French far right seeks vote win but deadlock looms
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 7 July 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Large numbers of French people are voting in the second round of parliamentary elections. Turnout at midday was the highest in over forty years. Attention is focused on whether the far- right National Rally can win an absolute majority.
Also in the programme: Reports quoting Hamas sources say the militant group has accepted Washington’s proposal to begin talks on releasing Israeli hostages; and for how much longer can Joe Biden resist pressure to stand aside as the Democratic party's presidential candidate?
(Photo: A woman exits a voting booth with her ballot in hand in the second round of the early French parliamentary elections, at a polling station in Paris, France, July 7, 2024. REUTERS/Yara Nardi)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to New Zealand |
| 0:05.0 | from the BBC World Service, Camidue Live from London. |
| 0:09.3 | I'm Julian Marshall. |
| 0:11.3 | Let's head straight to France and my colleague James Cumurit's army in Paris. |
| 0:16.0 | James. |
| 0:17.0 | Thanks very much Julian. |
| 0:19.0 | Is France ungovernable as the French public votes in today's decisive round of parliamentary elections |
| 0:24.8 | that question is posed on the cover of one of the main Sunday newspapers alongside a |
| 0:29.5 | photo of a dejected looking Emmanuel Macron. It is a month since the French leader called |
| 0:34.4 | these early elections in the wake of his centrist party's big defeat in European |
| 0:38.9 | ones. Now President Macron is not on the ballot himself. He still has three years left of his second |
| 0:44.7 | and final term, but today will determine what kind of government he will have to work |
| 0:49.4 | with and possibly accommodate. Will it, the big question is, be one led by his political nemesis the |
| 0:55.9 | national rally the Eurosceptic anti-immigration party of the radical right which |
| 1:00.8 | over the past decade or so has rebranded itself, gaining legitimacy, momentum, |
| 1:06.2 | and now broad-based electoral success. |
| 1:09.2 | The party, led by three-time presidential candidate Maureen Le Pen and her choice for Prime Minister Jordan Bardella |
| 1:15.4 | confirmed that last weekend by coming top in the first round of this election, winning about |
| 1:19.7 | a third of the vote. |
| 1:21.3 | Today's second round is then effectively a referendum on the |
| 1:24.6 | national rally and its fitness for power. In many parts of France, candidates from |
| 1:28.9 | a coalition of the left and the center have agreed to field just one candidate in the runoff contests |
... |
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