Macron’s giant gamble: can the President draw voters back from the brink?
Just four days ago, Rishi Sunak looked comfortably placed to win the Least Likely to Succeed trophy in the ongoing European Grand National. But that was before France’s Emmanuel Macron stunned his colleagues, and the electorate, by dissolving the National Assembly and calling parliamentary elections to take place on 30 June and 8 July.
The most likely result of the President’s bombshell announcement, made last night in the course of an impromptu television address, is that Marine Le Pen, or more likely her surrogate Jordan Bardella, will be installed next month as his new prime minister at the head of a hard-right, anti-immigrant administration.
There have been periods of cohabitation – President and government from two different factions – before. But never like this.
Macron will be hoping against hope that French voters will draw back from the brink. On Sunday, his centre-left, centre-right Renaissance Party came a distant second to Le Pen’s National Rally in the elections to the European Parliament and there is little doubt that his enduring would-be nemesis is already picking her nominees for the top ministerial positions. But if – as they have done before – the French recoil somewhat from a leap into the dark, the President could yet hold on to the levers of power.
That, at least, is what he will be telling himself.
But what a momentous week for the Right. First, Nigel Farage vowing to make his Reform party the main opposition party after the UK elections on 4 July. Now Macron, risking everything in an all-or-nothing challenge to the people of France. Are high-stakes gambles now to become the norm in Europe? Will Olaf Scholz, the embattled chancellor of Germany, be the next to put everything on the line, or will it be Spain’s Pedro Sánchez? Suddenly, Italy, led by Giorgia Meloni, looks to be the most stable of the EU’s member states – and who would have imagined that just twelve months ago?
The basis for what passes for Macron’s optimism – enunciated between gritted teeth – is that the European elections are one thing and France another. The Euros, he has to reckon, are a chance to let off steam, while the National Assembly is where the business of government is actually done.
Well, up to a point. Ever since the President failed to retain his majority in the National Assembly after the elections in the summer of 2022, very little of note has been achieved. It is as if democracy itself has been put on hold, reduced to ensuring that France doesn’t actually fall apart at the seams. Macron himself has recently done little more than grandstand at state occasions, acting presidential while in reality having less and less to do.
He has suggested that French troops might one day take to the field in Ukraine and called, loftily, on Europe to get its act together not only on the threat posed by Russia but on relations with China. He has even let it be known that he is ready to join Spain, Norway and Ireland in recognising Palestine as a sovereign state. Last week, having returned from a state visit to Berlin, he posed with world leaders, including King Charles, on the beaches of Normandy, then welcomed President Biden to the Élysee Palace to rest his weary bones. Following the parliamentary elections, he will preside over the Paris Olympics, anxious that they should not be overshadowed by the threat of terrorism. In the autumn, refreshed after a spell of R&R at his Mediterranean retreat in the Fort de Brégançon, he will join church leaders in the grand re-opening of Notre Dame – an achievement that might turn out to be his only lasting legacy.
Throughout, in keeping with his inflated estimation of his own worth, Macron will be focused on preserving his authority. Everyone else will be concerned much more with what Le Pen, with the 28-year-old Bardella by her side, will do if catapulted into power.
In the UK, Farage can talk until he is blue (rather than red) in the face about what he would do to solve the immigration crisis. He knows that he will not be able to do more than hurl abuse at Keir Starmer and what will almost certainly be the new Labour government. But in France, Le Pen and Bardella will have to show that they are not all mouth and no pantalons. Like Giorgia Meloni, they will have to operate within the system and under the gaze of their European allies. The pair will be hoping that with the Right rampaging across the Continent (though not yet in full control, even in the Netherlands and Austria), they will have a green light to do as they please. But they will also be conscious that Macron, still with three years to run as President, can step in to frustrate them, using his bully pulpit (the throne at Versailles) alongside his presidential veto to make their life endlessly difficult.
“The rise of nationalists and demagogues is a danger for our nation and for Europe,” he told the nation on Sunday night. “After this day, I cannot go on as though nothing has happened.”
Who knows? It could be that Macron has guessed right and that the French middle ground will move in his direction on 30 June 30 and 8 July. He will be hoping that keeping the slow-burn economic recovery on course will trump the potential chaos that Le Pen & Co could bring. In that event, it may yet be the case that he will be able to cobble together a governing coalition made up of Renaissance, the centre-right Republicans and a splattering of other factions up to and including the Socialists.
Just don’t bet on it.
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