PARIS — With presidential elections fast approaching, the French left is once again in tatters. Half a dozen contenders – totaling just over a quarter of the vote, according to the latest polls – are currently vying for the same dwindling electorate. As none of the leftist candidates wins more than 10% of the vote, their chances of reaching the second round in the presidential vote in April are slim.

France‘s progressive voices are drowned out in a campaign dominated by incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, who has yet to even officially declare his candidacy but is widely expected to seek re-election, and various right-wing candidates. The slide to insignificance is a dramatic shift for a country that has long been used to alternating between social democrats and conservatives at the head of government, with two socialist presidents elected since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

The left’s apparent inability to find its way back to government in France, one of the largest and most important countries in the European Union, also raises questions about the consequences for Europe at a time of debate. fierce internals on the bloc’s fiscal soul, the balance between EU and national laws, and how to handle immigration.

PARIS — With presidential elections fast approaching, the French left is once again in tatters. Half a dozen candidates in the running – totaling just over a quarter of the votes, according to the latest surveys—are currently vying for the same dwindling electorate. As none of the leftist candidates wins more than 10% of the vote, their chances of reaching the second round in the presidential vote in April are slim.

France’s progressive voices are drowned out in a campaign dominated by incumbent President Emmanuel Macron, who has yet to even officially declare his candidacy but is widely expected to seek re-election, and various right-wing candidates. The slide to insignificance is a dramatic shift for a country that has long been used to alternating between social democrats and conservatives at the head of government, with two socialist presidents elected since the start of the Fifth Republic in 1958.

The left’s apparent inability to find its way back to government in France, one of the largest and most important countries in the European Union, also raises questions about the consequences for Europe at a time of debate. fierce internals on the bloc’s fiscal soul, the balance between EU and national laws, and how to handle immigration.

The French left never recovered from the blow it received in 2017 when Macron, whose centrist rhetoric attracted dozens of moderate leftists, hurt the Socialist Party and left the progressive camp weakened and divided.

“Macron’s ‘social liberalism’ has sucked the blood of the left,” said Luc Rouban, a political scientist at Sciences Po University in Paris.

Much like the castaways painted by Théodore Géricault, the disaster left France’s progressive leaders adrift and trapped in their infighting.. “For five years, the left has been trying to settle its accounts internally on the reasons for the election of Emmanuel Macron,” said Guillaume Lacroix, president of the Radical Left Party. “For five years we have been prisoners of a debate about what happened, a debate about the past.”

The list of leftist presidential candidates includes radical brandon Jean-Luc Mélenchon, Greens Yannick Jadot, French Communist Party leader Fabien Roussel, former justice minister Christiane Taubira and socialist mayor of Paris Anne Hidalgo. At the end of January, the “people’s primary”, an online vote organized by activists with the aim of selecting a common candidate, failed to bring the long-awaited unity. The losing candidates refused to side with Taubira, a left-wing icon who easily ranked highest among the nearly 400,000 poll participants.

To people on the left, “these divisions appear totally petty given the serious problems facing French society,” said Samuel Grzybowski, spokesman for the popular primary who now backs Taubira. But the candidates “prefer to retain a strong role for themselves, each losing the presidential election separately, to a less central role within a coalition capable of winning”, he said. According to a survey released last month, more than a third of respondents on the left said they would not run on election day, compared to just 8% of Macron supporters.

The deep crisis of the French left runs counter to a generally positive trend for progressives in Europe. In recent months, social democratic parties have won national elections in Germany and Portugal. The Socialists have been in power in Spain since 2018; and in Italy, despite the rise of right-wing populists, such as the Lega Nord and the Brothers of Italy, the centre-left Democratic Party is currently Accompaniement polls.

But France has become a barren land for leftist parties. “Overall, the center of gravity of public opinion is currently on the right,” Rouban said. Although hostility towards migrants remains inferior than in the 1980s and 1990s, a Sciences Po 2021 to study found that the French electorate was significantly more conservative on immigration and capital punishment than a decade ago.

The French left has lost much of the working class to the far right or abstentionism, like other Western countries in recent decades. But Macron has also siphoned off many highly educated voters who elsewhere make up the core of the left. Wedged between Macron and the far right, which appeals to the working class with a mix of nativism and social spending measures, the French left is struggling to find its footing. Another left-leaning presidential candidate, Arnaud Montebourg, saw his candidacy die out after he proposed blocking private money transfers to countries that do not take back their undocumented immigrants. The announcement, which echoed the platforms of far-right populists like Éric Zemmour and Marine Le Pen, backfired dramatically. Montebourg pulled out of the campaign in January, after peaking at 1% in the polls.

In contrast, the other candidates try to showcase their leftist pedigrees by offering flashy – and expensive – aid to win back the hearts and minds of the underprivileged. Taubira has pledged up to 20,000 euros to help those who take part in its proposed youth programs; Jadot offers an annual “energy balance” for some 6 million households. All agree to increase taxes on the big fortunes and increase the minimum wage.

But in 2017, socialist candidate Benoît Hamon’s proposal for a “universal income” did not save him from an electoral debacle: he obtained a dismal 6%, the worst score ever recorded by the socialist party in its form. current. Nearly half of those who voted Socialist in the previous election switched to pro-business newcomer Macron.

A great change that has become apparent During the last decade: Swing voters who don’t identify as left or right have become more liberal on the economy amid widespread skepticism about the very recipes that laid the foundation for the country’s post-war boom. Redistributive policies that tamed economic inequality after World War II are now presented as radical and unrealistic.

“It’s an ideological battle that we have partly lost,” said Jean-Francois Debat, socialist mayor of Bourg-en-Bresse in eastern France and an ally of Hidalgo. “Rising economic liberalism has made the tools of social democracy more necessary but sometimes more difficult to implement.”

As in other Western countries, the French electorate is grappling with a crisis of confidence. French voters’ confidence in political parties in France has fallen since the late 1990s, becoming one of the lowest in Europe. This makes life especially difficult for parties whose rhetoric revolves around big government and generous public spending. At the same time, broadcasters are giving more space to Macron and far-right candidates, said Amory Gethin, a researcher at the Paris School of Economics. “Television and the media offer a boulevard to the far right,” he said.

France can boast of a solid left-wing tradition. In 1871, following a disastrous war against Prussia, the Paris common sought to establish direct democracy in the French capital before being crushed in a bloodbath by counter-revolutionary forces. In the mid-1930s, the Popular Front coalition improved the lives of millions of workers with measures such as paid holidays and a 40-hour work week. In the 1980s, in stark contrast to the ultra-liberalism of then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and then-US President Ronald Reagan, the French placed socialist Francois Mitterrand in the Élysée twice.

Even today, French leftist attitudes are anything but dead. The French Revolution entrenched a lasting hostility to social privilege that is still felt in cities across the country, with Ancien Régime palaces and gardens turned into museums and public parks. Despite some mood swings detected by polls, “the French remain very attached to public services and safety nets,” Rouban said.

Yet the tides of history lift no boat for the French left today. Some cling to a comeback, noting that nearly half of people have no made their decision how they will vote in April. Left hopefuls can still join forces; talks have recently taken place between Taubira and Jadot, but the campaigns are said to be far from concluded.

But the reluctance of left-wing candidates to recreate a united front suggests that they prefer quarrel on the raft rather than righting it.

“The ship sank,” Rouban said, and the various left-wing leaders “cling their separate lifeboats.