Far right fails to win key targets in French polls

The Socialist Emmanuel Grégoire was on track to be elected mayor of Paris last night, roundly beating the former rightwing minister Rachida • Dati, early projections showed.

- Angelique Chrisafis

Grégoire, an MP with a long track record at a city hall, was running for a united left grouping including the Greens. He was projected to have won with about 53%, a clear victory over Dati, who served in government under Emmanuel Macron and Nicolas Sarkozy, and who had sought to win the French capital for the right after 25 years of the left.

In France’s second city, Marseille, projections indicated that the mayor, Benoît Payan, had won with his leftwing coalition including the Socialists and the Greens - holding back a rise of Marine Le Pen’s far-right anti-immigration party in the city.

Elsewhere, the former prime minister Édouard Philippe is now expected to kickstart his centre-right bid for the French presidency next year after being reelected as mayor of the northern port city of Le Havre.

Philippe was prime minister during Macron’s first term in office and including during the start of the Covid pandemic. He has been building up for more than a year to run for president in 2027, when Macron’s two terms as president come to an end and it is uncertain who will head Europe’s second-largest economy.