Well that did not go very well in the French elections. I was initially very pleased to see that the turnout was the best in forty years, and the registration for postal votes very high. Despite the last minute nature of the elections, Macron called them after the painfully bad results in the low turn out European elections; Hoping that holding a gun to the French populations head may clear our hard right and hard left vote. The elections, well the first round went as expected, the white working class voted overwhelmingly for Marine Le Pen’s rebranded Ressamblement National, the old Front National now fronted by smart young white males with a good line in patter but only a very loose hold on policy.

The Left’s defensive alliance did as well as they could, relying predominantly on the public sector and middle class vote. The Left’s ability to reach out to the marginalised and alienated population was minimal, whereas the RN showed that it could mobilise the white sections of those groups, particularly in the deindustrialised North. The Communist leader lost his seat in the first round to such a vote.

The key now is the attitude of the centre right leaders and their voters in the second round. A whole raft of seats now face a triangulation, three occasionally four candidates made it through to the second round. The Left have announced that where they are in the third place they will withdraw their candidate and urge an anti RN vote. The centre right are not so clear. After spending the last week denouncing the “two extremes” as being as bad as one another Macron waffled on about supporting the Republican candidates, without making it clear who was in that holy camp; and who was not. Socialist but not Melenchon candidates, Greens but not Communists who knows? If the leaders and not so clear then the intention of their first round supporters is equally vague. Has the branding of the Left as a bunch of anti Semite police hating closet Hamas terrorists by the millionaire owned media mean that holding your nose and voting fascist is now acceptable? Certainly there is a group of Republicans, the party Sarkozy so successfully ran into the ground, that see it that way, the centre ground is a little more difficult to read.

They say in French election you vote in the first round for the candidate you want, and you vote in the second round against the candidate you don’t want. Does the centre not want Marine or Melenchon the most?

What is clear that the Assembly will be a mess afterwards an increased extreme right, a possibly larger Left, and a massively reduced centre. A technocratic government seeking support policy by policy is probably the best of a bad bunch of choices. Successive groups trying to form an non existent majority and all failing the worst .

Either way Macron gamble has failed, there is no a silent centre just waiting to be heard. There is alienation and despair, which does no tend to bring out the best in people.

So next Sunday let’s hope for the largest possible Left vote, some clear line form the marginal leaders, especially the one holding the Presidency;