The New Popular Front briefly reinvigorated the left with enthusiasm for the idea of stopping the radical right in its tracks and, with luck, achieving major social advances, including a rise in the minimum wage and a fairer pension reform plan. The radical right has been stopped for now, but the social advances are rapidly receding into a very uncertain future.
Perhaps the historical precedent one should invoke is not the Popular Front of 1936-1938 but the second Cartel des Gauches of 1932-1934. After the right won the elections of 1928, the Radical-Socialists–which, despite the name, was actually a centrist party like Macron’s–joined with Leon Blum’s SFIO (non-Communist Socialists) in 1932. The united left, known as the (second) Cartel des Gauches, won a majority of seats in 1932 but could never agree on a coalition platform, so that one government rapidly succeeded another. Couple instability with corruption, including the notorious Stavisky Affair, and the eventual result was a violent right-wing reaction, culminating in the riots of February 1934, a prelude to a later riot in which Blum nearly lost his life.
The past is prologue, but memory seems to have effaced the second Cartel des Gauches and replaced it with the happier image of the original Popular Front.