What France has just lived through can only be described by the words of Vladimir Lenin: “there are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen”.

In just a month, the country's political landscape was upended by Emmanuel Macron’s shock decision to dissolve the National Assembly after his party, Ensemble, trailed behind the right-populist Rassemblement National by seventeen points in elections to the European Parliament on June 9th.

In the week that followed, the left managed to unite once again, as in the 1930s Front Populaire, despite having spent the European race trading barbs. The Gaullist centre-right imploded, with Éric Ciotti, the leader of Les Républicains, calling on his party's candidates to either support or be supported by Le Pen's, while most of the bigwigs opposing him in-house attempted to remove him, usurp the Twitter account from his faction—and shut him off the party's headquarters.

In the midst of that chaos, Macron’s very own allies were gobsmacked by a decision that could have eradicated not just the government's ability to rule, but their own parliamentary standing. Yet while the campaign was marked by the possibility of a Rassemblement National government led by the 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, the party has been met by a barrage of tactical voting against its candidates in Sunday's runoff. Whereas it stunningly surpassed the one-third (33%) mark in the first round, its parliamentary group, after the biasing effect of local a non-proportional voting system, will be of 143 MPs, up from 89 but far lower than initially forecasted.

This legislative snap race leaves Parliament in an unruly state, with three roughly equal blocs: the left, the centrists and the nationalists—none of them especially keen to make compromises. So what happened, and where do we go from here? This week, we ask Mij Rahman (Eurasia Group) and François Hublet (Le Grand Continent) to walk us through the French chaos.

As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on whatever platform you use, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod) to get access to the full episode, where we talk in further detail about the drivers of the ever-increasing Le Pen vote.

Welcome to another Decency Deep Dive. This week we tackle the forthcoming European Parliament (EP) elections on June 9, widely expected to deliver a significantly more right-wing supranational legislature. Russia’s ongoing efforts to intrude into the news cycle, public debate and imaginary of Western societies are on the agenda, too, as we address its recent efforts at disinformation and lobbying. Finally, as Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez ups the ante of its effort to smear the country's press, its judges and the entire opposition, we ponder where goes Spain next.

As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on Apple Podcasts, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. And please consider supporting the show through Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/undecencypod.

“I think it is obvious that NATO's expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the alliance itself, or with ensuring security in Europe. On the contrary, it represents a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust. And we have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended?”

That was Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. This speech encapsulates Putin's long-simmering critique of the West and his framing of NATO's expansion as a form of provocation. It is often pointed to, today, as the beginning of Putin's foreign policy that led to the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Some in the West, most notably Tucker Carlson, have swallowed this argument hook, line and sinker—and continue to repeat it today.

In this week's episode, we spoke to Michael C. Kimmage, Chair of the History Department at Catholic University of America (CUA) and author of Collisions (2024), a new book with Oxford University Press that documents the build-up to all-out war between Russia and Ukraine. In his book, and in our discussion today, Kimmage takes us through the key moments that led to the invasion of February 2022.

As always, please rate and review Uncommon Decency on whatever platform you use, and send us your comments or questions either on Twitter at @UnDecencyPod or by e-mail at undecencypod@gmail.com. We’re also continuing our giveaway of the "How to Win Brexit" board game to our patreons, so sign up today for a chance to win one. Thank you, and we hope you enjoy this episode!

Bibliography:

• Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability (2024): https://global.oup.com/academic/product/collisions-9780197751794?cc=us&lang=en&.