Following Emmanuel Macron’s victory, his new party is looking set to storm the French parliamentary elections, writes Alex Porter

Progressives throughout Europe are celebrating the resounding victory of Emmanuel Macron’s victory in the weekend’s presidential election, as evidence that successful political campaigns can still be waged in the centre ground.

With most of Europe’s left arguing over what they would do in government without any roadmap of how to get there, Macron’s success poses an interesting question of how the left might successfully win office. While established leftwing parties struggle to decide on an identity and agenda for the future, the temptation grows to follow the anti-politics mood among the public and position ourselves against ‘the establishment’.

The success of insurgent political movements like Macron’s En Marche!, while latching onto growing anti-establishment sentiment, often rely on the sheer force of personality of compelling or outrageous figureheads like Donald Trump or Nigel Farage.

The presidential structure in France grants the winner a significant personal mandate and clearly favours dynamic candidates, a system that the young, charismatic leaders of both En Marche! and the National Front were able to use to their advantage over the course of the campaign, challenging establishment on the left and right and with Marine Le Pen, in particular, waging a highly personalised campaign. But to succeed in government, Macron’s new party will need to transform itself into more than a one-man band.

In order to push through a progressive agenda, Macron will need to expand beyond personal appeal, he will want to command the support of the National Assembly. Despite En Marche! being still in its infancy, initial polling for French newspaper, Les Echos, shows the new party on track to win as many as 186 in the legislative elections in June. These projections would make leave the nascent party the largest in the lower house, but falls short of the 289 needed for an absolute majority.

This is only the first poll of many for the upcoming two-round parliamentary elections, but they indicate this young but growing centre-left party could be set to replace traditional left-wing forces in French politics. By the current figures, the centre-right Republicans and their allies the Union of Democrats and Independents (UDI) can expect to form the main opposition on around 200 seats, while François Hollande’s Socialist party can expect to crumble to a rump of as few as 28 seats from its current 280, potentially acting as the junior partner in a coalition with the president’s party.

Macron’s success in breaking away from his party has already attracted some envious glances from this side of the Channel, and a likely landslide victory for the Tories next month may prove to be a catalyst for some waverers. But setting up a new party is a radical move, and one that has had limited success in the United Kingdom. The first past the post system does little to help candidates outside the political establishment, and the scars of separation in past decades have acted as a powerful deterrent for would-be Labour breakaways. Yet the man who has achieved such a landmark in France with exactly that strategy may expect others to follow his lead.

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Alex Porter is project manager of communications at Policy Network. She tweets at @AlexGPorter

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