Macron’s snap election is an attempt to scare French voters into rejecting Le Pen

The French presidential list score in the European elections “is not a good result for the parties which defend Europe.” So declared President Macron euphemistically on television last night to the French nation, as he called a snap election to be held on June 30 and July 7. Official results published this morning show the Rassemblement National (RN) has romped home on 31.47 percent. Macron’s party is in a lamentable second place on 14.56 percent (way behind its 22.4 percent in 2019) and very closely tailed by the moderate socialist Raphaël Glucksmann on 13.8 percent.

These European election results are a severe personal defeat for Macron

These European election results are a severe personal defeat for Macron. If there is one issue on which the wavering and inconsistent president has nailed his colors to the mast it is Europe. Adding insult to injury is the RN’s remarkable score.

Macron proclaimed loud and clear on his victory in 2017 that he would ensure that the reasons that led 11 million voters to vote for Marine Le Pen would be swept away. On the contrary, RN — which Macron refused to name in his TV address — has never been so popular. And following first estimates of Sunday’s results, it was Bardella who demanded Macron acknowledge defeat and call legislative elections. Le Figaro calls it a “political earthquake that will mark the history of the Fifth Republic.” 

That Macron has decided to dissolve the National Assembly, which the constitution does not require, signals acknowledgement of the parlous state of French politics. Not since 1997 has a president dissolved parliament to cleanse the atmosphere. But President Macron should beware the precedent. Gaullist president Jacques Chirac’s dissolution did not return a reinforced center-right chamber, as he hoped, but a left-wing one. That obliged Chirac to appoint a socialist prime minister and to govern in partnership with the opposition.

This is the scenario many believe that Macron the risk-taker has opened up. At present RN has eighty-eight seats, but all bets point to the RN being the largest party after the legislative elections. That would mean the president appointing the twenty-eight-year-old Jordan Bardella (the official president of the RN) as prime minister and governing in cohabitation. Macron believes that handing power to the RN will force it to come to terms with the realities of government and remove its credibility for the presidentials in 2027 where polls point to a Marine Le Pen victory.

Ever since Macron lost his working majority in parliament in 2022 the atmosphere in the lower chamber has been quasi-riotous with the president unable to implement many of his reforms. The French National Assembly could plumb greater depths were the prime minister to be Jordan Bardella, harried and hassled by a revivified radical left.

The radical left-wing La France Insoumise (LFI) list in the European elections garnered 9.87 percent of the vote, greater than polls suggested. Overnight its unofficial leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, excoriated the “far right,” declaring: “Incompatible the vision of a France from which would be eliminated those who belong to such and such a religion… and the new France.” LFI called for a spontaneous rally in Paris. The country has not been this divided for decades. 

Of course, Macron will be hoping that the dissolution shock treatment will scare French voters into seeing sense and returning him a majority, as General de Gaulle was able to do when he dissolved parliament after the May ’68 riots. But such is the personal animus generated by Emmanuel Macron that this appears a pipe-dream. 

All this comes against a background of heightened antisemitism in France, not to mention recent widespread social unrest, riots and strikes. Add to that the specific cyber targeting of France by Russia, which is predicted to increase for the Paris Olympic Games, which will now take place just after what will be a fiery election campaign and potentially explosive results. The clouds are darkening over France.

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.