Macron may have bitten off more than he can chew

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The writer is editorial director and a columnist at Le Monde

Emmanuel Macron came to power in 2017, at the age of 39, as the ultimate disrupter, bulldozing his way to the presidency past ailing established parties that never recovered. On Sunday, a humiliating defeat at the hands of the only political force that has thrived in this field of ruins, Marine Le Pen’s far-right Rassemblement National, convinced him to take another gamble.

This wager, though, is far riskier than any he has taken before — for himself, for France and for Europe. 

France’s political system has been deeply shaken by the double shock it suffered in the space of an hour last weekend. First came the results of the elections to the European parliament, with an unprecedented 31.4 per cent share of the vote for the RN’s list led by 28-year-old Jordan Bardella. This was more than twice the share of the president’s party list. And if you include the results of smaller parties, the far right won almost 40 per cent of the vote. Then came Macron’s dissolution of the National Assembly and his calling of fresh legislative elections, a move described as “brutal” by his own prime minister, Gabriel Attal, who had been kept out of the loop.

A new election, Macron said, would provide a necessary “clarification”: do the French really want the far right to govern, or do they just want to express their discontent?

The clarification started the very next day. Reeling from the shock, the centre-right party Les Républicains is imploding, its president having unilaterally decided to join Le Pen’s troops, taking with him dozens of candidates. In full crisis mode, the rest of the leadership decided to expel him but could not even meet in the party’s headquarters, which had been locked. On the left, radicals, ecologists and Socialists have reunited in a “popular front” to put forward joint candidates.

This ongoing recomposition of the political landscape may not be what Macron, ever the sorcerer’s apprentice, wished for. His goal, he said, is to stop the rise of “the extremes”. So far, it’s those very extremes that are profiting from his surprise move, with the centre desperately trying to reorganise its traumatised forces. This is Macron’s original sin: the failure to build a strong political party on the back of the dynamic that originally brought him to power.

“Better to make history”, he explained on Sunday, “than to be subjected to it.” He is determined to avoid having to hand over the keys to the Elysée to Le Pen in 2027, when his term ends. The recent success of her party has raised the prospect of an ungovernable country and three years of political paralysis that could pave the way for her victory at the next presidential election.

The last legislative poll, in 2022, left Macron without a parliamentary majority, His reasoning, after the results of the European election were in, was that an emboldened RN would make any attempt at reform impossible and eventually force him to dissolve the National Assembly sooner or later in any case. By calling Le Pen’s bluff, he at least got to decide on the timing and caught the RN unprepared.

Macron has bet that the voice of reason can prevail over what he calls “fever and disorder” in a two-round national election with higher stakes than the European ballot. But he seems unaware of the intensity of the voters’ personal dislike of him.

Another possible outcome is “cohabitation”. If the RN secures a majority in parliament, Macron will appoint Bardella, president of the party, as prime minister. The calculus then will be that the far right is not equipped to govern. By the time the voters are presented with a presidential choice, the logic goes, they will be disenchanted and turn away from Le Pen.

Many French people recall past episodes of cohabitation with some fondness. But these were arrangements between mainstream parties that shared basic values and a political culture. It’s hard to see how Macron could find common ground with the leader of a radical nationalist party that he has consistently branded as an enemy of democracy.

Will he succeed in turning the rejection of his leadership into a rejection of the RN in the space of three weeks? In 2002, when Jean-Marie Le Pen kept the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin out of the second round of the presidential election, French voters then formed a “republican front” against the far right and gave the incumbent, Jacques Chirac, a crushing majority. But in today’s very different conditions, Macron’s gamble could just as easily make France’s political mess even worse, weakening his hand at a series of upcoming international summits and depriving Europe of a leading, creative voice, badly needed in a time of war.