-Analysis-
ROME — Once again the so-called “republican” discipline has been activated in France. And once again, it blocked far right leader Marine Le Pen’s ultimate victory.
The logic is the following: we were enemies yesterday, we will go back to being enemies tomorrow. You could already see that future from the first post-elections statements by far left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon about the impossibility of working with French President Emmanuel Macron.
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And yet, the majority of the French electorate clearly rejects Marine Le Pen, as it did with her father Jean-Marie Le Pen in 2002. This model works as a defensive front, even if the formation and effectiveness of the next French government is highly questionable. Still, even the simple ability to beat the far right appears to not be exportable to Italy. There are at least three explanations:
Different threats
The first is purely technical: if the French electoral law — like the Italian one — mandated one instead of two rounds of voting, there could be no so-called Front Républicain, the decision by the leftist NFP and Macron’s centrist Ensemble to suppor each other’s candidates at the second round.
The second concerns the nature of the would-be risk to the Republic, both the real and the perceived one: Giorgia Meloni certainly does not represent a modern conservative right. Even while she has adhered to a whole series of constraints from a systemic point of view, and has been pro-Europe and pro-Ukraine, she still maintains a clearly nationalistic approach to politics. But overall, Meloni is not Le Pen, as shown by French leader’s pro-Russian tendencies.
Yet another difference concerns their European ambitions: while Meloni tries to land a European Commissioner from her political group and is ambiguous towards Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen, Le Pen continues to defend the supremacy of national law over EU law, which would have explosive effects on the foundations of the Union.
In fact, the two of them are not in the same political group, and now the new “Patriots of Europe” group with Viktor Orban, which the National Rally (RN) has pledged to join, is challenging Meloni’s EU leadership.
In Italy, nothing moves
It is clear that comparing Italy and France doesn’t work. They’re two different versions of right-wing nationalism. We must also look at the results: Meloni has already won twice, at the legislative elections in 2022 and at the European elections in June.
There is no real point in Italy in sounding the democracy-at-risk alarm
So, there is no real point in Italy in sounding the democracy-at-risk alarm. In general, Italians don’t see Meloni as a risk, and even those who do don’t seem willing to do more to stop it.
Evoking a Popular Front in France also works because of historical reasons, after Léon Blum led a front of Communists, Socialists, Radicals and Republicans to power in the 1930s. Even François Mitterand achieved a unification of the French left in 1971, at the Epinay congress of the Socialist Party.
In Italy, unifying the left has historically never worked. This opens a debate, with the French and the British case as models to follow by the Italian left, either to form a broad coalition that prevents the enemy from getting to power or by creating a political movement that manages to get votes from those that support the enemy as well.
The French case will be widely discussed because it used an emergency to move people to act. In Italy, nothing and nobody moves, not even for defensive purposes. But the left should know by know that the status quo won’t get them anywhere.
