At first glance, there is little logic in calling elections from a position of such weakness, but that is exactly what French President Emmanuel Macron did when he called surprise parliamentary elections in France after being humiliated by the far right.
After Marine Le Pen and her popular rival Jordan Bardella’s National Coalition suffered a crushing defeat to Macron in Sunday’s European elections, Macron could have done nothing, reshuffled his cabinet or simply changed course by abandoning controversial plans to tighten immigration controls and tighten regulations on unemployment benefits.
Instead, the risk-taking Mr Macron, who became president in 2017 at age 39, gambled that France would vote one way on Sunday and then another a few weeks later.
“Like most people, I am surprised,” said Alain Duhamel, the well-known author of “Emmanuel the Fearless,” a book about Macron. “It’s not madness or desperation, but a big risk taken by an impulsive man who prefers to lead rather than be dictated by events.”
Shock rippled across France on Monday. The stock market crashed. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, whose city is just six weeks away from hosting the Olympics, said she was “shocked” by the “disturbing” decision. “Lightning struck” the daily newspaper Le Parisien, it said on its front page.
For Le Monde, it was a “leap into the void.” Raphaël Glucksmann, who led his resurgent centre-left Socialist party to the third-largest position among French political parties in the European vote, accused Macron of playing a “dangerous game”.
France has always been shrouded in mystery, its perpetual discontent and restlessness at odds with its prosperity and beauty, but this was a surprise of an unusual magnitude.
After a bitter defeat in which his National Rally won 31.37% of the vote to 14.6% for his coalition led by his Renaissance party, Macron essentially called out his country’s bluff, questioning whether the appearance of being poised for a far-right government was real or just a venting of anger.
The risk is that in about a month from now, Mr Macron will have to govern with the 28-year-old Mr Bardella as prime minister, someone who embodies everything he abhors. He may be forced to take that plunge if the nationalist, anti-immigration Rally National wins an absolute majority in the 577-member National Assembly (an unlikely scenario) or simply emerges as the dominant party (more likely).
Le Pen, who is seeking to win the presidential election in 2027, is almost certain to hand the prime ministerial position to Bardella, who headed the party’s European election campaign.
France would face a seizure of political power by far-right officials that has been unthinkable since the Vichy government ruled France in collaboration with the Nazis from 1940 to 1944.
Why play with fire like this? “It’s not the same election, the voting is different, the stakes are not the same,” said Jean-Philippe Derosier, a professor of public law at the University of Lille. “Macron seems to think that the best option is to keep the Rally National candidate under his control, rather than allowing Le Pen to win in 2027.”
In other words, Macron, who is term-limited and due to step down in 2027, may be toying with the idea that three years in power could transform the Rally National from a party of protest into one that can shoulder heavy government responsibility and thwart its inevitable rise.
It’s one thing to criticise from the outskirts, but quite another to run a heavily indebted and polarised country, infuriated by levels of immigration, crime and the cost of living that have many French people appearing to have said “enough is enough”.
As in the United States and other Western societies, there is a widespread sense of alienation, even invisibility, among people outside the internet-connected cities of the knowledge economy, which has led to a widespread feeling that the current system needs to be blown up.
On Sunday, Ms. Le Pen announced an end to the “painful globalist bracket that has caused so much suffering around the world.” It seemed a bold prediction given that mainstream pro-European parties won about 60% of the vote in the European Parliament elections, despite gains by the far right.
It is not uncommon for the French to refer to a “coexistence” of a president from one party and a prime minister from another: most recently, the centre-right Gaullist Jacques Chirac ruled with Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin from 1997 to 2002. France weathered the crisis and Chirac was re-elected.
But there has never been such a deep ideological rift between Macron and his National Rally leader, down to the very notion of French values and the core importance of the European Union to the continent’s freedoms.
