The cordon sanitaire was once a non-negotiable electoral strategy that parties across the French political aisles implemented to block the far right from getting to power, but it is now shattered almost to the point of irrelevance. 2002 was a benchmark electoral year in France’s modern political history. Jean-Marie Le Pen, figurehead of the far-right Front national, made it to the second round of presidential elections in a turn of events few could possibly anticipate – and threw the country in a state of shock. “In the face of intolerance and hatred, there can be no compromise,” the then-incumbent President Jacques Chirac, who was seeking re-election, said at the time: “Never have I accepted an alliance with the Front national in the past, whatever the political cost, and never will.” He went on to win the second round with a Soviet-style 82.21% of the vote. That was a different era, but it speaks of a time when the cordon sanitaire was such an obvious choice that it was hardly questioned. The far-right should never reach higher office, and voters would see to it. Fast forward 22 years, and the cordon sanitaire – otherwise referred to by the French as the ‘Republican Front’ – is at risk of extinction, just as Le Pen’s party, now renamed Rassemblement national and led by his daughter, Marine, and her protegé Jordan Bardella, secured a historic lead in the first round of snap legislative elections. The left ‘Front populaire’ coalition held a clear and unequivocal line: If their candidates make it to the second election round in third place, behind the far right and a pro-Macron candidate, they will drop out of the race in that particular constituency, come what may, so voters can rally behind the lesser of two evils. Other political forces have much murkier stances. President Emmanuel Macron’s Ensemble coalition said time and time again during the campaign that the far right was their only true opponent – yet it spent so much energy vilifying the ‘Front populaire’ and its biggest party, the far-left La France insoumise (LFI), that it successfully turned them into the other side of the same “extremes” coin. |