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Ohs oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Tuesday, the ninth of July. I'm zara, i'm emma, France's far right party was expected to dominate in France's election over the weekend, but a surprise swing to the left has resulted in a hung parliament. The results are nothing less than shocking. This was the biggest surprise in French politics for generations.
A left wing coalition that didn't exist a few weeks ago won the most seats in the final round of voting for the French election, but a divided result means there's no clear majority winner. We'll take you through the results and what they mean for the future of France's government in today's deep dive.
But first, Zara.
What's making headlines.
Northern Territory police have announced curfew in Alice Springs. It's the second in three months. Territory police say the decision comes after a recent spike in crime, including assaults against local police. The three day curfew prohibits anyone from entering the Alice Springs CBD from ten pm to six a m. The Anti Police Commissioner can extend the length of the curfew with approval from the Police Minister.
Global plane manufacturer Boeing will plete guilty to fraud charges after the U S Government launched legal action over two separate Boeing seven three seven Max crashes. Two Boeing planes crashed in Indonesia and Ethiopia in twenty eighteen and twenty nineteen, respectively,
killing nearly three hundred fifty people in total. Boeing will now have to pay a penalty of US two hundred forty three point six million dollars that's over three hundred sixty one million Australian dollars for failing to address safety concerns. The company will also need to invest a further four hundred and fifty five million US dollars in compliance and safety programs.
Last month was the hottest June on record. That's according to the European Union's Climate change service Copernicus. New figure show a global average surface air temperature of sixteen point seven degrees celsius. That's nearly zero point seven degrees higher from the nineteen ninety one to twenty twenty June average, while below average temperatures were recorded in the northern and
eastern areas of Australia. Countries like the US, Greece and India are facing some of their hottest summers on record.
And today's good news the UK has elected its highest ever number of women to Parliament. Two hundred and sixty three women won seats in the general election on the fourth of July, according to interim summary results. That's up from the previous record of two hundred and twenty women set at the last election in twenty nineteen. Estimates indicate women now make up around forty percent of the UK Parliament.
M another day, another global election. Yesterday we were of course talking about the UK election and their new PM, kir Starmer. Last week we were talking about the US election and Joe Biden and Donald Trump. But today we have a new entrant into the global election scene, and that is France. It was a bit of an unexpected weekend with the election results taking many by surprise. Can you just start with explaining what the hell is going on in France?
It's a good question.
On the starting point.
Over the past few weeks, as you've mentioned, we've basically been told to brace for a big swing to the far right, in France's elections, but a coalition of left wing parties ended up securing the most votes in the second round of voting over the weekend. And the reason this has come as a big shop to a lot of people is because it follows this recent trend towards
the far right in France. So both at a domestic level during the first round of national elections and at the recent European elections.
I do want to pick up on those European elections and run with that because that really kickstarted this whole process, the whole election process in France. Talk me through those.
Yep, you're exactly right. So President Emmanuel Macron called a snap election last month. That came after his main rival Marine Lapenn led the far right National Rally Party to its best ever result in the EU election. That election doesn't directly impact the composition of the French Parliament at a domestic level, but the result is considered an indicator
of the president's popularity, in this case declining popularity. So he announced an election in light of that, and Macron told voters at the time that he had heard their message from the EU result and that he would address it with a vote so.
It was almost this way for Macron to test the temperature, and obviously when he picked that thermometer up, he wasn't too happy with what it said. So then Macron calls this snap election. How did the rest of France feel about this?
So something pretty remarkable ended up happening within French politics after we saw the far right round that was made up in the EU elections and that has gone on to have some pretty major implications.
So we saw the emergence of.
A new coalition of parties all from the left of politics, in response to concern around this growing influence of La penn and the National Rally Party. We've got this group of socialist communists, left wing alliance parties all working together in sort of really unlikely circumstances. But the socialist leader Olivier for a he said only a united left could stand in the way of the far right. So this movement, this coalition is called the New Popular Front and as
I mentioned, it's an alliance of left wing parties. It's also got this party called France Unbowed included in it. Now that's a party scene as kind of the most extreme far left party in France. It's led by Jean Luke Melenchon, and he's seen as a pretty radical figure in France. He's been in politics since the seventies, but more recently he's been a really vocal critic of NATO. He's been calling for France to leave the Treaty Alliance for a few years. He's also been accused of anti
Semitism over recent campaigns. So quite an extreme figure in the French political landscape.
So this left wing alliance has emerged in response to this surge in the far right wing vote in these EU elections. It is still a bit complex to understand though. How does that impact what's actually happening in France.
Yep, So it's complicated, but stay with me. The timeline essentially is.
Only because you are so niceute.
European Union has elections. That's about the decision makers in the EU, so that body of European nations. But then that's seen as a temperature test of French sentiment and politics and this kind of swing to the far right. So the president says to the country, you seem to be keen.
On this far right party of which Macron is not a member.
Of, not a member. No, so Macron is a centrist leader. He is part of the Ensemble party. So Macron says to the French people, it seems like France is skewing to the far right. Let's go to an election and see if that's how you want your government to look here at home domestically rather than in the EU. So that gives us the French elections.
Okay, And those elections work differently to how they do here. They've split up into two different rounds, right.
Yes, So the first thing to say here is that we're talking about elections of France's National Assembly, it's lower House. These elections, as you say, are held over two rounds to elect five hundred and seventy seven members that make up the lower House. Only candidates who receive more than twelve point five percent of the votes in their electorate progress to the second round of voting.
Yeah.
Round one essentially narrows down the field, and round two gives voters the choice between the most popular candidates in their electorate.
I think this is the first and last time I'm ever going to use a sporting analogy, but it's almost like the heat and then the finals. Yes, thank you. I was really proud of that I've.
Got like a knockout round and then a final okay.
And thank you so much, and just before we go on any further. This election doesn't impact Emmanuel Macron's job in the very literal sense. His job wasn't up for.
Grabs, yeap, His job was not up for grabs. This is a parliamentary election and that's different to the presidential race. So Mcron will be the president of France until twenty twenty seven. His job might change in terms of how he governing with less of a majority or in terms of how he governs with a minority, but we'll get to that. But unlike in Australia, as you mentioned earlierz Aara, the parliamentary system of France, it functions differently. We've got
a president and a Prime minister. The president is elected by French voters every five years. That's the country's head of state. They have control over foreign policy and defense matters. But this election did mean something for the Prime minister in France. So that person is appointed by the President with the approval of the parliament and they serve as the head of government. So we're talking about every day governing and domestic policy matters.
Okay, so I think I understand a bit of the lay of the land now, and just going back to our timeline, we've already had the first round and then most recently we have the second round. What happened in the first round of the election, so.
That was the thirtieth of June round one where we had this historic turnout of voters. Turnout was estimated at sixty seven point five percent, the high turnout since nineteen ninety seven, an interestingly national rally. That's the far right party won the most votes of any party, so they were seen to dominate in that first round, and that is kind of what we were expecting. It's kind of in line with what we saw in the EU elections, so it was this general trend general trends, so what
we were expecting. But it's also the first time that we saw a glimpse of nfp's success among voters. So that's the new left wing alliance. They were formed recently after the EU elections. This is the first time we've put their popularity to the test, and NFP beat mccron's party, the Centrist Ensemble Party. So NFP won about twenty eight point five percent of the vote, in round one ensemble
twenty two percent. So to recap, we had far right National Rally with over thirty percent of the vote, around twenty eight percent with the left wing Party, and around twenty two percent with the Center.
Okay, So that was what happened in round one of the election. Round two then happened over the weekend yeap.
So despite the fact that National Rally won the most votes of any party in the first vote, it came in third overall with.
This second right party YEP.
Sunday's vote actually saw the left wing Alliance NFP take the highest number of seats, around one hundred and eighty. So remember there are five hundred and seventy seven up for grabs, the party with the most votes gets one hundred and eighty. Mccron's party picked up about one hundred and sixty. That's down from two hundred and forty five at the last election, So nearly one hundred seats lost and the far right won about one hundred and forty seats.
Okay. So it wasn't what the first round had necessarily indicated what was going to happen. It kind of flipped on its head. It was exactly the far right it was the Left Wing Alliance. Did that alliance win enough seats to govern in its own right?
So this is where it gets even trickier, because the short answer is no. Two hundred and eighty nine seats are needed to form a majority in the lower house of French Parliament. None of these parties are even close to that. So we've got the party with the most votes, that Left Wing Alliance, on one hundred and eighty. That's one hundred and nine short of where it needs.
So many numbers, Okay, so they're far away from where they need to be in order to govern in an outright majority.
So a bit of a hung parliament exactly, we've got a hung parliament. Now. In Australia, if we had a hung parliament, we'd expect to see the major parties doing deals and negotiating with the minor parties and independents to try and form government. But it's different in France because minor parties have essentially been amalgamated already into these three major parties. They're each coalitions made up of multiple other parties.
So it's not like the Liberal Party and the Labor Party. We're talking about a bunch of different groups all coming together under the same pannel.
And that's a strategic decision that these parties have made based on their political leanings, to kind of try and garner more seats to be a stronger presence. So even Macron's ensemble in the center, that's a coalition of three center parties. So there isn't the option for these players to kind of do those deals with those minor parties and independents. They just don't exist.
Can they do deals with each other? Though, So if there's three kind of main alliances or broad umbrella groups, can say the left wing who emerge victorious do a deal with Macron's centrist party.
That definitely makes more political sense than if that left wing group we're working with the far right. But commentators are indicating that it could be weeks before a deal is reached because no one has indicated that they're inclined
to work together. You've got macrons ensemble in the center who have been vocally critical of members of that far left alliance that Macron has said some parts of that group are, to paraphrase how he's described the situation that there are radical leaders as bad on the far left as on the far right, and he doesn't want to work with them. You've got this kind of deadlock that we end up being left with. And each of these parties give or take, has basically a third of the vote.
And I think that really speaks to the division in French politics. That's the landscape in a nutshell, right, It's this incredibly divided environment.
I don't envy Emmanuel Macron, who among this kind of divided society has to somehow lead through that when it's so clear that he doesn't have the support that he once had or once enjoyed. Another person who has really been feeling the results of this has been Gabriel La Tal, who was the Prime minister. As we said before, the French system has both tell me a bit about him.
Gabrielle Atal is a casualty of this snap election. He's resigned. He has not secured enough of a majority or a minority to lead as prime minister. He's part of Macron's Ensemble party, which has sort of ranked second in this race of three, but he has suggested that he could remain in office throughout the upcoming paras Olympic and Paralympic Games to maintain government, to sort of oversee day to day runnings in a caretaker kind of role. But he's gone.
He's resigned, basically, whether or not he sticks around for the Olympics regardless, you know, he will not be prime minister in the future. The French constitution requires Macron to choose the next prime minister, though, and we have no idea who that's going to be. In a victory speech, Melonchon who is from that left wing alliance, He's called on the president to choose a prime minister from the NFP, from that alliance, but it's not clear who that could be.
Melonchon said that the president has the power and the duty to call the new Popular Front to govern, but we just don't know what that will look like.
And just to clarify, if that were to happen, it would mean that centrist Macron as president is working with a left wing leader in a prime minister and you know they might not see eyda eye, but together they're meant to really rule in harmony, and that's a really challenging situation to be in.
Could be incredibly difficult, and I think when you look to some of nfp's policies and how they kind of butt heads with Macron's agenda, it could be a stalemate kind of a government.
And what's the reaction been like among voters after this second round election?
So if the lead up to the election was any indication of things to come, there's going to be a long road ahead in terms of uniting the French people. Government officials said that there were at least fifty candidates and activists who'd experienced physical violence in the lead up to the election. There was a spate of assaults, dozens of arrests and a significantly ramped up police presence.
Obviously, the far right has not ended up on top as they would have liked. And also what the polls were telling us was going to happen. What have we heard from Marie Leapenn, who's the leader of that far right alliance?
So Lea Penn posted on x saying the tide continues to rise and our victory is now only delayed. So I think it's important to point out while the far right didn't outperform an FP, there was still big momentum for the National Rally Party. They will be counting this as their best ever result in the lower House because it is. It's not a loss by any means for them.
So we'll have to wait and see how this future government, whatever that ends up looking like, is received by voters to really know if the rise or the threat of the far right, which is what the opposition has called it, has subsided. You know, if French voters aren't happy with how the future coalition government manages things, they might want to see change next time they got to vote for their president, and you could see a far right leader
still becoming president. So overall you could say, you know, mccron took a gamble on this snap election. He has kept the far right at bay for now. But I don't think that this conversation is over by any means. We've got a really divided country, a really divided government, and the chaos kind of looks like it's going to continue.
And if that could be the theme of every general election this year, I think it would be at this rate. Thank you so much for explaining that, m and thank you for joining us today on the Daily OS. If you learned something I know I did. Who knew that French elections were so fascinating? You can hit follow if you're listening on Spotify or Apple and if you're on YouTube, you can subscribe so that you can always watch our video podcasts. We'll be back again tomorrow, but until then
or what. My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Caalcuttin woman from Gadigal Country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadigal people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torrestrate island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.