French political rivalries spill onto soccer field ahead of lawmaker charity match

By Elizabeth Pineau

PARIS (Reuters) – Deep divisions running through France’s National Assembly spilled out onto the soccer pitch on Wednesday, with leftwing lawmakers refusing to play alongside colleagues from the far-right at an annual charity match.

After Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National party won a record number of seats in elections in June, lawmakers from the centre-left and hard left decried what they called the “normalisation” of the far right.

Stepping onto the soccer field along side Le Pen’s party lieutenants would only accelerate that process, they said.

“We cannot be teammates on a football pitch when we are doing everything we can to not let the far right become commonplace,” Parti Socialiste chief Olivier Faure told reporters.

France’s parliament was for decades dominated by two mainstream parties. But the kind of voter anger over globalisation and self-serving political elites that propelled Donald Trump to the White House and underpinned Britain’s Brexit vote has fuelled support for parties on the left and right fringes of French politics as well.

Faure said Italy’s election results neatly illustrated what was at stake at home.

“Trivialisation leads to alliances between the right and the extreme right, and this is how the extreme right can then govern,” he added.

Far-right lawmakers said those boycotting the evening game were guilty of holding French voters in contempt.

Le Pen won 41.5% of the vote in a presidential runoff vote in April after a campaign fought on protecting household incomes from surging living costs, before her party won 89 seats in the lower house.

“I’m sorry that the left and hard left are not capable of rising above these political divisions and accepting the result of the ballot box. We were elected democratically,” said far-right legislator Alexandre Sabatou.

(Reporting by Elizabeth Pineau; Writing by Richard Lough)