In the face of it, there is little logic in calling the election from a position of great weakness. But that’s what President Emmanuel Macron has done by calling France’s snap parliamentary election an insult to the far-right.
After the National Rally of Marine Le Pen and her popular protégé Jordan Bardella handed him a crushing defeat on Sunday in the European Parliament elections, Mr Macron may do nothing, reshuffle his government, or simply change course through stricter controls on immigration and by canceling plans he fought to tighten rules on unemployment benefits.
However, Mr. Macron, who became president at 39 in 2017 by taking a risk, chose the gamble that France, having chosen one way there, will choose another in a few weeks.
“I was surprised, like almost everyone,” said Alain Duhamel, the lead author of “Emmanuel the Bold,” a book about Mr. Macron. “This is not madness, it is not despair, but there is a great risk from an impatient person who prefers to take the initiative rather than experience events.”
Shock over France on Monday. The stock market collapsed. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, the city that will host the Olympics in just over six weeks, said she was “surprised” by the “disturbing” decision. “Lightning,” thundered Le Parisien, the daily newspaper, on its front page.
For Le Monde, it is “jumping into the void.” Raphaël Glucksmann, who led the revived centre-left socialists to third place among French parties in the European vote, accused Mr Macron of playing a “dangerous game.”
France has always been a mystery, its constant discontent and restlessness no match for its prosperity and beauty, but this was a surprise of unusual proportions. Mr. Macron, after the stinging defeat of the National Rally won 31.37 percent of the vote to 14.6 percent for the coalition led by the Renaissance party, has in effect called his country’s bluff, asking what seems ready to the extreme right in power. real or just letting off steam.
The risk is that in about a month from now Mr Macron will have to govern with Mr Bardella, 28, who represents everything he hates, as prime minister. If the nationalist, anti-immigrant National Rally wins an absolute majority in the 577-member National Assembly, an unlikely scenario, or only emerges as far as the strongest party, which is more reasonable, Mr. Macron may be forced to swallow hard and do it.
Mrs. Le Pen, with an eye on winning the presidency in 2027, will almost certainly defer to Mr Bardella, who led the party’s European election campaign, for the post of prime minister.
France will then be faced with the consecration through high political office of the extreme right, an idea that was unthinkable since the Vichy government ruled France in collaboration with the Nazis between 1940 and 1944.
Why are you playing with fire like that? “It is not the same election, not the same form of ballot, and not the same stake,” said Jean-Philippe Derosier, professor of public law at the University of Lille. “Macron apparently feels that it is the worst choice to have a National Rally prime minister to rule, rather than Le Pen’s victory in 2027.”
In other words, Mr. Macron, whose term is limited and will leave office in 2027, could be flirting with the notion that three years in office for the National Rally – turning from a protest party to a party with heavy responsibilities. government – will stop the rise that cannot be done.
It’s one thing to run from the border, another to open up a deeply indebted and polarized country, so angry about the level of immigration, crime and cost of living that many French people seem to be driven by the sentiment of “enough is enough.”
As in other Western societies, including the United States, a widespread, even invisible, sense of alienation among people outside the cable cities of the science economy has led to a widespread feeling that the existing system needs to be thrown out.
Mrs. Le Pen on Sunday announced the end of the “painful globalist cage that has made many people suffer in the world.” Given that mainstream pro-European parties won around 60 percent of the vote in the European Parliament elections, despite the surge on the right, that seems like a bold prediction.
A “cohabitation,” as the French call it, between the president of one party and the prime minister of another, is not unknown – most recently, Jacques Chirac, a center-right Gaullist, led with the Socialist prime minister, Lionel Jospin, between 1997 and 2002. France survived and Mr. Chirac was re-elected.
But before there is an ideological gulf, towards the very concept of French values ​​and the core importance of the European Union for the independence of the continent, as there will be between Mr. Macron and the prime minister of the National Rally.
