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      How the Far-Right National Rally Did in France’s Elections

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      Leaders of France’s far-right National Rally tried to put a brave face on projected results from parliamentary elections on Sunday that showed the party had failed to win the most seats, saying that they remained on a path to power despite a disappointing night.The National Rally, which had finished first in an initial round of balloting last week, was set to hold its most seats ever in the National Assembly, said the party’s president, Jordan Bardella. He denounced a political strategy by its centrist and left-wing rivals to withdraw candidates from hundreds of races to avoid splitting their support, saying they had “deprived” the country of a far-right government.Still, with almost all of the 577 National Assembly seats left to be called, the National Rally had amassed 142 seats, the most of any single party. It was also winning about 37 percent of the votes nationally, the most of any party.“This evening, an old world has fallen,” Mr. Bardella said. “Nothing can stop a people who have started to hope again.”Marine Le Pen, the party’s leader and the daughter of its founder, also sought to put the result in a wider context. “The tide is rising,” she said. “It didn’t rise high enough this time, but it’s still rising. And as a result, our victory, in reality, is only delayed.”The National Rally’s leaders argued that many of France’s problems stemmed from immigration and had campaigned on a plan for “national preference,” under which certain jobs, social benefits, schooling and health care would be reserved for citizens rather than immigrants.The New Popular Front coalition of four left-wing parties came together quickly last month in a bid to present a united front and keep the National Rally from winning a majority after President Emmanuel Macron called the snap election.Results in the western region of La Sarthe illustrated the challenge for National Rally supporters in overcoming a bitter defeat. The party had won a plurality of votes in four of five constituencies there last week, but fell short of the absolute majority required to avoid a runoff. In the second round of voting on Sunday, no National Rally candidate was elected for any of the five seats.“It’s a shame,” said Felix Aubry, a student and the campaign manager for one of the National Rally candidates, François Fèvre. “It’s crazy to see this massive shift in votes.” He described the recent alliance of left-wing parties as “unnatural” and tried to put a positive spin on the National Rally’s progress.“The National Rally has still made a very big breakthrough, so it’s still historic,” he said, adding, “When you see all the things that have been put in place to block it, it’s huge.” More

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      France’s Snap Election Enters Its Final Hours

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      The vote will determine the composition of France’s National Assembly, and the future of President Emmanuel Macron’s second term.Voters in France will cast ballots on Sunday in the final round of snap legislative elections. The results could force President Emmanuel Macron to govern alongside far-right opponents or usher in chronic political instability weeks before the Paris Summer Olympics.Mr. Macron called the elections for the 577-seat National Assembly, France’s lower and more prominent house of Parliament, last month in a risky gamble that appeared to have largely backfired after the first round of voting last week.Most polls close at 6 p.m. local time on Sunday, or as late as 8 p.m. in larger cities. Nationwide seat projections by polling institutes, based on preliminary results, are expected just after 8 p.m. Official results will come in throughout the night.Here is what to watch for.Will the far right win enough seats for an absolute majority?That will be the key question.The first round of voting was dominated by the nationalist, anti-immigration National Rally party. An alliance of left-wing parties called the New Popular Front came in a strong second, while Mr. Macron’s party and its allies came in third.Seventy-six seats were won outright — roughly half by the National Rally. But the rest went to runoffs.Over 300 districts were three-way races until over 200 candidates from left-wing parties and Mr. Macron’s centrist coalition pulled out to avoid splitting the vote and try to prevent the far right from winning.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hakeem Jeffries Plans to Discuss Biden’s Candidacy With Top House Democrats

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      Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, has scheduled a virtual meeting on Sunday with senior House Democrats to discuss President Biden’s candidacy and the path forward, according to a senior official familiar with the plan.The session, which is to include the ranking members of congressional committees who make up the top echelons of the party in the House, comes at a time of profound worry among Democrats on Capitol Hill about Mr. Biden’s poor performance at last week’s presidential debate. House Democrats have not met as a group since, even as concerns have mounted about Mr. Biden’s viability as a candidate and the impact he could have on his party’s ability to win back control of the chamber and hold the Senate should he remain in the race. Mr. Jeffries has been in listening mode all week, refraining from pressuring Democrats to rally around the president but also encouraging them not to be rash in their public pronouncements as Mr. Biden and his team determine the best path forward.But Democrats have begun to splinter. Four in the House — Representatives Lloyd Doggett of Texas, Raúl Grijalva of Arizona, Seth Moulton of Massachusetts and Mike Quigley of Illinois — have called for the president to withdraw, while others have made public their serious concerns about his ability to prevail in the race.On Friday, Mr. Quigley said he had had a “hard time” getting to the point of urging the president to get out of the race.But, he told MSNBC, “clearly, the alternative now is a very bleak scenario with, I would say, almost no hope of succeeding — and it doesn’t just affect the White House. It affects all of Congress and our future.”Senator Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia, has been working to organize a meeting of Democrats in his chamber to discuss their concerns about Mr. Biden’s candidacy and what should be done, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the effort who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity. More

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      Labour Wins Back the Trust of Jewish Voters

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      From the day that Keir Starmer became the head of the Labour Party in 2020, he made repairing ties with British Jews a priority, calling antisemitism a “stain” on the party.On Thursday, many British Jews who had turned away from Labour in the 2019 general election gave the party another chance. Labour won back several North London constituencies with significant Jewish populations.Nearly half of Jewish voters planned to support the Labour Party in Thursday’s election, according to a poll of 2,717 Jewish adults who responded to the Jewish Current Affairs Survey taken in June, before the election.Britain’s 287,000 Jews make up less than 0.5 percent of the country’s population, and some of them had been politically homeless under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party’s former leader, who was accused of having let antisemitism flourish within the party. Jewish support for the party under Mr. Corbyn reached a low of 11 percent in the 2019 general election, according to the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, which focuses on Jewish life in Europe.“It’s very clear that Jews have flocked back to what I think to many people has long been their natural political home,” said Jonathan Boyd, the executive director of the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, which is based in London.Sarah Sackman, the Labour candidate for the North London constituency of Finchley and Golders Green, where nearly one in five voters are Jewish, the largest proportion in Britain, was elected on Thursday. Labour candidates in the North London constituencies of Hendon, where 14 percent of voters are Jewish, and Chipping Barnet, where nearly 7 percent of voters are Jewish, also won.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Who Is Rachel Reeves, the Woman Taking the Helm of the U.K.’s Economy?

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      Rachel Reeves became Britain’s first female chancellor of the Exchequer on Friday, taking on one of the country’s four great offices of state, with responsibility for managing Britain’s budget.After a decade and a half of economic stagnation, Ms. Reeves, a Labour lawmaker with a reputation as a serious and steady manager, faces the tough jobs of boosting Britain’s productivity growth, a key measure of prosperity, and of reviving struggling public services.“I know the scale of the challenge that I’m likely to inherit,” Ms. Reeves told the BBC early Friday. “There’s not a huge amount of money there,” she said, adding that the party needed to unlock private investment.Ms. Reeves is expected to approach her new role with deliberation.“Labour has come a long way to regain the trust of people on their economic record and she doesn’t want to risk that,” Carys Roberts, the director of the Institute for Public Policy Research, said.For example, Labour has moved to more centrist policies in recent years, following former leader Jeremy Corbyn’s left-wing program of higher spending and widespread nationalization of industries.Ms. Reeves, 45, was elected to Parliament in 2010 in the northern city of Leeds. In a bid to prove her credibility, she has frequently referred to her traditional training as an economist during six years working at the Bank of England after college.She has emphasized her goal of creating stability after a period of international and homegrown economic shocks, including a surge in energy prices and the premiership of Liz Truss, who lasted only 49 days in office after her tax cut proposals roiled financial markets.Ms. Reeves calls her economic agenda “securonomics,” a dull-sounding portmanteau that reflects her already earnest reputation. She once told The Guardian that if you want “cartwheels” to turn to someone else.She has described “securonomics” as ensuring Britain’s economic security in a world that is fragmenting, while also ensuring the security of working people’s finances. It is inspired by the policies of U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.But the call for stability is also a sign that Britons shouldn’t expect quick or drastic changes in the handling of the economy.Amid high debt levels and relatively high taxes, Ms. Reeves has vowed not to raise corporate, personal income or V.A.T. taxes and to adhere to strict debt rules. Given these restraints, she hopes that stability will induce much-needed economic growth.In practice, that is expected to mean giving more power to institutions, like the fiscal watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility, and working more closely with businesses to encourage them to ramp up private investment.“Labour are pinning a lot on the hope of economic growth, including relying on growth to enable them to spend more on services,” Ms. Roberts said. More

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      Keir Starmer es el nuevo primer ministro del Reino Unido

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      El exabogado de derechos humanos, de 61 años, carece del carisma de sus antecesores, pero lideró un cambio de rumbo para el Partido Laborista[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]Keir Starmer se convirtió el viernes en el primer ministro del Reino Unido después de la decisiva victoria de su Partido Laborista en las elecciones generales.“En todo el país, la gente se despertará con la noticia de que se ha quitado un peso de encima, finalmente se ha quitado una carga de los hombros de esta nación”, dijo un exultante Starmer a sus partidarios en el centro de Londres a primera hora de la madrugada del viernes.Utilizando la analogía de un “rayo soleado de esperanza” naciente, al principio pálido y cada vez más fuerte, dijo que el país tenía “una oportunidad, después de 14 años, de recuperar su futuro”.Starmer sustituye a Rishi Sunak, el primer ministro saliente, quien tomó posesión del cargo hace menos de dos años y lo llamó para felicitarlo.Starmer, de 61 años, es un exabogado de derechos humanos y ha liderado un notable cambio de rumbo del Partido Laborista, que hace pocos años sufrió su peor derrota electoral desde la década de 1930. Ha impulsado el partido hacia el centro político, al mismo tiempo que le ha sacado provecho a los fracasos de tres primeros ministros conservadores.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Nigel Farage, Right-Wing Disrupter, Elected to Parliament for the First Time

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      Nigel Farage, a supporter of former President Donald J. Trump, a driving force behind Brexit and Britain’s best known political disrupter, was elected to Parliament for the first time.The new insurgent party he leads — Reform U.K. — was projected in the national exit poll to have captured four seats, more than many analysts had predicted, in an electoral system that typically punishes small parties. His party has been buoyed by an anti-immigration platform.Mr. Farage won by a large margin in Clacton, a faded seaside town, where pre-election opinion surveys had suggested he had a strong chance of winning. He had tried and failed seven times before to be elected to Parliament.“The establishment are terrified, the Conservatives are terrified,” Mr. Farage declared gleefully in a speech last month, referring to the governing party. Britain was “a broken nation,” he added, attacking targets ranging from asylum seekers to the BBC.A polarizing, pugilistic figure and a highly skilled communicator, Mr. Farage, 60, helped the Conservatives to a landslide victory in the last general election by not running candidates from his Brexit Party in many key areas.This election, his plan was different: to destroy the Tories by poaching much of their vote, then replace — or take over — the party’s remnants. Early in the campaign, after a journalist asked if he wanted to merge his upstart party with the Conservatives, he replied: “More like a takeover, dear boy.”Reform U.K. has come under fierce criticism in recent weeks after a number of its candidates were found to have made inflammatory statements. One said that Britain should have remained neutral in the fight against the Nazis; another used antisemitic tropes by claiming that Jewish groups were “agitating for the mass import into England of Muslims.”The party has blamed some of its problems on growing pains, has dropped some candidates and has threatened to take legal action against a private company it paid to vet candidates.Last week, an undercover investigation by Britain’s Channel 4 News secretly filmed Reform campaigners in Clacton using racist and homophobic language, with one using a slur to describe the prime minister, Rishi Sunak.But for two decades he has shaped Britain’s political conversation, driving the Brexit cause, outflanking the Tories and pushing them further right. More

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      Jeremy Corbyn Wins Election Against Labour, Party He Once Led

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      Jeremy Corbyn, an independent candidate running for Parliament, won his seat against a candidate from the Labour party, which he once led.It was a vindication for Mr. Corbyn, who was running for the first time against the party he led from 2015 to 2020.Mr. Corbyn, who has held the seat since 1983, was suspended as Labour leader and eventually purged by the party over his response to allegations of antisemitism during his tenure.Supporters of Jeremy Corbyn in Islington on Thursday.Andrew Testa for The New York TimesFor many in his constituency — an area of London with pockets of deep wealth alongside deprivation — the race meant choosing between a longstanding affinity for Labour and a politician who had represented the area for more than 40 years and was a deeply familiar presence in the community. For others, Mr. Corbyn’s handling of alleged antisemitism on the hard-left of the Labour Party while he was its leader was an enduring stain on his reputation.Heading into Election Day, a poll by YouGov had declared the race to be a tossup, with the Labour candidate, Praful Nargund, holding a slight lead over Mr. Corbyn.Paul Anthony Ogunwemimo, who said he had lived in the area for 14 years, called Mr. Corbyn “a very nice man.” But he had voted for the Labour candidate on Thursday, he said, largely to support Keir Starmer, who replaced Mr. Corbyn as the head of the party.Hibbah Filli, who was born and raised in Mr. Corbyn’s constituency, said many of her friends and family members had voted for him in the past as “more of a Labour thing.” Voting for the first time on Thursday, she said she had backed Mr. Corbyn.“I feel like he’s very dedicated to the community,” she said. “I feel like he’s done a good job for a long time, and I feel like we need a diverse range of voices in Parliament.” More