The Left Alliance surprisingly won as the largest bloc in the French election. But the big question still remains: who will become the Prime Minister?
It needs to be someone centrist, says expert Göran von Sydow.
In the second round of the parliamentary election, it became clear that the Left Alliance, New People's Front, is the winner of the election, with over 180 seats in the National Assembly.
The big surprise was that the far-right party, National Rally (RN), led by Marine Le Pen, did not become the largest.
So, who is the Left Alliance, New People's Front?
It's a very diverse movement. The French left has been very divided on many different issues, which has been to their disadvantage in an electoral system that favors cooperation, says Göran von Sydow, head of the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies (Sieps).
Besides the Left Party, Unsubmissive France, and the Socialist Party, the Greens, Ecologists, and the Communist Party are also part of the alliance.
Not united on key issue
The big question is now who will govern. On that issue, the Left Alliance has so far not been able to agree on a candidate for the Prime Minister's post.
It will need to be someone who is more centrist, who both the Left Alliance and Macron's liberal alliance, Together, can agree on. Either a candidate from the Left Alliance or from the liberal alliance.
At the same time, the leader of the Left's largest party, Unsubmissive France, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, came out yesterday and thought that he himself or their movement, as the largest single party within the People's Front, should lead a government. But many reacted very negatively to that, says von Sydow.
What decided the election
One reason for the Left Alliance's success is that several candidates from both the New People's Front and Macron's Together gave up their candidacies between the first and second rounds, to block the far-right party, National Rally, from winning.
It was surprising how well the cooperation between parties that wanted to make it difficult for National Rally has worked. And that voters mobilized and showed that it was an important election, says von Sydow.
At the same time, one should not forget that the far-right party, with Le Pen at the helm, actually made progress in the election.
Even though they didn't win the election, National Rally did better than in the previous election and made strong progress.
