Violence in Paris as Conservatives soundly defeated in General Election. UK Conservatives also soundly rejected by Voters

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Violent clashes break out in Paris after shock exit poll results in France’s general election​

Violent clashes erupted on the streets of France after a shock win for the country’s left-wing coalition blocked the far-right from taking power in the country’s snap general election.

Protesters could be seen launching flares, setting e-bikes on fire and clashing with police as thousands of officers were deployed across France.


It comes after the left-wing New Popular Front won 182 seats, followed by president Emmanuel Macron’s centrist Together alliance on 168 and the far-right National Rally in third with 143 seats - in a bitter blow for Marine Le Pen’s party.

National Rally had held a commanding lead after the first round of voting late last month, but more than 200 candidates from the centre and left stepped down in seats to avoid splitting the vote against Le Pen candidates.


Following the results, prime minister Gabriel Attal said he would offer his resignation. But with no party within 100 seats of an absolute majority of 289, Mr Macron asked him to stay in the short term while France faces political deadlock.

Mr Macron took even his own allies by surprise in calling the snap election after RN made huge gains in European elections, gambling that French voters would block the far right.


The results mean Mr Macron is likely to be saddled with a parliament containing many hostile MPs for the final three years of his presidency, with the leader of the largest party in the New Popular Front, France Unbowed (LFI), declared immediately after the exit poll that Mr Macron should invite his coalition to form a government.

Describing the projections as an “immense relief for a majority of people in our country”, Jean-Luc Melenchon said: “The will of the people must be strictly respected... the defeat of the president and his coalition is clearly confirmed.”

But Mr Macron’s interior minister Gerald Darminin shot back that “no one can say they have won this legislative election, especially not Mr Melenchon”.

Demonstrators climb on the Monument a la Republique during a protest following the legislative election results in France (Getty Images)© Provided by The Independent
In a sombre speech after polls closed, Ms Le Pen’s protege Jordan Bardella – who had his sights set on becoming prime minister – denounced the political manoeuvring that led the National Rally to fall far short of expectations.

“Tonight, by deliberately taking the responsibility to paralyse our institutions, Emmanuel Macron... is consequently depriving the French people of any responses to their daily problems for many months to come,” Mr Bardella said.

 

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Britain ousts Conservative Party after 14 years in major win for center-left Labour​

What we know​

• Britain's Labour Party has handed a brutal defeat to the ruling Conservatives. Keir Starmer, the party leader, will be prime minister, replacing Rishi Sunak.
• Exit polls indicate Labour is poised to take 410 seats in Parliament, versus 131 for the Conservatives — the fewest seats in their history.
• Starmer is a former prosecutor and a centrist who supports NATO and Ukraine — foreign policy views that align closely with President Joe Biden's. But he could be at odds with Donald Trump were he to win a second term.

 

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How the far-right went from 1st to 3rd in France's election​

The far-right National Rally (RN) has suffered a stinging defeat in the run-off round of France's parliamentary elections, hobbled by electoral pacts between the left and President Emmanuel Macron's centrists.

Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella's RN led the first round of voting in the election on June 30 but fell back to third in Sunday's second round after the victorious left-wing New Popular Front (NPF) alliance and Macron's second-placed centrists joined forces to avoid splitting the anti-RN vote.



The New Popular Front and its allies won 187 seats in the 577-seat National Assembly, Macron's centrist group won 159 seats and the National Rally and its allies won 142 seats, interior ministry figures show.

All three blocs fell far short of the 289 seats required for an outright majority.

- 'Republican Front' -

The RN and its allies won 39 parliamentary seats in the first round of the election and topped the vote in 258 of the 501 constituencies that were still up for grabs in the second round.

But their first-round win was overturned by their rivals in two-thirds, or 109, of those constituencies after the third-placed left-wing or centrist candidate bowed out of the running to set up a duel between the RN candidate and its closest rival from a mainstream alliance.

The strategy of parties banding together across the political divide to avoid splitting the anti-far-right vote has been regularly used since 2002, when Le Pen's father Jean-Marie faced Jacques Chirac in a presidential run-off.



On Sunday, it helped left-wing lawmaker Francois Ruffin overturn his RN rival's seven-point first-round lead in the northern city of Amiens, after the centrist candidate withdrew and urged her supporters to back Ruffin.

It also worked in the Calvados area in Normandy, where Macron's former prime minister Elisabeth Borne, widely despised on the left for pushing through an increase in the retirement age last year, saved her seat after the third-placed left-wing candidate bowed out.

- Duelling and losing -

The big question going into the run-off on Sunday had been whether left-wing and centrist voters whose candidates had pulled out of the run-off would vote for the other alternative to the far-right.

While polls had shown voters growing weary of being asked repeatedly to "hold their noses" and vote for other parties to block the RN, they complied again on Sunday.



Nearly everywhere the RN found itself in a duel, it lost.

It lost in 90 out of 152 constituencies where it did battle with the left, in 105 out of 128 constituencies where it faced off against a centrist and 32 out of 39 constituencies where it duelled with the centre-right.

The RN, which campaigned on dramatically limiting immigration, restoring law and order and boosting purchasing power, did better in constituencies where three candidates were vying for a seat in the run-off.

It won 10 out of the 11 three-way races in which it was leading after the first-round.

- 'Victory delayed' -

The RN may derive solace from seeing nearly all of its outgoing 89 MPs re-elected.

Only eight of its incumbents lost their seats.

By contrast, Macron's camp shed nearly 100 seats, down from 250 seats in the outgoing assembly to 159 seats.

Thirty-three RN lawmakers won re-election in the first round, with another 48 securing their seat in the run-off.


The final tally of 142 seats for the RN and its allies is a dramatic increase on the eight seats it had going into the last election in 2022.

Le Pen, who wants to launch a fourth bid for the presidency in 2027, hailed the "rising tide" of support.

"It did not rise high enough this time, but it continues to rise and, consequently, our victory has only been delayed," she declared.

 

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Deeply Divided France Risks Unprecedented Deadlock After Election Shock​

ARIS—France’s elections have produced a fractious parliament that threatens an unprecedented period of political paralysis, revealing a country that is deeply split along lines of class, geography and religion.

No party came close to a majority, and the lawmakers elected Sunday are now grouped into blocs with profound differences. The New Popular Front, an alliance of leftist parties that won the most seats in parliament, is a diverse coalition whose most powerful faction is a polarizing, far-left party, France Unbowed.


Leaders of the pro-business bloc allied with President Emmanuel Macron, which came in second, have said they can’t form a government with France Unbowed. Marine Le Pen and other leaders of the far-right National Rally party, which came in third, have signaled they won’t form a government with either Macron’s party or the left, who say the feeling is mutual.

Sunday’s result showed that opposition to the far right still commands a strong majority in French politics. But beyond that, political fragmentation is growing. Paris and other metropolitan centers are home to globally-connected, well-off French who voted en masse for Macron’s bloc.


The National Rally channels the growing antiestablishment anger of voters in the French hinterlands who are demanding France close its borders to immigrants. And on the left, France Unbowed draws much of its political support from students and the Muslim community in France, one of Europe’s largest.


Since the creation of the modern French state in 1958, parliamentary elections have produced large political blocs on the left or the right that were able to form governments quickly. Sunday’s election spread parliamentary votes across the spectrum, with some of the most powerful factions concentrated at the extremes.

The first step for the newly elected blocs will be to come to terms on a new prime minister, whom Macron must then agree to appoint. No consensus candidate is in sight.

Prime Minister Gabriel Attal offered his resignation on Monday, but Macron asked him to remain temporarily to ensure the country’s stability, according to a French official.

France Unbowed officials on Monday quickly made the case that the job should go to someone from their ranks, and that Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the party’s founder and one of the most divisive figures in French politics, should be a possibility.



“Jean-Luc Mélenchon taught the left how to win again,” said Mathilde Panot, president of France Unbowed in parliament, adding that he is “absolutely not disqualified.”

France’s immediate problem is its government finances, which are sure to be the most contentious subject in negotiations between the political parties. The country is coming under growing pressure to cut its deficit, forecast this year at 5.1% of gross domestic product, well-above the 3% threshold set in European Union rules. Yields on French government debt have jumped since Macron called snap elections last month.


The New Popular Front has proposed spending increases of around €350 billion over the next three years—nearly $380 billion—to boost public-sector wages and increase housing benefits, among other big-ticket items. They have also proposed to reinstate France’s wealth tax and roll back the pension overhaul. Macron expended much of his political capital to raise the country’s legal age of retirement, pushing the measure into law over the objections of parliament and a majority of the French public.



Those divergences appear to offer few areas for compromise between The New Popular Front and Macron’s party. In addition, France Unbowed has outraged much of France’s political establishment with its strident criticism of Israel, rhetoric that Macron’s government says has fueled a sharp rise in antisemitic acts in France since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7.

“There is not, and there will never be an alliance with France Unbowed,” Attal said before the election.

But other factions in the New Popular Front said the group must be allowed to govern and that the idea of choosing another prime minister from Macron’s ranks was out of the question.

“There was a massive rejection of what Emmanuel Macron did,” said Olivier Faure, head of the Socialist Party. “So we won’t put back those of Emmanuel Macron. That would be totally absurd.”

 

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UK's Conservatives face leadership "bloodbath" as party seeks new direction​

LONDON (Reuters) -The recriminations and jostling for top positions among Britain's Conservative lawmakers began long before Thursday's crushing election defeat to Labour that some party figures said left the party facing the prospect of a decade out of power.


After 14 years in government - the last eight marked by chaos and divisions following the Brexit vote - the Conservatives are now confronted by an internal struggle among lawmakers, grassroots members and donors over whether to move further to the right or turn back to the centre.

Keir Starmer's Labour Party won Thursday's election by a landslide, achieving a massive majority in parliament. The Conservatives suffered the worst performance in the party's long history, amid anger over a drop in living standards and a resurgence of the right-wing Reform UK party.

Rishi Sunak promptly announced his resignation as prime minister on Friday and said he would step aside as Conservative leader once arrangements were made to select his successor, as the party sought to rebuild.

Reuters spoke to 20 politicians, party members and strategists who said that Sunak's widely expected departure would trigger a battle among the institutions that underpin the party - with the right-wing media, financial backers, think tanks and vocal members all jostling to influence its direction.


The outcome will help determine whether a party that has governed Britain alone or in coalition for around 100 years since it was formed in 1834 can rebuild from a much-diminished state.

One veteran Conservative former lawmaker predicted a "bloodbath" as the party set about charting its way back to power.


"The party will suffer a kind of nervous breakdown, which will continue for a wee while," said the former lawmaker, who declined to be identified. "And it's then going to be necessary to find a way forward."

Several lawmakers are expected to compete to replace Sunak, the party sources said, with the right wing likely to promote two former interior ministers known for a tough line on immigration - Priti Patel and Suella Braverman - as well as former trade minister Kemi Badenoch, named minister of the year by the website ConservativeHome in 2023 after she took a robust position on trans issues.

Braverman was quick to promise change to voters. "I'm sorry that my party didn't listen to you," she said in a speech after winning reelection. "I will do everything in my power to rebuild trust. We need to listen to you, you have spoken to us very clearly."


The party sources said centrist candidates were also preparing campaigns, with James Cleverly and Tom Tugendhat, interior and security ministers under Sunak respectively, named as possible contenders.

Indicating the likely arguments ahead, three Conservatives questioned the right-wing credentials of Robert Jenrick, a former immigration minister who has been working hard to shore up his support, after he previously voiced more centrist positions.

Penny Mordaunt, a prominent centrist who was Sunak's Leader of the House of Commons, had also been consulting colleagues on her chances, but lost her seat to Labour. Accepting defeat, she warned Conservatives against talking to "an ever smaller slice of ourselves" as they sought to renew the party.

Veteran party adviser Peter Botting described the battle for the leadership as being between those who became Conservative because of former prime minister Margaret Thatcher - a staunch free-marketeer - and those who followed the moderniser David Cameron, with his more paternalistic 'one nation conservativism'.


"People will want big personalities: big, easily identifiable personalities," Botting said. "There are a lot of eminently forgettable people but they all think that they can be a prime minister."

THREAT FROM REFORM UK

The former lawmaker said the Conservative Party should move to the right, to meet the challenge posed by Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage's Reform UK party. Farage won a seat in parliament at the eighth time of trying.

While Labour's roughly 34% share of the vote nationwide was far lower than its showing at its 1997 landslide victory, the resurgence of Reform UK split the right-wing vote and handed Starmer a massive majority under Britain's first-past-the-post system.

Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, warned that a move to the right would go against "the case that elections are won in the centre of British politics".


"What we've seen since Brexit is the silent majority of more centrist MPs allow the party to slip towards the right, due to a much more vocal minority of more populist politicians on that side of the Conservative Party," he told Reuters.

By 1110 GMT and with 648 seats counted, Labour had 412 of the 650 seats in parliament, compared with 121 for the Conservatives, according to broadcaster BBC.

Reform only won four seats so far, but it picked up more than 4 million votes - around 14% of the total ballot.

The performance of Reform UK scared many Conservatives, with leader Farage - a seasoned campaigner - promising to hound the Conservative Party and become the main voice of opposition.

His success might spur Conservative grassroots members into pushing for a more populist radical right strategy to restore its fortunes - something that the party's more centrist wing finds unpalatable.


Several Conservatives who spoke to Reuters said the grassroots membership felt increasingly marginalised since Sunak's appointment in 2022 without their votes, and want the party to reclaim what they see as its traditional values of a small state and free markets.

Comparing the situation to 1997, when it had to rebuild after Labour swept away 18 years of Conservative government, adviser Botting said the party's future depended on where the energy, ideas and finance needed to reset it came from.

"When, or if, the party decides what and who it is for, rather than against, we will know whether the party has a future," said Botting, a coach to hundreds of Conservative candidates over many years.

HOLLOWED OUT

It's a far cry from 2010 when Cameron ended the dominance of so-called 'new Labour' under former prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, which had governed for 13 years.


Despite winning three more elections, the Conservative Party become increasingly unmanageable, buffeted by ructions and rancour stemming from the vote to leave the European Union.

The Conservatives have had four prime ministers since Cameron, three brought down by their own party, including one - Liz Truss - who lasted just over 40 days in power. Truss lost her seat in parliament in Thursday's vote.

Almost all of those interviewed agree the party has sunk so low that it may struggle to mount a strong electoral challenge at the end of Labour's scheduled five-year term.

The party has become increasingly hollowed out - more than 70 lawmakers stood down before the election, including former prime minister Theresa May and several other ministers. Dozens of advisers and researchers jumped ship to look for new jobs, and 12 senior ministers lost their seats at the election, a record number.


Some Conservatives doubt the party will be able to run an effective opposition for some time.

"What you'll be left with is a very small, very inexperienced ... Conservative parliamentary party," the Conservative lawmaker, who stood down at the election, said.

"It basically means that for a couple of years, at least, the Labour Party will have a free run. We're not going to be any opposition."

While election results show it will have a vocal wing on the right of the party, the party still has a solid centre.

The lawmaker said the Conservatives had to change, acknowledging that the party's centre and right wing had failed to function in tandem for the last seven or eight years.

"We have to acknowledge that the current state of affairs is unsustainable," the lawmaker, on the right of the party, said.

Others think that with numbers reduced, the parliamentary party might try to unite in Westminster, with Botting saying the party might "get bigger together rather than squabble about the 'left' or the 'right'".


Ryan Shorthouse, chair of the independent centre-right think tank Bright Blue, said the party had arrived at "an electoral and economic dead end".

"There's going to be a big battle of ideas within and around the Conservative Party," said Shorthouse, whose think tank advocates for centre-right policies but is not affiliated to the Conservative Party.

His organisation is undertaking a strategic review to position itself as a cross-party organization able to influence the Labour government too, Shorthouse said.

"We want to ... basically forge a new centre-right."

 

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Ummm what? Is he actually trying to say that UK and France election's were stolen by Democrats?

Do they even have Democrats in those countries

Here is a TRUMP official literally trying to blame US Democrats for cheating in elections in OTHER COUNTRIES because the Conservative parties in those nations lost


What the actual FU@£

 

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MAGA Fumes Over France Election Results: 'They Cheated' newsweek

Donald Trump loyalists have lashed out at the shock results of the French parliamentary elections, saying the far right was "cheated" out of victory.

The New Popular Front, a left-wing coalition, emerged with a surprising victory in the second round of voting in France on Sunday, but its 182 seats are not enough to secure an outright majority.

President Emmanuel Macron's centrist Ensemble alliance came in second with 168 seats, with the far-right National Rally, which was widely expected to win the election since it won the first round of voting, finishing third with 143 seats.

...

Following Sunday's vote, numerous Trump supporters criticized the results after Macron's gamble to keep the far right out of power succeeded, comparing the election to the 2020 and upcoming 2024 U.S. elections.

Catturd, a conservative social media account with more than 2.5 million followers on X, formerly Twitter, wrote, "They cheated in France just like here."
"There's not one country on planet earth that has fair elections now. Once you realize that, you're apart of the real resist," the user added in a later post.

David Sacks, a venture capitalist backing Trump and co-host of the All-In podcast, wrote on X: "France shows that no election is certain. Macron and the far-left used every trick in the book to deny Marine Le Pen her victory. Republicans shouldn't get complacent."

End Wokeness, a right-wing X account with more than 2.6 million followers, said: "This is insane. Macron's party colluded with the far-left socialists in order to block a Le Pen win.
"200 candidates dropped out last week, coalescing against the 'far-right'. Well the coup just paid off. The socialists just won FIRST PLACE. It looks like France will not be saved."

Other supporters of the Make America Great Again movement helped "RIP France" become one of the top trending topics on X in the wake of the second round of voting.

Chaya Raichik, the conservative figure behind the Libs of TikTok social media profile, wrote on X: "Glad I got the opportunity to visit France before it totally goes to sh*t. RIP France."