The Weekly Dispatch is your weekly summary of the major events taking place in French politics, published on Sundays in order to give you the perfect way to catch up with French news and events.

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Polling update

Now that the election campaign has been launched, we’ve now back on the polling horse, after one of the most reliable pollsters just released some new data.

Right off the bat, it looks like the legislative elections will be a three horse race between Ensemble!, NUPES, and the Rassemblement National.

Currently, NUPES tops the polls with 28% of French citizens intending to vote for them, followed closely by Ensemble! at 27% while the Rassemblement National hovers at the 22% mark.

Aside from these top dogs, which make up 77% of the total voting intention, things aren’t looking so good for the other candidates. Les Republicans, for example, are currently struggling in the 11% range, which is admittedly better than their performance in the Presidential elections, but still not where the former juggernaut wanted to be.

Likewise Reconquete is currently looking for a way to solidify its position, having been one of the only parties that was able to be reimbursed for its performance in the recent elections, and looking for a way to continue sapping the strength from the RN. However, Eric Zemmour was recently forced to wait to hear if Jordan Bardella would run so that he could announce his candidacy in his district, so things look tricky for the upstart, and even one seat may be a big challenge for his nascent party.

Moving onto the secret regarding the identity of our next Prime Minister, IFOP released a mildly interesting poll detailing the preferences of the French people for a left-wing prime minister, which ultimately showed that there’s no consensus right now.

With a warning to my fellow Brexit veterans, who may be scarred by close polls, we learnt that 49% want a left-wing Prime Minister, but 51% don’t. It is clearly not the helpful indicator on who one of our future leaders might be, which we would undoubtedly all have liked.

Macron Launches the Ensemble! Campaign

With the legislative elections now in full swing, Emmanuel Macron this week collected all of the candidates fighting under the Ensemble! confederation in Paris, and he had some select words for them.

“I expect you to be solid, determined and humble candidates. Nothing is acquired. I don't want an "installed" campaign”

Macron explained that he expected a high-level of professionalism from his candidates and that he didn’t want to see any arrogance or behaviour that could be seen poorly by the French public.

Having recently attended the campaign launch for Pieyre-Alexandre Anglade in Brussels, I can personally attest to the fact that this message has been taken seriously by both candidates and the militants within the region.

It is clear that the candidates care about the preoccupations of French citizens, and they want to show that they’re listening and that they’re genuinely engaged with working in the interest of the French people to address their concerns.

Nevertheless, we’ll see how the campaign goes.

Taha Bouhafs Launches a Crisis

Less than a week after its official launch, Jean Luc-Mélenchon's Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale is already at risk of being derailed by a scandal.

Taha Bouhafs, a militant journalist close to La France Insoumise who released the footage of Macron’s security guard Alexander Benalla assaulting a protestor back in 2018, was recently forced to step down as a candidate for NUPES due to accusations of sexual assault.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon himself publically denounced "a pack [who] fought against him" by utilising "death threats and daily public challenges" and made a big show of how he blamed himself “for not having been able to comfort him (Bouhafs) as much as needed.”

Several big figures from La France Insoumise joined in with the defence, appearing on multiple television platforms to debate the issue and show their support for their comrade in arms.

However, after the staunch defence of this supposedly young, innocent man, it turned out that the reason why Bouhafs stepped down was partially political, but also far more sinister.

Bouhafs was initially asked to be the candidate for La France Insoumise in a town called Vénissieux in Rhône, but his candidacy caused a local conflict with the communist mayor of the town, Michèle Picard. Picard threatened to run a dissident campaign that could have sapped the strength from Bouhaf’s canvassing, and while ultimately unlikely, could have derailed the NUPES alliance at a local level.

However, La France Insoumise had learned just days before his announcement that Bouhafs was accused of sexual assault by multiple women who had made complaints to the party. In turn, the complaints changed the dynamics of defending this young man.

These accusations of sexual assault, combined with his previous examples of poor behaviour such as racially charged slurs where Bouhafs called another man a “service Arab”, made Bouhafs’ position untenable, and he was forced to step down.

Now, the LFI strategy now appears to try and sweep him under a carpet and move on.

France Says Goodbye to Castex

We’ve had a few weeks of not knowing the fate Castex, but it now looks as though our Prime Minister will exit Matignon.

With his final council of ministers meeting on Wednesday 11 May, the man whose announcement for Prime Minister in May 2020 came as a major surprise to a significant portion of the French population, is now heading off.

He became known to the majority of us (myself included), as one of the faces of France’s COVID-19 management team, as a leader who explained many of the lockdown regulations, what the French should expect, and managed expectations alongside the members of the government and the President of the Republic.

In addition, he was one of the leaders who helped manage the launch of the French Presidency of the European Union, and across all of his work, the unknown civil servant became a known actor to the French public.

For the time being, he has made it clear that he doesn’t want any other government roles, so we can only wish him a hard earned rest and all the best in his next position, in gratitude for his work and his impact in managing the crisis around us. We can only hope that our next PM is able to carry on his strong legacy.

However…

We still don’t know who our next Prime Minister is

Now that Castex is moving on from his post, we are all waiting to hear who the next Prime Minister of the French Republic will be. Unfortunately, the only indication that we’ve been given is that President Macron will select a woman who will be tasked with actively managing the ecological transition,

Many have hypothesised (and claimed) that the candidate could be the current President of the European Central Bank, Christine Lagarde, due to her stature, experience, and as someone put it to me, “the fact that she’s a political bulldog”.

However, several other names have been doing the rounds: Labor Minister Elisabeth Borne, Director General of Unesco Audrey Azoulay, and former Socialist Minister of Social Affairs Marisol Touraine.

During his recent visit to Berlin, Macron was asked if he knew who he would be picking for the post, and he clearly answered that he did indeed. He outlined that he had selected someone “social”, “ecological”, and “productive”, but that Berlin wasn’t the place to make such an announcement and that we would all have to keep waiting for the news.

Nonetheless, we’re in for an interesting week ahead as there are rumours that we may learn their identity in the coming week…