France’s left-wing and centrist parties have withdrawn hundreds of candidates from Sunday’s parliamentary elections, in a move aimed at thwarting the formation of the country’s first far-right government since World War II.
Macron’s centrists and the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) hope they can prevent such an event, with the president telling a closed-door meeting of ministers at the Elysee Palace on Tuesday that the top priority was blocking the RN from power.
That would involve supporting members of the far-left France Unbowed party (LFI) if necessary, Macron said, despite some opposition from members of his own party.
What Macron has lately been calling “far-left” would have been considered middle of the road leftism only a couple years ago. Macron has pulled such a massive shift of the Overton window --what with calling himself a centrist when all of his policies are right-wing, and constantly calling anyone that’s left of him “far-left”-- that it’s no surprise right-wing extremism is totally normalized now. LFI is not far-left, and I wish the media would stop repeating and thus normalizing that idea.