His party faces near-annihilation in the National Assembly, with fewer seats than Rishi Sunak’s Tories can hope for later this week. His prime ministers, past and present, could not find hard enough words in private to describe his “suicidal” snap election decision since he took it three weeks ago. Marine Le Pen was quick to claim an historic victory as her National Rally came first in yesterday’s first round of the legislative elections, with 33 per cent of the vote.
Yet Emmanuel Macron seemed not to have a care in the world yesterday when he went for a walkabout at Le Touquet, the northern seaside town where he has a holiday home, and had just cast his vote. Smiling, in a leather biker jacket, baseball cap, and fetching sun specs, he was projecting Marshal Foch’s famous Battle of the Marne stand: “My centre is giving way, my right is retreating: situation excellent, I attack!” Despite a nationwide vote of rejection against him and his policies, the president still believes he can snatch a victory of sorts from the chaos he wrought on France with his risky political gamble.
Tomorrow at 6:00pm, the shape of next Sunday’s second round will be clearer: this is the moment by when candidates must officially register to stay in the race. There are some 300 constituencies, of a total of 577, where no-one won an absolute majority: this is known as a “triangular” election. In a majority of these, the Macronista candidate came last.
They can’t win, and are faced with the hard choice of either staying on for a three-way contest, becoming the “spoiler” candidate preventing the victory of the second best-placed, usually a New Popular Front Left-winger, or dropping out, which is what Emmanuel Macron is commanding them to do, to “bar the way to the Rally”. This is known as the “Front Républicain” principle, where you prevent the so-called “fascists” from taking over.
But how fascist is today’s “detoxified” National Rally, which Marine Le Pen has for years brought to political stances outwardly resembling most of France’s Right-wing politicians in the past half century? That’s the question now splitting the centre. Only three weeks ago, on June 12, Macron could not find hard enough words for the Jean-Luc Mélenchon-led New Popular Front. “The socialists, greens and communists are allying themselves with an anti-democratic, anti-parliamentarian, anti-Semitic, anti-nuclear power, pro-Russian party”, he thundered, meaning the hard-Left, which had grabbed the lion’s share of winnable NPF constituencies. Yet he now wants his own candidates to support them.
There’s little likelihood Macron’s injunctions will be followed by all of his once-meekly obedient followers. His popular first PM (2017-2020), the former Le Havre mayor Edouard Philippe, a possible presidential candidate for the centre-Right, has already advised support in “triangulars” for all components of the Left – except France Unbowed. The Républicains (the tattered remnants of Nicolas Sarkozy’s and Jacques Chirac’s neo-Gaullist party) have refused to tell their voters whom to choose, which in effect may give one or two dozen seats to the Rally. All politics are local: in many constituencies, personal factors will decide a potential spoiler candidate to drop out or remain.
And there remains a very specific stigma attached to the National Rally, which will prevent some politicians from having any truck with a party led by someone named Le Pen. Many still remember the local alliance agreed by the Gaullist Charles Millon 27 years ago with Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front minority representatives for the presidency of the Rhône-Alpes regional council. Millon, a former well-rated Minister for Defence under Jacques Chirac, normally on track for further plum Cabinet jobs, got in – but his political career died there and then. Today aged 78, he lost his seat, never to be selected again.
Emmanuel Macron is banking on the likely chaos emerging next Monday as the country faces a hung parliament to stay bunkered up at the Elysée palace, making life miserable for whoever gets to be his PM. Jordan Bardella has always said he doesn’t want the job if the Rally doesn’t enjoy a clear majority in the House: he might still chance it if he’s only short five or ten MPs, because he probably would find it easy to find enough Centre-Right allies to pass bills. If even this modest ambition doesn’t pan out, nobody knows what the future will look like – except that financial markets, which hate uncertainty, will make France’s debt more expensive.
Meanwhile, across the country, millions of National Rally voters, most incredibly vocal in their deep-seated detestation of the president, will feel robbed, while, on the hard-Left, some have already started calling for national disobedience and strikes. Macron has let it be known that he plans to dissolve the House again in a year’s time, on July 8 2025, the instant he is allowed to again. In the meantime, he means to announce this coming Wednesday a series of new nominations at key posts in France’s plethoric civil service, to ensure maximum friction for every bill and decision that manages to be passed by politicians he doesn’t like. For a gambler like him, it’s the ultimate thrill.
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