French far right wins first round of snap election, projections show

Good morning. We start with France, where Marine Le Pen’s far-right party has battered President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist alliance in the first round of snap French parliamentary elections, moving the country closer to a potential nationalist government that would jolt the European project.

After unusually high turnout, the Rassemblement National (RN) party and its allies won 33.2 per cent of the vote, while the leftwing Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP) alliance came second with 28 per cent, according to provisional results published by the interior ministry. Macron’s Ensemble alliance and allies secured 22.4 per cent of the vote.

The first-round results suggest the RN and its allies are on track to win the most seats in the National Assembly and potentially even an outright majority in the final round of voting on July 7.

If the RN secures 289 seats in the 577-strong lower house, it will force Macron into an uncomfortable power-sharing arrangement known as a “cohabitation” in which two opposing parties must govern together.

However, the vote has led to an unprecedented number of three-way run-offs, which make seat projections difficult. Ipsos estimated there would be 285 to 315 potential three-way contests in the second round, assuming that no candidates withdraw.

An intense period of bargaining will now begin between leftwing and centrist parties over whether to drop out in some seats in an attempt to block the RN from winning. Parties must finalise their candidate lists in 48 hours. Read the full report.

• Macron’s miscalculation: The French president’s gamble has given the RN a shot at securing an absolute parliamentary majority with potentially disastrous consequences for social cohesion and for France’s place in Europe.

• Europe’s ‘cordon sanitaire’: It is time to admit that ostracism of elected representatives to the right of traditional conservative parties can sometimes do more harm than good, writes Martin Sandbu.

Here’s what else I’m keeping tabs on today:

• Economic data: S&P Global releases manufacturing PMI data for the Eurozone, Germany, France, Italy and the US, while Germany issues provisional CPI figures for June.

• Central banks: Clare Lombardelli becomes the Bank of England’s deputy governor for monetary policy while European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde speaks at the bank’s Forum on Central Banking in Sintra, Portugal.

• Companies: Janet Truncale becomes the new chair and chief executive of EY, succeeding Carmine Di Sibio.

Five more top stories

1. Exclusive: Israel is preparing to test an experimental model for running postwar Gaza by creating a series of “humanitarian bubbles” designed to be Hamas-free, which has been met with incredulity by many people briefed on the plans. The pilot scheme, soon to be launched in northern Gaza, is seen as a template for what Israel imagines would follow the war. Neri Zilber has more on the proposal.

2. The UK armed forces “cannot defend the British homelands properly” and are unprepared for “conflict of any scale”, according to the senior defence official charged with gauging Britain’s military strength. Rob Johnson’s comments come as the Tories and Labour are under pressure to demonstrate their commitment to defence ahead of this week’s election.

• Black Country: Low turnout in places like Wolverhampton could have unexpected consequences for UK election results, writes William Wallis.

3. Drug traffickers chose to launder money through Citigroup because they believed the bank was “more favourable”, with less robust fraud controls, according to senior US law enforcement officials. In an indictment unsealed last week, US prosecutors detailed how two California residents who allegedly worked with the notorious Sinaloa cartel deposited tens of thousands of dollars at Citi ATMs. Read more details of the case.

4. BlackRock has agreed to buy Preqin, a UK private markets data group, for £2.55bn in cash, as the world’s largest money manager makes its first foray into financial information provision, said people briefed about the matter. The transaction is the latest of a series of deals for specialised data providers amid growing demand for ever more granular financial information.

5. Exclusive: The US tried to facilitate a deal for Swiss trading house Mercuria to acquire copper-cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo in a transaction that hinged on Washington lifting sanctions against controversial Israeli billionaire Dan Gertler. The unusual US initiative reflects its increasingly fierce competition with China for access to the minerals needed for clean energy infrastructure.

The Big Read

The rise and fall of Evergrande’s bonds has shed light on the profound differences between mainland China’s financial, legal and political systems and those of the wider world. Almost three years after the troubled property group first missed payments to offshore investors, overseas bondholders are finding themselves left stranded with little recourse when boom turns to bust.

We’re also reading . . . 

• Age of anxiety: Changing concerns and business models demand more sophisticated strategies for regionalisation and de-risking, writes Rana Foroohar.

• Eurocracy: Why are the UK and EU economies falling behind the US? Look at the role of government, writes Ruchir Sharma.

• UK capital markets reboot: Challenges to the initiative include convincing often wary domestic pension funds to back start-ups.

Chart of the day

If Labour sweeps to power as the polls predict, the party would have to pick up the pieces of the UK’s fragmented asylum system, including the Tory party’s flagship Rwanda scheme, while trying to make good on its pledge to reduce small boat crossings and increase returns of asylum seekers. But do Sir Keir Starmer’s policies stand any chance of bringing down the number of people making the perilous journey across the Channel?

Take a break from the news

There is an abundance of goal-setting, time-managing, email-batching productivity “hacks” we are constantly told will speed us to career success. But one oddly overlooked superpower reveals an uncomfortable truth about modern working life, writes Pilita Clark.

Additional contributions from Benjamin Wilhelm and Gordon Smith