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Can the Rights in France Unite?
Foreign Affairs
Can the Rights in France Unite?
Sovereigntism and liberalism may find an accommodation in the face of a more aggressive left.
France is at a crossroads: The nationalist party Rassemblement National is entering next year’s presidential election in a commanding position. According to some polls, the RN candidate could garner 70 percent of votes against a left-wing contender. The RN’s long-time boast of being France’s largest political party is now an incontrovertible fact.
But France’s right has failed to march behind one banner. Rather than form an alliance with the RN, the Republicans (LR)—the heirs of Charles de Gaulle’s postwar movement—have lent grudging support to President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist bloc, enabling the Macronists to maintain a tenuous hold over the parliament and the country’s political life.
The press often depicts this as an affair of clashing personalities or electoral tactics, but the divide runs much deeper. The traditional right of the LR and the nationalist right of the RN are beset by a centuries-old problem: the unresolved divorce between liberals and conservatives dating back to the French Revolution.
The conservative tradition, attached to social order, historical continuity, cultural cohesion, and national sovereignty, and the liberal tradition, extolling individual freedom, economic openness, and constitutionalism, remain at odds. In the Anglo-American world, these traditions developed in tandem; in France, liberalism and conservatism are the Jacob and Esau of the right-wing mind.
Despite the legacy of Constant and Tocqueville, liberalism in France is frequently perceived as an Anglo-Saxon import. It resonates as a byword for moral permissiveness and ruthless laissez-faire. The term is hurled as a pejorative at figures who in the Anglo-American world would rate as social democrats—see Nicolas Sarkozy and Emmanuel Macron.
France’s “liberal imagination” features not moderation of limited government, but market tyranny and social abandonment. In a society in which the idea of the state as protector cuts across the political spectrum, many conservatives deplore liberalism as a force for individual atomization and social dissolution.
Mapping these philosophical distinctions onto partisan labels can prove arduous. That said, Marine Le Pen’s RN, embracing the welfare state and robust social protection, comes down on the “conservative” side of the economic equation, while LR has adopted a more “liberal” bent.
The electorate of each party reflects and reinforces this obstacle to a “union of the rights.” The RN has won over “peripheral France”: lower-middle and working-class populations outside major metropolitan areas affected by deindustrialization, declining public services, and cultural invisibility. For decades, the mainstream right has maintained a wide berth from this down-at-the-heel electorate, often derided as ploucs (“rednecks”) or petits blancs (“little whites”).
The RN’s burgeoning electoral appeal has pushed it to endorse economic policies associated at times with the left. Jean-Marie Le Pen once claimed inspiration from Ronald Reagan, but four decades hence, the party has donned the same statist and protectionist garb as its disadvantaged base. Marine Le Pen often recalls that her electoral stronghold of Hénin-Beaumont, in northern France, was long a socialist-communist bastion. The RN has largely abandoned social conservatism, embracing abortion rights and same-sex marriage—a point in its favor for the liberal right—while developing an economic program closer to social democracy than to market liberalism—a demerit for free-market advocates.
But the landscape is changing.
In an ironic twist for a France that sees itself as the center of the world, succor has come from abroad. The victories of Donald Trump, Giorgia Meloni, and Javier Milei have forced the French right to look outward again—not to imitate blindly, but to recognize that ideological renewal is occurring elsewhere.
This coincides with a genuine liberal awakening in France. On social media, a new generation of influencers promotes market liberalism, entrepreneurship, deregulation and fiscal discipline, often drawing on Anglo-American references and rejecting French statism. Investment-focused influencers in particular have introduced liberal ideas to younger audiences previously untouched by political theory. Slogans inspired by Milei’s “Afuera!” would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
This intellectual shift is beginning to translate politically. While still electorally marginal, figures such as Éric Zemmour and Sarah Knafo of the Reconquête party have blazed a path for liberal conservatism in public discourse. More discreet but equally telling is the Nouvelle Energie initiative launched by David Lisnard, mayor of Cannes and president of the Association of Mayors of France, who proposes a presidential primary extending to all the parties of the right, including Reconquête.
At the same time, the RN itself is evolving as the return of unapologetic American power politics has validated some of its long-standing intuitions. During the Obama years, RN’s calls for sovereignty and protectionism were dismissed as reactionary. Today similar themes are echoed across the spectrum. Macron himself now advocates protectionist measures in response to Trump’s statements on Greenland.
Recent American positions on Venezuela, Greenland, and trade have reinforced a broader realization: Alliances do not vitiate interests. This has been accompanied by an effort to rethink sovereignty and liberalism together. Essayists such as Julien Rochedy, formerly a leader of the RN’s youth movement, now articulate a critique of liberalism from within, rejecting both progressivism and authoritarian temptations while insisting on civilisational continuity.
The RN also faces pressure on its right flank. Zemmour’s liberal tack is gaining traction in influential milieus. A recent municipal poll in Paris even places Reconquête ahead of the RN—a striking signal in a city long impermeable to Le Pen’s party. This has accelerated the RN’s outreach to business circles, with meetings multiplying and private-sector figures entering its leadership. The party has refined its program for small business owners, among whom it now polls at around 40 percent.
Internationally, the RN has distanced itself from its erstwhile ally in the Kremlin. Rather than substituting one foreign model for another, it has adopted a selective approach: learning without allegiance. It does not align itself with Trump, but draws a lesson from him—that political movements are judged less by moral posture than by their ability to defend national interests.
This doctrinal evolution is embodied by a new generation. Pierre-Romain Thionnet, a 32-year-old RN member of the European Parliament and head of the party’s youth movement, embodies this trend, insisting on a sovereignty-based conservatism that eschews illiberalism.
France’s traditional right is relaxing its policy of a cordon sanitaire around the RN. LR and the liberal right no longer entirely rule out rapprochement, as seen in recent actions by Nicolas Sakorzy and LR chief Bruno Retailleau. For its part, the RN understands that welfare state reform and economic freedom are prerequisites for governing credibility.Signs of an emerging liberal-conservatism à la française already exist at the intellectual level. For them to break through into full public view, there only needs to be one inciting factor—a shared enemy in the form of La France Insoumise (France Unbowed). Hostile to the market economy, aligned with left-wing authoritarians, supportive of mass immigration and profound social transformation, the radical left party raises the hackles of the right’s liberal and conservatives alike. In a second round of the presidential election pitting the RN against La France Insoumise, yesterday’s adversaries might well seal the long-awaited alliance to fend off their common nemesis.
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