In the middle of the most comprehensive smear campaign against the radical Left that France has seen for the last 50 years, this month’s municipal elections are key struggles for fascists and antifascists alike. The first round on 15th March saw a strong showing for the radical Left and worrying steps forward for the fascists.
The first round of France’s municipal elections took place on Sunday 15th March, with the second round scheduled for the 22nd. Municipal councils in France have considerably more power than their counterparts in many countries. They are responsible, for example, for building and maintaining primary schools, developing social housing, and sometimes running a municipal police force.
The electoral system is a two-round list ballot with a substantial winner’s bonus. A list that comes first —either with over 50% in the first round or with whatever figure in the second round—receives a bonus of roughly half the council seats. The remaining seats are then distributed proportionally among all lists that obtained more than 5% of the vote. In practice, this means that a list winning 51% of the vote will usually obtain around 75% of the seats.
Occasionally, a list wins an outright majority in the first round. If not, a second round is held. Lists that received at least 10% in the first round can stand again or merge with others. Lists scoring between 5% and 10% cannot run independently in the second round but may join a qualified list.
Between the two rounds, lists frequently merge—often among left-wing parties seeking to prevent victory by the right or the far right. These mergers take two main forms. A political merger is based on a shared programme and usually includes a commitment to support the municipal budget. A technical merger, by contrast, simply places candidates from different lists on the same slate without any promise of political solidarity once elected. Supporters argue that this arrangement allows the council’s composition to reflect more democratically the range of opinions in the electorate.
Polarization
In the six years since the last municipal elections, political polarization in France has deepened. President Emmanuel Macron’s camp, the traditional right, and the social-liberal Socialist Party have all lost ground, while both the far right—led by the National Rally (RN)—and the radical left, La France Insoumise (France in Revolt – FI), have expanded their support.
Predictions remain difficult. Turnout in municipal elections can be very low—abstention sometimes exceeds 50 percent—and the alliances formed between the two rounds are often decisive yet highly unpredictable.
A growing section of the traditional right is now willing to ally with the far right, giving the RN hope of taking control of a number of municipalities. Before these elections, fewer than a dozen of the roughly thousand French towns with more than 10,000 inhabitants were governed by the far right, (even though the RN holds 118 seats in the National Assembly and won 13 million votes in the last presidential election under Marine Le Pen). One of the main reasons for this gap is the RN’s historically weak local party organization. Nevertheless, with support from the establishment media, the RN has been promoting the message that it—together with the traditional right—can “save France” from the threat to democracy posed by La France Insoumise!
In three towns in the South -Toulon (170 000 inhabitants), Nice (350,000) and Marseille (850 000), the RN scored high in the first round and may win in the second round. In this last, the second-round result depends on whether the Socialist Party agrees a united Left slate. A rally to demand such a slate is scheduled for Monday night.
In the rest of the country the fascists did not at all see the breakthrough we feared in the big towns, but quite a lot of medium-sized communes saw them improve their score considerably.
The Left and antifascist fronts
On the Left also there has been much turbulence in recent months. The France Insoumise has been subject to a huge smear campaign claiming that the organization and its best-known leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, are hostile to Jews.
The campaign is in many ways identical to the smear campaign in Britain against Jeremy Corbyn around eight years ago. In both cases, left-wing figures elected and re-elected to parliament for decades were never accused of anti-semitism until the Palestine movement and the radical Left became a real problem for the powers-that-be. The arguments used were generally laughable – how much had Corbyn studied some mural? Why did Mélenchon joke that Epstein’s name might be pronounced as if it were a Russian name? Establishment cronies work fulltime sifting through Mélenchon’s very long public speeches looking for ten-second excerpts to misinterpret. All the other classic smears – “friends of dictators”, “threat to democracy” and so on, are also blared out on the media day and night. Because the France Insoumise is getting stronger, the determination of the capitalists to smash it is also reinforced.
The Socialist Party (PS), which was pushed in 2024 into signing up to a radical programme jointly with the France Insoumise, the Greens and the Communists, has been looking for a way to reassert a break with any radicalism. They have joined in the smear campaign against the FI with enthusiasm. Several key figures have been arguing that no alliance should be made in any circumstances, even to keep the fascists out. Raphael Glucksmann, who is likely to be the presidential candidate for the Socialist bloc next year, demanded in a public meeting where he shared the platform with PS General Secretary Olivier Faure this week, that the Socialist Party “break definitively” with the FI. “We cannot fight for democracy with a friend of tyrants among us” he thundered. Leading PS senator, former minister for Women’s rights and feminist, Laurence Rossignol, circulated on social media an extract from my local FI group leaflet, (which committed itself to boycotting companies supporting Israel) ; alongside it she placed a large photo of Nazi graffiti (“Jude”) on 1930s shops in Germany.
Other parts of the Socialist Party, though, will not agree to rule out cooperation, since refusing all alliances would no doubt mean victory for the Right and even for fascists in a number of towns. The Socialist Party, much reduced in parliament since its horrific austerity governments of 2012-17, is still extremely dominant locally. Around half of all towns with over 10 000 inhabitants are run by the PS or by alliances which they dominate. PS mayors govern Paris, Rennes, Caen, Nantes and Montpellier, among many others.
The national council of the Socialist Party voted last week against a national agreement on mergers with France Insoumise lists, but the France Insoumise leadership has proposed technical mergers for the second round with all other left lists, including those of the Socialist Party, in particular in towns where this could stop the fascists from winning. In a few dozen towns, united left lists already existed for the first round. Some second-round mergers will no doubt be announced this week (Toulouse has just announced one) but in other towns, the PS will refuse. PS heavyweight Boris Vallaud grumbled Sunday night “We thought the FI were going to lose out in these elections, but they’ve come out stronger”.
Citizens’ revolution?
The far-right has of course much profited from the attacks on the FI. After a fascist street fighter was killed in a street fight with antifascists in Lyon last month, a death blamed on the FI by the media despite all evidence, far right violence has soared. Dozens of leafletters or fly posters across the country (three in my town of Montreuil alone) have been attacked by fascist individuals. Many FI headquarters have been vandalized and a couple of meetings attacked by groups. Some of the revolutionary left (but not all) has stepped up to loudly defend the France Insoumise. Left wing Jewish groups published an open letter supporting Mélenchon.
The France Insoumise election campaign has been the most dynamic campaign in local elections for decades. A number of meetings with Jean-Luc Mélenchon attracted thousands, and mass door to door canvassing, not a tradition in France, has been generalized in working class estates. La France Insoumise leaflets call for “a citizens’ revolution in your town”, free school meals for all children, rent freezes where the legal instruments exist, requisition of vacant building for housing (just to give a couple of examples) as well as emphasizing green policies, opposition to Trump’s war and active solidarity with Palestine.
Before these elections, the France Insoumise, a young movement, governed only three towns, none of them over 20 000 people. Several impressive results were announced on Sunday night. Saint-Denis (150 000 inhabitants) was won outright. In Roubaix (100 000), the FI got 47%, making victory in the second round almost certain. In the cities Lille, Limoges, Toulouse, Argenteuil and in Montreuil, where I live, FI scores were over 20%.
The good results of the FI have made the PS smear campaign look stupid and unprincipled. In any case, the FI campaign has kept antifascism and opposition to austerity and war in the public eye. It has also ensured that in hundreds of towns there will be a radical left opposition for the first time. Finally, it is clear that for a number of years at least, the France Insoumise, which has progressed at each election, will remain the centre of gravity of the radical Left, and is attracting many of the best young activists. The far left needs to come to terms with this.
Fightback
Recent weeks have seen dozens of antifascist initiatives around the country, some organized by the France Insoumise, others by multiple local alliances. And on March 14th, there were 85 demonstrations around the country, coordinated by the Marche des Solidarités. The slogan on the call to demonstrate showed some anarchist influence and could have been better chosen (“Against racism, fascism and state violence”), but the whole of the radical left supported the demonstrations, and the timing- the day before the first round of crucial elections- was perfect.
If the state-sponsored pogroms we have seen in recent months in Minneapolis have not been happening in Marseille and Lyon, it is partly due to the magnificent antifascist mobilization during the parliamentary election campaign in 2024, which ensured that the National Rally eventually came in third in the number of seats won. All opinion polls had predicted a fascist Prime Minister.
A combination of electoral opposition and permanent antifascist education, combined with harassment of the RN, is the way forward.
