History UsefulNotes / FrenchPoliticalSystem

* '''Lutte Ouvrière''' (LO, Workers' Struggle): A (very) old Trotskyist party which gives great importance to the defense of workers' rights and revolution. Formerly led by Arlette Laguiller, who was the first woman to run in a French presidential election. Which she did ''[[{{Determinator}} 6 successive times]]'', scoring as high as 5-6% in 1995 and 2002. The party is notorious for its utter refusal to make alliances with anyone, even the ideologically close NPA.

France is famous for [[UsefulNotes/TheFrenchRevolution having gone from a monarchy to a republic]], but its political system has changed no fewer than ten--that's right, '''ten'''--times since Louis XVI's head came off in 1793, [[RevolvingDoorRevolution generally through revolutions]].

** Their candidate in 2022 is expected to be Emmanuel Macron, who vies for a second mandate.

* '''La France Insoumise''' (LFI, Unyielding France): A movement [[InsistentTerminology (they don't want to be called a "party")]] created by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Socialist Party senator, who slammed its door in 2008 [[DefectorFromDecadence because of its increasingly rightwing orientations]]. After his departure he created the small Parti de Gauche (PG, [[ShapedLikeItself Left Party]]) with fellow socialist dissidents, and forged an alliance with the Communist Party and several other small formations to create the Front de Gauche (FG, Left Front). All was well until the 2012 presidential election and the future looked bright, but soon after the Front started to fall apart, [[WeAreStrugglingTogether mostly because of persisting political and strategic disagreements with the Communists]] and [[HotBlooded Mélenchon's character]] getting on some people's nerves. Mélenchon grew tired of that and in February 2016 launched a new movement called La France Insoumise to start his presidential campaign without waiting for the Communists' support. LFI's program puts an emphasis on institutional reform through a constituency assembly for a 6th Republic, as well as on environmental issues by opposing nuclear power and intensive chemical agriculture. Other points include leaving NATO and the WTO, and a "Plan A/Plan B" strategy towards the European Union[[note]]Basically: reform the EU into a less free-market oriented organisation through negotiation, or break away from it altogether if that fails[[/note]]. In just over a year, the movement became the de facto leading force of the left following the PS’s collapse in 2017, but failed to really expand its influence in local elections, with internal tensions mostly due to their leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon being a ''very'' polarizing character, as well as disagreements on policies, especially societal ones, that some see as too close to American identity politics.

* '''Parti Communiste Français''' (PCF, French Communist Party): In the early 20th century, there was a heated debate within the original socialist party, the SFIO [[note]](Section française de l'internationale ouvrière, French Section for the Workers' International)[[/note]] about whether they should pursue gradual reform or total revolution, especially after the Russian Revolution happened in 1917. The result was the Tours congress in 1920, where a majority split to become the French Communist Party, and joined the Communist International led by the Bolsheviks. The PCF was a very strong and radical party, weighing around 20% of voters for decades, and also used to hold controversial views, notably defending Stalin and the USSR despite evidence of their less-than-stellar track record... And then, François Mitterrand happened (see the Socialist Party below). Long story short, from the eighties on the party experienced a steady decline, not helped by the fall of the Soviet Union, as their political views gradually became more moderate and consensual. The short-lived governmental alliance with the Socialists in the late nineties [[HopeSpot was but a brief respite]], and by 2007 the party was ailing, scoring less than 2% in the presidential election. Between 2009 and 2015, they were the leading force of the Left Front alliance, but even that eventually fell through, and now the PCF doesn't quite know where it's going. The party shares quite a few common views with LFI, but also clashes with them on some major issues regarding ecology (they're largely pro-nuclear) or Europe (they're against the "Plan B"). It is currently led by Fabien Roussel. Also, the century-old daily "L'Humanité" was the party's official newspaper until the mid-nineties and remains closely connected to it.

* '''Europe-Écologie/Les Verts''' (EELV, Europe-Ecology/The Greens): A fusion between the old Green party and a more recent party led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a famous figure of the May 68 protests who is now more of a centrist (and left the party a few years later). Currently, the party is led by David Corman. The political spectrum within the alliance is quite large, from de-growth activists to centrist liberals. Thus, the political line of the party is rather blurry, but mostly on the center-left. During the 2012 election, they forged an agreement with the Socialist Party and participated in their government until April 2014, when the nomination of the very right-wing Manuel Valls as prime minister was a hard pill to swallow for them. Nowadays, their activist base is more or less split in half between a liberal line close the PS led by Yannick Jadot and a more left-leaning line led by Sandrine Rousseau. The former won the party’s primary for the 2022 election by a small margin.

* '''La République En Marche!''' (LREM, Republic Forward!): A movement founded in April 2016 by former Minister of the Economy Emmanuel Macron (the fact that the party's initials are the same as their founder's is not a coincidence), in a way similar to Unyielding France mentioned above. A centrist and liberal party, claiming to be "above left and right" and taking cues from the US' Third Way Democrats and the British Liberal Democrats. They support free-market economics and deficit reduction, but also support the European Union, climate change legislation, immigration and acceptance of refugees[[note]]However, on the last two points, many non-governemental associations accuse the party of having nice speeches but not acting, or even worsening the climatic and migration crisis[[/note]]. Since 2017, they haven't managed to gain much ground at each election due to a combination of the Macron presidency's unpopular policies, the older parties (mainly Les Républicains) still having strong local footholds, and abstention beating new records in France (even before the UsefulNotes/COVID19Pandemic).

''Presidents of the Fifth Republic are now listed on the UsefulNotes/ThePresidentsOfFrance page, along with the other French presidents.''

* '''Reconquête''' (Reconquest): A nationalist/sovereigntist party created in 2021 by political journalist, writer and polemicist Éric Zemmour, who has declared himself candidate for the presidential election in 2022. Politics-wise, it's like the Rassemblement National but tougher and also includes national economic preference and major tax cuts. Zemmour himself sees this movement as an attempt at unifying the French Right Wing to "resurrect the RPR" (a predecessor of Les Républicains before it became more centrist). He is notably known for his controversial opinions about the [[LesCollaborateurs Vichy Regime]] during World War II (mainly that many Jews were saved from UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust through actions of said regime, which is ''hotly'' debated among historians), and was condemned by courts several times for racist public declarations. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews -- France's equivalent of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} -- where he has been working for years).[[note]]He actually has the open support of billionaire media mogul Vincent Bolloré, [=CNews’=] owner.[[/note]] A nostalgic of pre-1968 France (particularly under UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle), he sells his ideological books to hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one.

* '''Rassemblement National''' (RN, National Rally): Known as the "National Front" until June 2018. The main nationalist party and, as of February 2020, second major party in number of voters. It was founded in TheSeventies by a bunch of people nostalgic of Vichy or French Algeria, and was originally little more than a groupuscule before its sudden rise in the mid-eighties. Its most famous figure Jean-Marie Le Pen was consistently seen as a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain because of his often sulfurous statements. In 2011, his daughter Marine won an internal election to become the president of the party. One could argue that the party's line has shifted from blatant antisemitism and racism, to the populist islamophobia popular in much of Europe. Marine Le Pen is by all accounts, if nothing else, not nearly as antisemitic as her father was [[note]] Very, ''very'' ironically, she enjoys support from some of the more conservative of French Jews, which would have been absolutely unthinkable ten years ago, due in part to her views on Islam and the UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict[[/note]]. Her main battlehorses are defending secular values against the "Islamization" of France (something her younger voters disagree with, being more inclined towards rigid Catholicism), curbing immigration and fighting insecurity (which the FN considers to stem from immigration) and promoting the return of the death penalty in France. A notable difference in the FN's newer style of politics is a strikingly Left Front-esque focus on Finance and neoliberalism in TheNewTens (think a socially-conservative version of Geert Wilders), a much less Euroskeptical approach than her father (instead promoting close relations and work with other European far-right parties), distancing the European Union from the United States and turning to Russia as a new key ally, and a communication strategy commonly refered to as "dédiabolisation" ("de-demonization"), that seeks to polish the image of the party in the media. Much of it was led by the party's no. 2 figure Florian Philippot, a self-proclaimed Gaullist who left the party in 2017 because of growing political disagreements. The party's notable for reaching the second turn in 2002, dovetailing the socialist candidate with 17%; if French people talk about "April 21", it refers to this. It was that big a shock. Then the party reached the second round once again on 23 April 2017 and some seats in Parliament and mayor offices. The consensus so far of RN-ruled towns and cities range between "less bad than expected" and "just like before with added patriotism".

** By the way, her niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen was the youngest MP in the 2012 legislature at the tender age of 23, a distinction she shares with her grandfather, Jean-Marie Le Pen.

----

* '''Les Républicains''' (LR, The Republicans): Formerly called the UMP (Union for a Popular Mouvement), founded in 2002 by Jacques Chirac and Alain Juppé, it was actually a gathering of several right-wing parties but was basically the successor of the former Rally For Republic (RPR). Known for its neoliberal economic views and its harsh positions on immigration and insecurity (even more so after Nicolas Sarkozy took the lead and wanted to attract far-right voters). It is basically the Republican Party to the PS's Democratic Party. Sarkozy announced that he retired from poltitics after his defeat in 2012, but in November 2014, after much turmoil caused by the rivalry between the party's (very unpopular) leaders, a new internal election was held, and the same Sarkozy was comfortably elected president of the party. Then in April 2015, Sarkozy decided to change their name into "The Republicans". In the past years, the party has seen its electorate drawn by Macron’s liberal orientation on one side and the National Rally’s nationalist line on the other, trying to find a compromise between the two.

* '''Europe-Écologie/Les Verts''' (EELV, Europe-Ecology/The Greens): A fusion between the old Green party and a more recent party led by Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a famous figure of the May 68 protests who is now more of a centrist (and left the party a few years later). Currently, the party is led by David Corman. The political spectrum within the alliance is quite large, from de-growth activists to centrist liberals. Thus, the political line of the party is rather blurry, but mostly on the center-left. During the 2012 election, they forged an agreement with the Socialist Party and participated in their government until April 2014. The party's ministers had said in 2013 that they would leave the government should the ostensibly rightwing (and then minister of the interior) Manuel Valls become prime minister. Which is exactly what happened after the 2014 city council elections.

* '''Parti Socialiste''' (PS, Socialist Party): The party in power between 2012 and 2017. Remember the SFIO and the Communist split in 1920? What remained of it slowly declined after WWII, before François Mitterrand salvaged it, made it take a more radical stance and turned it into the Socialist Party in 1971. During the seventies, the new party rapidly grew in influence until it started to eat into the PCF's electorate, and Mitterrand taking communist ministers in his government in 1981 actually ended up ''weakening'' said PCF (and many analysts think that was exactly the intention). Although the PS implemented a few acclaimed social reforms while in power (like the death penalty abolition, the Minimum Income of Insertion, the Tax on Large Fortunes or the 35 hours working week), since the mid-80s, its economic views have progressively switched to the right, making it some kind of French Democratic Party. [[ArtifactTitle So it's now "socialist" in name only.]] While it always was quite the BigScrewedUpFamily, the party's popularity nosedived during François Hollande presidency, and it is now in a situation very similar to the pre-1969 one, with the left wing (or what remains of it) and the right wing of the party thoroughly hating each others guts. After François Hollande's presidency, the Socialist Party is seen as a grim shadow of it's former self despite clinging to several ''régions''. [[note]]With a low 4% popularity rate in October 2016, caused by the adoption of a very unpopular labour code reform and repression of protests against this reform, but representative of a continuous decline in his popularity since its election in 2012 (with the exception of a spike in popularity after the adoption of same-sex marriage in France in 2013 and another with his gestion of the January 2015 attacks which was deemed adequate by most French), François Hollande holds the unpopularity record never reached by a French president since the invention of opinion polls. His Prime Minister Manuel Valls, largely but not only because of his role in the repression of several social movements, is also regularly cited among the five most hated politicians by the French, even ''years after'' he left France to go to Spain to continue politics there (which he can do because he is Franco-Spanish).[[/note]]

* '''Debout la France''' (DLF, "Rise Up, France!"): Formerly a current within the UMP, led by Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, it seceded and became an independent party (initially called "Rise Up, Republic") in 2007, to represent the nominally Gaullist right-wing. They promote a Keynesian flavour of capitalism rather than what they perceive as the deregulated, neo-liberal capitalism of the EU, as well as a confederal model for UsefulNotes/TheEuropeanUnion. Critical of the European Commission for being unelected. They also promote the Euro as a common reference currency (with national currencies in parallel) rather than a single currency.

* '''La France Insoumise''' (LFI, Unyielding France): A movement [[InsistentTerminology (they don't want to be called a "party")]] created by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Socialist Party senator, who slammed its door in 2008 [[DefectorFromDecadence because of its increasingly rightwing orientations]]. After his departure he created the small Parti de Gauche (PG, [[ShapedLikeItself Left Party]]) with fellow socialist dissidents, and forged an alliance with the Communist Party and several other small formations to create the Front de Gauche (FG, Left Front). All was well until the 2012 presidential election and the future looked bright, but soon after the Front started to fall apart, [[WeAreStrugglingTogether mostly because of persisting political and strategic disagreements with the Communists]] and [[HotBlooded Mélenchon's character]] getting on some people's nerves. Mélenchon grew tired of that and in February 2016 launched a new movement called La France Insoumise to start his presidential campaign without waiting for the Communists' support. LFI's program puts an emphasis on institutional reform through a constituency assembly for a 6th Republic, as well as on environmental issues by opposing nuclear power and intensive chemical agriculture. Other points include leaving NATO and the WTO, and a "Plan A/Plan B" strategy towards the European Union[[note]]Basically: reform the EU into a less free-market oriented organisation through negotiation, or break away from it altogether if that fails[[/note]]. In just over a year, the movement became the de facto leading force of the left, but started to peter out due to internal tensions mostly due to their leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon being a ''very'' polarizing character, as well as disagreements on policies, especially societal ones, that some see as too close to American identity politics.

* '''Les Républicains''' (LR, The Republicans): Formerly called the UMP (Union for a Popular Mouvement), founded in 2002 by Jacques Chirac and Alain Juppé, it was actually a gathering of several right-wing parties but was basically the successor of the former Rally For Republic (RPR). Known for its neoliberal economic views and its harsh positions on immigration and insecurity (even more so after Nicolas Sarkozy took the lead and wanted to attract far-right voters). It is basically the Republican Party to the PS's Democratic Party. Sarkozy announced that he retired from poltitics after his defeat in 2012, but in November 2014, after much turmoil caused by the rivalry between the party's (very unpopular) leaders, a new internal election was held, and the same Sarkozy was comfortably elected president of the party. Then in April 2015, Sarkozy decided to change their name into "The Republicans". This was rather controversial among other parties; given how "The Republic" has come to be virtually interchangeable with "France" (ie ''all'' French people are "Republicans"[[note]]Aside from the now rather fringe monarchists, of course.[[/note]]), Sarkozy has been accused to trying to claim ownership of the French identity for his party alone. The party held a primary election to choose its candidate for 2017, similarly to what the PS did in 2011.

* '''Reconquête''' (Reconquest): A nationalist/sovereigntist party created in 2021 by political journalist, writer and polemicist Éric Zemmour, who has declared himself candidate for the presidential election in 2022. Politics-wise, it's like the Rassemblement National but tougher and also includes national economic preference and major tax cuts. Zemmour himself sees this movement as an attempt at unifying the French Right Wing to "resurrect the RPR" (a predecessor of Les Républicains before it became more centrist). He is notably known for his controversial opinions about the [[LesCollaborateurs Vichy Regime]] during World War II (mainly that many Jews were saved from UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust through actions of said regime, which is ''hotly'' debated among historians), and was condemned by courts several times for racist public declarations. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews -- France's equivalent of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} -- where he has been working for years). A nostalgic of pre-1968 France (particularly under UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle), he sells his ideological books to hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one.

* '''Union des Démocrates et Indépendants''' (UDI, Union of Democrats and Independants): A new party created after the 2012 elections by Jean-Louis Borloo (a former minister of Nicolas Sarkozy) and member of the Radical Party, to try and unite the "centrist wing" after Bayrou seemingly failed to do so. Notable members/supporters include former President Valéry Giscard-d'Estaing and the late Simone Veil, Auschwitz survivor and minister of health under Giscard who legalised abortion back in TheSeventies. As of 2017, they've more or less broken ties with Les Républicains and are one of the groups closest to En Marche! in the parliament. Basically it looks like the UDI is going to be roughly what the UDF had been pre-2002. [[HereWeGoAgain Well that was useful.]]
** For 2017, they considered taking part in the rightwing primary in 2016, but the party's activists opposed the idea in an internal vote.

** Their candidate for 2017 was ''Nicolas Dupont-Aignan'' (Deputy of the Essone department), who scored 4.7%. He was the only candidate to announce his support to Marine Le Pen for the second round.
[[quoteright:211:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/logo_lr.jpg]]

** The Republican candidate for 2017 was Nicolas Sarkozy's Prime Minister during his term, François Fillon, who scored 19.9% at the election's first round. For the first time since 1988, no centre-right candidate reached the second round (although many centre-right politicians joined Emmanuel Macron, actually).

** Their candidate for 2012 was Marine Le Pen (then Member of European Parliament, now a national MP). She scored 18%. [[note]]Since she scored 18% in the latest presidential election, which was even more than what got her father to the runoff stage of the election in 2002, but the party itself went on to get either 1 or 2 seats (depending on who you count) out of several hundred in the National Assembly, the FN (along with the centrists, the Greens and the Left Front for somewhat obvious reasons) are the most vocal proponents of changing the electoral system to a proportional-ish system. There's a somewhat similar debate in the UK, although the current electoral systems aren't the same (the UK has FPTP while France mostly has two-stage runoff elections). Mitterrand had actually switched to proportional voting for the 1986 parliamentary election, mainly to try and prevent a Socialist loss, with the predictable effect of the FN winning seats in the National Assembly, and the whole thing being scrapped and two-stage runoffs being brought back in 1988.[[/note]] She ran again for the 2017 election, scoring 21.4%, thus qualifying for the second round against Emmanuel Macron, but lost in the second round with 33,9%.

* '''Reconquête''' (Reconquest): A nationalist/sovereigntist party created in 2021 by political journalist, writer and polemicist Éric Zemmour, who has declared himself candidate for the presidential election in 2022. Politics-wise, it's like the Rassemblement National but tougher, though Zemmour himself sees this movement as an attempt at unifying the French Right Wing to "resurrect the RPR" (a predecessor of Les Républicains before it became more centrist). He is notably known for his controversial opinions about the [[LesCollaborateurs Vichy Regime]] during World War II (mainly that many Jews were saved from UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust through actions of said regime, which is ''hotly'' debated among historians), and was condemned by courts several times for racist public declarations. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews -- France's equivalent of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} -- where he has been working for years). A nostalgic of pre-1968 France (particularly under UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle), he sells his ideological books to hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one.

** Their candidate for the 2012 presidential election was ''Nathalie Arthaud'' (economy and management teacher), she scored 0.5%. She ran again in 2017, scoring 0.6%.

* '''Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste''' (NPA, New Anticapitalist Party): ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin. A refoundation of an old Trotskyst party (the Revolutionary Communist League, LCR), led by young postman Olivier Besancenot until recently.[[note]]For his first presidential campaign in 2002, he scored 4%. That's right, along with LO, the Trotskyst parties gathered ''10%'' of voters that year)[[/note]] They're composed of and led by mostly non-professional militants, and proud of this fact. They put an emphasis on ecological and social issues and like the previous party, they consider only social struggle brings any change. Their current spokeswoman is Christine Poupin (although you're more likely to read about Philippe Poutou or Olivier Besancenot in the media).
** Their candidate for 2012 was ''Philippe Poutou'' (worker and union leader in a car factory), he scored 1.5%. He ran again in 2017, scoring 1.1%.

** Their candidate in 2017 was Jean-Luc Mélenchon (then Member of European Parliament, now a national MP), who scored 19.6%, just barely failing to reach the second round (by 600 000 votes). He will run for the third and last time in 2022.

** Their candidate in 2012 was Jean-Luc Mélenchon, through the Left Front, scoring 11%. They ended up supporting him again ''very'' reluctantly in 2017, but without a formal alliance this time around. For the 2022 election the party decided to run separately, with Fabien Roussel as its candidate.

** Their candidate for 2012 was ''Éva Joly'' (a former Franco-Norwegian examining judge). She scored 2.5%. A primary election designated Yanick Jadot as their candidate for 2017, but he then stepped down to join the PS candidate. He’ll be the party’s candidate again in 2022.

** Their candidate for 2012 was ''François Hollande'' (deputy of the Corrèze department). He scored 28% in the first round and won the second round with 51,5%. He announced that he wouldn't run for a second term in December 2016. Benoît Hamon won the January 2017 primary elections, making him the PS candidate for the presidential election. He scored an all-time low for the PS at 6.3%, before leaving the party to create his own a few months later. Anne Hidalgo (mayor of Paris) will be the PS candidate for 2022.

** Their candidate in 2022 is Emmanuel Macron, who vies for a second mandate.

** Their candidate for 2012 was ''François Bayrou'' once more. He scored 9.5%. In 2017 it's his friend Jean Lassale who ran for the Center (after leaving the [=MoDem=]), scoring a measly 1.2%, while Bayrou gave his support to Alain Juppé in the rightwing primary (which he lost). In the end, Bayrou chose to support Emmanuel Macron.
** Basically half the UDF already split to join Alain Juppé/ Jacques Chirac to found the UMP in 2002. Bayrou was not one of them. Then, in 2007, virtually all of what was left of the UDF dumped him to found the Nouveau Centre under Hervé Morin, which then promptly joined a coalition with the UMP and was mostly absorbed by them, until the 2012 election, where Nicolas Sarkozy is perceived to have ditched the centrists to try to please the far-right (basically, ''not'' doing what got him elected in 2007, which worked just as well as you can imagine). What was left of centrists still loyal to the UMP at this point left to form:

[[quoteright:190:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/reconqute.jpg]]

** Their candidate in 2022 is Emmanuel Macron,

** Their candidate in 2017 was Emmanuel Macron, who qualified for the second round against Marine Le Pen, scoring 23.9%, and was then elected with 66,1% (blank votes notwithstanding).

* '''Reconquête''' (Reconquest): A nationalist party created in 2021 by political journalist, writer and polemicist Éric Zemmour, who has declared himself candidate for the presidential election in 2022. Politics-wise, it's like the Rassemblement National but tougher, though Zemmour himself sees this movement as an attempt at unifying the French Right Wing to "resurrect the RPR" (a predecessor of Les Républicains before it became more centrist). He is notably known for his controversial opinions about the [[LesCollaborateurs Vichy Regime]] during World War II (mainly that many Jews were saved from UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust through actions of said regime, which is ''hotly'' debated among historians), and was condemned by courts several times for racist public declarations. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews -- France's equivalent of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} -- where he has been working for years). A nostalgic of pre-1968 France (particularly under UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle), he sells his ideological books to hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one.

* '''Reconquête''' (Reconquest): A party created in 2021 by political journalist, writer and polemicist Éric Zemmour, who has declared himself candidate for the presidential election in 2022. Politics-wise, he's like the Rassemblement National but tougher, though Zemmour himself sees this movement as an attempt at "unifying the French Right Wing". He is notably known for his controversial opinions about the [[LesCollaborateurs Vichy Regime]] during World War II (mainly that many Jews were saved from UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust through actions of said regime, which is ''hotly'' debated among historians), and was condemned by courts several times for racist public declarations. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews -- France's equivalent of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} -- where he has been working for years). A nostalgic of pre-1968 France (particularly under UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle), he sells his ideological books to hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one.

* '''Reconquête''': A party created in 2021 by political journalist, writer and polemicist Éric Zemmour, who has declared himself candidate for the presidential election in 2022. Politics-wise, he's like the Rassemblement National but tougher, though himself sees his nascent movement as an attempt at "unifying the French Right Wing". He is notably known for his controversial opinions about the [[LesCollaborateurs Vichy Regime]] during World War II (mainly that many Jews were saved from UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust through actions of said regime, which is ''hotly'' debated among historians), and was condemned by courts several times for racist public declarations. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews -- France's equivalent of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} -- where he has been working for years). A nostalgic of pre-1968 France (particularly under UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle), he sells his ideological books to hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one.

* Political journalist, writer and polemicist '''Éric Zemmour''' has declared himself candidate for the presidential election in 2022. Politics-wise, he's like the Rassemblement National but tougher, though himself sees his nascent movement as an attempt at "unifying the French Right Wing". He is notably known for his controversial opinions about the [[LesCollaborateurs Vichy Regime]] during World War II (mainly that many Jews were saved from UsefulNotes/TheHolocaust through actions of said regime, which is contested by a number of high profile historians), and was condemned by courts several times for racist public declarations. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews -- France's equivalent of Creator/{{Fox News|Channel}} -- where he has been working for years). A nostalgic of pre-1968 France (particularly under UsefulNotes/CharlesDeGaulle), he sells his ideological books to hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one.

* Political journalist, writer and polemicist '''Éric Zemmour''' has declared himself candidate for the presidential election in 2022. Politics-wise, he's like the Rassemblement National but tougher, though himself sees his nascent movement as an attempt at "unifying the French Right Wing". He is also notably known for his glorifications about the Vichy Regime, the nazi-like ultraconservative military dictature during the WWII, and was condemned by courts several times for racist and sexist public declaration - who are illegals in France. He is also well known for his media impact, his words being very intensively relayed by the news channels (especially Cnews where he has been working for years) and to sell his ideological books to tens or hundreds of thousands of copies every time he publishes a new one.

* Political journalist, writer and polemicist '''Éric Zemmour''' has declared himself candidate for the presidential election in 2022. Politics-wise, he's like the Rassemblement National but tougher, though himself sees his nascent movement as an attempt at "unifying the French Right Wing".

* '''La France Insoumise''' (LFI, Unyielding France): A movement [[InsistentTerminology (they don't want to be called a "party")]] created by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Socialist Party senator, who slammed its door in 2008 [[DefectorFromDecadence because of its increasingly rightwing orientations]]. After his departure he created the small Parti de Gauche (PG, [[ShapedLikeItself Left Party]]) with fellow socialist dissidents, and forged an alliance with the Communist Party and several other small formations to create the Front de Gauche (FG, Left Front). All was well until the 2012 presidential election and the future looked bright, but soon after the Front started to fall apart, [[WeAreStrugglingTogether mostly because of persisting political and strategic disagreements with the Communists]] and [[HotBlooded Mélenchon's character]] getting on some people's nerves. Mélenchon grew tired of that and in February 2016 launched a new movement called La France Insoumise to start his presidential campaign without waiting for the Communists' support. LFI's program puts an emphasis on institutional reform through a constituency assembly for a 6th Republic, as well as on environmental issues by opposing nuclear power and intensive chemical agriculture. Other points include leaving NATO and the WTO, and a "Plan A/Plan B" strategy towards the European Union[[note]]Basically: reform the EU into a less free-market oriented organisation through negotiation, or break away from it altogether if that fails[[/note]]. In just over a year, the movement became the de facto leading force of the left, but started to peter out due to internal tensions mostly due to their leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon being a ''very'' polarizing character ([[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment and nothing more shall be said]]), as well as disagreements on policies, especially societal ones, that some see as too close to American identity politics.

* '''La France Insoumise''' (LFI, Unyielding France): A movement [[InsistentTerminology (they don't want to be called a "party")]] created by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a former Socialist Party senator, who slammed its door in 2008 [[DefectorFromDecadence because of its increasingly rightwing orientations]]. After his departure he created the small Parti de Gauche (PG, [[ShapedLikeItself Left Party]]) with fellow socialist dissidents, and forged an alliance with the Communist Party and several other small formations to create the Front de Gauche (FG, Left Front). All was well until the 2012 presidential election and the future looked bright, but soon after the Front started to fall apart, [[WeAreStrugglingTogether mostly because of persisting political and strategic disagreements with the Communists]] and [[HotBlooded Mélenchon's character]] getting on some people's nerves. Mélenchon grew tired of that and in February 2016 launched a new movement called La France Insoumise to start his presidential campaign without waiting for the Communists' support. LFI's program puts an emphasis on institutional reform through a constituency assembly for a 6th Republic, as well as on environmental issues by opposing nuclear power and intensive chemical agriculture. Other points include leaving NATO and the WTO, and a "Plan A/Plan B" strategy towards the European Union[[note]]Basically: reform the EU into a less free-market oriented organisation through negotiation, or break away from it altogether if that fails[[/note]]. In just over a year, the movement became the de facto leading force of the left, but started to peter out due to a mix of several [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clientelism clientelism]] accusations, internal tensions mostly due to their leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon being a ''very'' polarizing character [[Administrivia/RuleOfCautiousEditingJudgment and nothing more shall be said]], as well as disagreements on policies and support, especially social ones, seen as being carbon copies of American identity politics.
** Their candidate in 2017 was Jean-Luc Mélenchon (then Member of European Parliament, now a national MP), who scored 19.6%, just barely failing to reach the second round (by 600 000 votes).

** Their candidate in 2012 was Jean-Luc Mélenchon, through the Left Front, scoring 11%. They ended up supporting him again ''very'' reluctantly in 2017, but without a formal alliance this time around.

** Their candidate for 2012 was ''Éva Joly'' (a former Franco-Norwegian examining judge). She scored 2.5%. A primary election designated Yanick Jadot as their candidate for 2017, but he then stepped down to join the PS candidate.

* '''Parti Socialiste''' (PS, Socialist Party): The party in power between 2012 and 2017. Remember the SFIO and the Communist split in 1920? What remained of it slowly declined after WWII, before François Mitterrand salvaged it, made it take a more radical stance and turned it into the Socialist Party in 1971. During the seventies, the new party rapidly grew in influence until it started to eat into the PCF's electorate, and Mitterrand taking communist ministers in his government in 1981 actually ended up ''weakening'' said PCF (and many analysts think that was exactly the intention). Although the PS implemented a few acclaimed social reforms while in power (like the death penalty abolition, the Minimum Income of Insertion, the Tax on Large Fortunes or the 35 hours working week), since the mid-80s, its economic views have progressively switched to the right, making it some kind of French Democratic Party. [[ArtifactTitle So it's now "socialist" in name only.]] While it always was quite the BigScrewedUpFamily, the party's popularity nosedived during François Hollande presidency, and it is now in a situation very similar to the pre-1969 one, with the left wing (or what remains of it) and the right wing of the party thoroughly hating each others guts. After François Hollande's presidency, the Socialist Party is seen as a grim shadow of it's former self despite clinging to several ''régions''. [[note]]With a low 4% popularity rate in October 2016, caused by the adoption of a very unpopular labour code reform and repression of protests against this reform, but representative of a continuous decline in his popularity since its election in 2012 (with the exception of a spike in popularity after the adoption of same-sex marriage in France in 2013 and another with his gestion of the January 2015 attacks which was deemed adequate by most French), François Hollande holds the unpopularity record never reached by a French president since the invention of opinion polls. His Prime Minister Manuel Valls, largely but not only because of his role in the repression of several social movements, is also regularly cited among the five most hated politicians by the French, even ''years after'' he left France to go to Spain to continue politic here (which he can do because he is Franco-Spanish).[[/note]]
** Their candidate for 2012 was ''François Hollande'' (deputy of the Corrèze department). He scored 28% in the first round and won the second round with 51,5%. He announced that he wouldn't run for a second term in December 2016. Benoît Hamon won the January 2017 primary elections, making him the PS candidate for the presidential election. He scored an all-time low for the PS at 6.3%, before leaving the party to create his own a few months later.

* '''Rassemblement National''' (RN, National Gathering): Known as the "National Front" until June 2018. The main nationalist party and, as of February 2020, second major party in number of voters. It was founded in TheSeventies by a bunch of people nostalgic of Vichy or French Algeria, and was originally little more than a groupuscule before its sudden rise in the mid-eighties. Its most famous figure Jean-Marie Le Pen was consistently seen as a PoliticallyIncorrectVillain because of his often sulfurous statements. In 2011, his daughter Marine won an internal election to become the president of the party. One could argue that the party's line has shifted from blatant antisemitism and racism, to the populist islamophobia popular in much of Europe. Marine Le Pen is by all accounts, if nothing else, not nearly as antisemitic as her father was [[note]] Very, ''very'' ironically, she enjoys support from some of the more conservative of French Jews, which would have been absolutely unthinkable ten years ago, due in part to her views on Islam and the UsefulNotes/ArabIsraeliConflict[[/note]]. Her main battlehorses are defending secular values against the "Islamization" of France (something her younger voters disagree with, being more inclined towards rigid Catholicism), curbing immigration and fighting insecurity (which the FN considers to stem from immigration) and promoting the return of the death penalty in France. A notable difference in the FN's newer style of politics is a strikingly Left Front-esque focus on Finance and neoliberalism in TheNewTens (think a socially-conservative version of Geert Wilders), a much less Euroskeptical approach than her father (instead promoting close relations and work with other European far-right parties), distancing the European Union from the United States and turning to Russia as a new key ally, and a communication strategy commonly refered to as "dédiabolisation" ("de-demonization"), that seeks to polish the image of the party in the media. Much of it was led by the party's no. 2 figure Florian Philippot, a self-proclaimed Gaullist who left the party in 2017 because of growing political disagreements. The party's notable for reaching the second turn in 2002, dovetailing the socialist candidate with 17%; if French people talk about "April 21", it refers to this. It was that big a shock. Then the party reached the second round once again on 23 April 2017 and some seats in Parliament and mayor offices. The consensus so far of RN-ruled towns and cities range between "less bad than expected" and "just like before with added patriotism".

* Political journalist, writer and polemicist '''Éric Zemmour''' is launching a bid for the presidency in 2022. Though he hasn't declared himself candidate just yet, the Conseil Supérieur de l'Audiovisuel (CSA), the French superior audiovisual authority, considers him as such due to his presence in the media and poll results (which now are higher than the Rassemblement National). Politics-wise, he's like the Rassemblement National but tougher, though himself sees his nascent movement as an attempt at "unifying the French Right Wing".

* Eventually, things came to a head, and in July 1830, riots broke out. Charles X was forced to abdicate; his more liberal cousin, Louis-Philippe, the Duke of Orleans,[[note]]The Orléans branch of the House of Bourbon, historically liberal minded, had been favoured by liberal French constitutional monarchists since the days of the Directory, as the then-self-proclaimed Louis XVIII was seen as an intransigent reactionary, while the Duke of Orléans at the time of the Revolution, Louis Philippe II, had been a major leader of the liberal movement, renamed himself Philippe Égalité (Philippe Equality), and had voted for the execution of his cousin Louis XVI before being executed during the Reign of Terror for being insufficiently radical.[[/note]] was acclaimed "King of the French," and the constitutional '''July Monarchy''' was established. (''Literature/LesMiserables''[[note]]Specifically, volumes III-V of Les Misérables. Volume I begins in 1815, the year of Napoleon's return (though after his re-exile)[[/note]] is set here, against the tumult of the 1830 revolution and subsequent revolts. It also [[FanService inspired]] Eugène Delacroix's painting of the [[MostCommonSuperPower "liberated"]] ''[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_Leading_the_People#/media/File:Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix_-_La_libert%C3%A9_guidant_le_peuple.jpg Liberty Leading the People]]''.)

* Political journalist, writer and polemicist '''Éric Zemmour''' is launching a bid for the presidency in 2022. Though he hasn't declared himself candidate just yet, the Conseil Supérieur de L'Audiovisuel (CSA), the French superior audiovisual auhtority, considers him as such due to his presence in the media and poll results (which now are higher than the Rassemblement National). Politics-wise, he's like the Rassemblement National but tougher, though himself sees his nascent movement as an attempt at "unifying the French Right Wing".

* In TheNineties Creator/LesInconnus made a musical sketch titled "Les Rap'tout", about French governments never stopping to enforce more and more taxes, depicting a few government and political figures with vampire teeth.