00:00No one expected the result that we saw yesterday, the far right, the National Rally, was predicted
00:06to gain the most seats, falling short of the majority. Instead, it's the left bloc that
00:12won the most seats. Macron's centrist bloc came second and saved far more seats than
00:19again was predicted, and the National Rally came third. So that was a huge surprise, and
00:25I think for anyone not familiar with the French system, it might be puzzling to understand
00:30how the far right went from winning the first round on the brink of power to losing and
00:40having not as many seats as was anticipated. And the answer to this is this is what can
00:46happen with a two-round electoral system, especially with a strong Republican front.
00:53Now, this is key to understand what happened yesterday. The Republican front means tactical
00:57voting against the far right. It looked tired in 2022, with many voters not willing anymore
01:06to yet again vote against as opposed to for a candidate. But it came back with a vengeance
01:12this time, and that's the main lesson of yesterday, that the Republican front is alive and kicking,
01:20and it explains why the National Rally did not win. And I would say it really shows that
01:27despite the far right being normalized and mainstreamed, it still remains perceived as
01:35a danger by enough voters who mobilized to defeat the far right, to block the far right
01:44from getting power. So that's the main takeaway from yesterday. The victor was not the left
01:52bloc. The real victor is the Republican front. As for Macron, he will feel relieved, first of all,
01:59that the far right is not in power. They won't have to have a cohabitation with the far right.
02:04That he limited the damage because his centrist bloc came second and didn't lose as many seats as
02:12was predicted. However, his gamble to dissolve the National Assembly has spectacularly failed.
02:20He wanted clarification from the electorate. He has got an even more fragmented Assembly than the
02:26one before. He wanted to divide the left. That didn't work. He thought that the vote for the
02:34far right was a protest vote. It's not. It's a conviction vote. He had power. He had authority.
02:41He had a united party. He had a relative majority. Yes, it was difficult, but he still managed to
02:46pass key reforms. And now all that is gone. Even his party is turning against him, as we saw in
02:53yesterday's prime minister's address. So he's lost everything, really. He instigated his own
03:00effacement, his own erasure. And the power now will be in the National Assembly and not with him.
03:06So what's next? I generally don't know. I don't think anyone in France knows.
03:11For very simple reasons, there is no absolute majority for anyone. And if you look at the left
03:17bloc, yes, they won the most seats, but they are roughly 80 to 90 seats short of an absolute
03:24majority. That means they will have to find someone to govern with. They can't do it on their
03:31own. They can't say, we won the election, make me prime minister and we will implement our
03:38programme. They might say this, but the arithmetic reality means that they can't do it because they
03:46don't have enough. They don't have an absolute majority. So it will either be a coalition.
03:54The questions here are who is on which programme? What type of coalition? We might end up with a
04:01technical government where you put in charge a consensual figure and you wait for a year until
04:07the next dissolution because that's the problem. You cannot dissolve the National Assembly for
04:13another year. So even if Macron decided to resign and we have a new president, you will still get
04:20the same National Assembly. So what's going to happen? I generally don't know. I don't think
04:26anyone knows. And the next days, the next weeks, we are going to see a lot of chat, formal, informal
04:32between parties. And we're going to see whether or not they manage to somehow cobble together
04:39a coalition, bearing in mind that France is not known for its consensus culture. So it's going
04:46to be really interesting. But right now it's blocked. There's a gridlock and we need to see
04:53whether some kind of key can be found to unlock it.
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