the single aim of keeping the far right from taking control of parliament.

Mr Bardella complained that millions of French voters had been deprived of a response to France’s cost of living crisis by what he condemned as “alliances of dishonour”.

“We don’t want power for power’s sake, but to hand it to the French people” Mr Bardella told his supporters.

Party colleague Sébastien Chenu accused the Macron alliance of enabling a left-wing victory, leaving France in a “quagmire” conjured up by the president.