A beleaguered French president has called for unity against the far right in the second round of the vote.
Marine Le Pen and her far-right National Rally (RN) have won big in France’s snap election, garnering reactions from domestic rival parties and politicians abroad.
The RN won close to 34 percent of the vote in the first round of the parliamentary election in what was a major victory – but not one that gives the party an absolute majority in the parliament.
Le Pen, trailed by the left-wing New Popular Front (NFP) coalition with about 29 percent and President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Ensemble alliance with about 20.5 percent, called on the French citizens to vote for her party during the second round.
Despite his defeat, Macron welcomed the high turnout of 65.8 percent, and reiterated his call to stand up to the far right in the second round.
“Faced with National Rally, the time has come for a great union, clearly democratic and republican for the second round,” the president stressed in an official statement.
Jean-Luc Melenchon, the leader of the centre left, said the president suffered a “hard and indisputable defeat” and was to blame for the shock decision to dissolve parliament, but stopping the far right was the priority.
“Not one more vote for the RN, not one more seat for the RN,” he emphasised.
‘Chaos and failure’
In her first comments following the French first-round results, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Monday said the “constant attempt to demonise” far-right voters was losing impact.
“The constant attempt to demonise and corner people who don’t vote for the left… is a trick that fewer and fewer people fall for,” Meloni told the Adnkronos news agency.
In the United Kingdom, election candidate Keir Starmer from the Labour Party said the far-right victory in France proves the left must show “only progressives have answers” to problems in the UK and across Europe.
“We have to make that progressive call. But we have to, in making that, understand why it is, certainly in the United Kingdom after 14 years of chaos and failure, that people do feel disaffected with politics, return politics to service, and continue to make that argument that politics is a force for good,” he said.
