00:02And we're pleased to welcome Damien Lecomte, political science researcher at Paris-Panthéon University.
00:08Thanks for being with us here on France 24.
00:11Irony that the announcement of Lionel Jospin's death comes the day after municipal elections,
00:18which are effectively the starting gun to next year's presidential poll here in France.
00:24Before we talk about last night's results, a word on Jospin.
00:28I remember interviewing him when he was education minister, most notably.
00:33He was somebody who stood out because of his rigor.
00:41He was a different kind of politician.
00:44Yeah, Lionel Jospin was highly respected for his integrity, for his moral integrity and for his intellectual sharpness.
00:51And he was still a very respected moral and intellectual figure among the left wing.
00:57And we have seen a lot of grief shared by the entire left wing spectrum.
01:02Yeah, the tributes pouring in from across the political spectrum.
01:05Of course, being upstanding doesn't necessarily get you elected.
01:10Jacques Chirac was much more of a rough and tumble kind of guy.
01:13Even though he was an unpopular president, he got reelected because Jospin was unable to unify the left.
01:20He had something like eight candidates against him in 2000.
01:23Actually, Lionel Jospin is interesting because he embodies an ambivalent symbol about the unity of the left
01:31because he has led a government of a broad coalition of the left wing for five years.
01:37This was the late 90s period of growth?
01:39Absolutely. And yes, it is a government that is remembered fondly by the left because it was successful in many
01:44ways.
01:45But it ended badly because the left was divided in the subsequent election.
01:50Everybody thought, well, I can run in the first round because it doesn't matter.
01:53Jospin will be there in the second round.
01:54Absolutely. Everybody thought Jospin would win, actually would be qualified for the second round.
01:59It was a given almost, but the division of the left contributed to its elimination to the far right of
02:07all parties.
02:07It is the far right that was qualified in the second round.
02:10So Lionel Jospin is remembered fondly by the left as a good prime minister and the president who could have
02:16been
02:16and the one who was defeated by the division of the left and by the far right rising.
02:22So this presidential election was a very traumatic experience for the left.
02:27And I think that today, when you can see the far right still rising and the left being still divided,
02:34it is going to be something that the left is going to be remembered badly, I think.
02:40It was a trauma. Jean-Marie Le Pen for the left.
02:42Jean-Marie Le Pen, the far right leader who had supported Algeria, remaining French and all the far right causes,
02:58squeaking through to the second round.
03:01And the French learned at the time that there's a big difference between running a campaign for the first round
03:06of a presidential election,
03:08because it's only the top two that qualify for a presidential election and running a campaign for a runoff of
03:14a presidential election.
03:14Yeah, absolutely, because Lionel Jospin did not succeed to unify his own camp on the first round,
03:20probably because the socialists were already focused on the second round and gaining ground with the center, the moderates.
03:27But they did not succeed to unify the left flank and the Greens and the communists and such.
03:36And so that left divided was defeated in the first round.
03:40And that is something that the left should remember today when you see...
03:45Among those paying tribute, another former socialist, and that is Jean-Luc MĂ©lenchon,
03:51who instead founded this hard left party, La France Insoumise, France Unbowed.
03:56And he's accused of being able to run a very good first round campaign,
04:03but with a low glass ceiling that would keep the left out of power again.
04:09Yeah, that is the opposite problem for Jean-Luc MĂ©lenchon.
04:11And Jean-Luc MĂ©lenchon was interesting enough.
04:13He was a minister in Lionel Jospin's government.
04:15And he said at the time that Jospin's government was the most left-wing government in the entire world.
04:21So even if Jean-Luc MĂ©lenchon shifted a little toward the center,
04:28he was still considered to not have converted totally to neoliberalism
04:33like the British Tony Blair or the German Gart Schroeder.
04:37So that is also a reason why he's remembered fondly by the left.
04:40He was someone true to his principles.
04:43Even if he shifted a little toward the center,
04:47he was still true to his left-wing values and principles.
04:50So if you're just joining us here, on Sunday, we had municipal elections,
04:58elections for town halls and for city mayors.
05:02And all the talk this Monday morning was how do you unify the right?
05:09How do you unify the left?
05:10Because the big lesson from Sunday this time around is if it seems splintered in 2002,
05:15today it's times 10, the splintering of French politics.
05:21Yeah, absolutely.
05:22The left-wing is a big issue when you look at this election
05:26because the left is holding its ground in the big cities, that's for sure,
05:30but it is in a difficult position if you look at the big picture.
05:34And obviously there is this issue of the relationship between the united left,
05:38socialists, Greens and communists, and the hard left,
05:42the France Insoumise of Jean-Luc MĂ©lenchon,
05:45because there were often clashes in the first round between the left-wing and the hard left.
05:50And in the second round, in some places, there were alliances and in other notes.
05:55It's kind of impossible to draw conclusions.
05:57In some cases, slates of candidates got defeated because they made an alliance with the hard left.
06:04In others, they got elected because of them.
06:06Yeah, absolutely.
06:06It is the problem.
06:07The left has no obvious solution for the left wing
06:10because it is very hard to hold both ends
06:13because indeed, in many places, the hard left is still a strong part of the left-wing electorate,
06:19so it is difficult to win without them.
06:21But also, they have a repulsive effect for the moderate electorate,
06:26so it is very hard to hold both ends to win in many places.
06:30The left's problem is also the right's problem.
06:34We saw it, for instance, here in Paris,
06:37where the lead candidate, Rachida Dati,
06:42who hails formerly from the Les RĂ©publicains Conservative Party,
06:48she courted the far right in the runoff for those municipal elections
06:56and was soundly beaten by this man who rode his city bike to his victory speech at City Hall,
07:04and that is Emmanuel Grégoire.
07:06Nicholas Rushworth has more.
07:11Thank you all.
07:13Paris has a new mayor, Emmanuel Grégoire.
07:16He's celebrated with a bike ride, his win, after a tense campaign,
07:20and under a list of united left and greens,
07:22extends the socialist quarter-century rule in the French capital.
07:28Tonight, this victory represents a promise, a demanding one,
07:32the triumph of a certain vision of Paris,
07:34a vibrant, progressive Paris,
07:36for the people,
07:38a Paris for everyone.
07:41Emmanuel Grégoire was a deputy to outgoing mayor Anne Hidalgo,
07:45relations between them had been poor
07:47after she accused him of failing to back her unsuccessful 2022 presidential bid.
07:54Grégoire was born in the working-class Parisian suburb of Saint-Saint-Denis
07:58into a family with roots in the Communist Party.
08:00He was a consultant in the medical sector before turning to politics.
08:05His win now comes as France gears up for next year's presidential race,
08:09with the far right eyeing its best chance yet to claim the country's top office.
08:15From Monday, our country enters its next democratic challenge,
08:18the 2027 presidential election.
08:21We had a taste of it during these municipal elections.
08:24The battle for France will be brutal, violent and crucial.
08:29He has said he feels he's sometimes portrayed as dull
08:32when he is super cheerful, always laughing and really down to earth.
08:37He has pledged to increase the number of green spaces
08:39and the number of bike lanes in Paris.
08:44With Damien Lecomte, Damien, yes, spotlight on Paris, France's largest city, the capital.
08:49Jacques Chirac used it as a springboard to becoming president back in 1995.
08:57Emmanuel Grégoire, traditional socialist, he congratulated his team.
09:03He made alliances with some but not all.
09:07And an old-school kind of politics.
09:09And that formula did work to a certain degree.
09:12But again, these are local elections, not national elections.
09:15And the big tent, the old parties, the conservative, les républicains, the socialists,
09:20did pretty well on the night.
09:22Yeah, absolutely.
09:22What is clear is that the largest cities are leaning strongly toward the left,
09:27and especially the moderate left, the socialists and the greens.
09:31But the rest of the country, not so much.
09:34So this is a story not just about France, but the whole world, right?
09:36Yeah, absolutely.
09:37The big cities are for using your bicycle in town,
09:42and it's in the countryside where there is this fear of globalization.
09:47And also, I want to point out that it has not been sent a lot yesterday,
09:53but the national rally, of course, did not score many big victories in larger cities.
09:58But the far-right national rally has still made real inways in the small and medium-sized cities.
10:06And it has increased the number of elected officials,
10:10which means that they probably will make gains in the Senate,
10:14because the local elected officials are the electors for the Senate.
10:18And also, we have seen that there is a growing overlap between the far-right electorate
10:23and the traditional right-wing conservative electorate in a lot of countryside cities.
10:27So there is this sharp division between the biggest cities led by the left-wing,
10:34the socialists and the greens, and the rest of the country,
10:36which is much more conservative, and where the national rally, the far-right,
10:40is still establishing a foothold.
10:43So local elections with slates of candidates,
10:46very different system from the presidential poll next year,
10:49where it's a national election.
10:52Are there any conclusions that we can draw regarding next year?
10:56What can we say looking ahead to 2027?
10:59We must be very cautious, because we have seen that in 2020 and 2021,
11:04the local elections were won by the traditional party, the Socialists and the Conservative,
11:09and both their candidates made very poor results in the 2022 presidential election.
11:15Anne Hidalgo and Valérie Pécresse, they were under 5%.
11:19Absolutely. So we must be very cautious.
11:21But what we can say is that the national rally, the far-right, is still making gains.
11:26So clearly it has now not spectacular victories in big cities,
11:30but it is still establishing a strong presence in the local level.
11:35And both the left-wing and the right-wing have a problem of unity to end.
11:41Do the French want a radical break with the past,
11:44or do they want some kind of a consensual figure to emerge?
11:50Well, I think the French are very divided in this issue,
11:53but I think that maybe the force of a national rally now
11:57is that it succeeds to both be an anti-system party,
12:00but also to be the law and order party and the one that is going to establish order,
12:08but a new one breaking with the old system.
12:11All right. And the national rally, whose leader Marine Le Pen was in Budapest today.
12:16We'll be telling you more about that after the break.
12:19Damien Lecomte, I want to thank you for joining us here.
12:21Thank you for inviting me.
12:22Stay with us. Yeah.
12:23Well, there's more news to come, including that visit to support Hungary's Viktor Orban,
12:29whose relationship with Moscow is coming under scrutiny,
12:32plus today's business and sports.
12:34You're watching France 24.
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