The French electoral system, based on the double-voting single-member majority, has often allowed the Socialist Party to survive despite frequent bleeding of consensus. Not infrequently the agreements in the second round have saved the center-left candidates for a corner not only because of the convergence of the votes of the radical left, but even with the support of the center-right, so as to isolate the uncomfortable candidates of the Front National, often the first party in the individual colleges.
The principle also made sense on the contrary. The biggest demonstration was the 2002 presidential ballot when the votes of the left allowed Chirac to defeat Jean Marie Le Pen and prepare for the second term.
The French system guarantees stability but creates a certain embarrassment in the institutions, held up by the fear of nationalist extremism but in the facts that are less and less representative of popular sentiments.
This process has been consolidated for at least twenty years. More or less since Europe has turned from a declaration of intent to a rope around the neck of many, including French. The constant rise of the Front National is evidently linked to the whole process.
French Europeanism has always divided itself between left-wing internationalists who, like their counterparts around the world, are fighting for a world ideally without frontiers and advocates for a return of France to an undefined grandeur.
If the former seem to come out of a film by Michel Leclerc and end up becoming witnesses of princes valued only in the intellectual circles of big cities, the latter must come to terms with two great contradictions:
in Brussels we speak more German than French and the grandeur, already compromised on a global scale, appears difficult to resurrect even on a continental scale;
the return of France to the NATO integrated command that took place in 2009 after 43 years of independence, is in fact a submission to American geopolitics, not always historically aligned with the ambitions of Paris.
For both people it seems increasingly difficult to satisfy the popular sentiment rooted in rural areas, the millenary backbone of a nation with great agricultural traction and consensus reservoir for Marine Le Pen.
If deep France is on the wings of an increasingly anti-European revanchism, the drama could seem more socialist than Gaullist. But it is possible to pour France at the Elysium: it is also possible to cherish themes dear to the FN such as the restoration of border controls with Italy. Obviously to the health of the Parisian European gauche and above all that of the south of the Alps.
How much this depends on the national sentiment of the French, which often goes beyond ideological differences or electoral calculations, is hard to say.
The socialists have lost 150 municipalities to the 2014 administration and are missing for the 2017 presidential elections, where the FN will likely triumph and Sarkozy will return to office.
President Hollande and Interior Minister Cazeneuve know this well.
We cannot know if borders are closed for France or pour la chaise. Politics combines its interests with public ones all over the world, you know.
Which of the two most weighty factors is not so important. What matters is that the French institutions respond to a very strong demand from below.
Electoral and party systems can sometimes be less than vox populi. That voice that the French express with a sense of extraordinary community, from which we Italians can only learn.
(photo: Ministère de la Défense)
