ANDREW NEIL: Emmanuel Macron’s gamble has failed
President Macron has gambled and failed — disastrously. Far from putting France’s populist Right back in its box after it came first in elections to the European Parliament last month, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which won a predicted 34 per cent of the vote according to exit polls in yesterday’s legislative elections, will now be the largest party in the French National Assembly.
It might even win a majority when the second round of elections takes place on July 7.
Macron’s centrist Renaissance party was thumped. With only 20 per cent of the vote, it is on track to lose around two-thirds of the 250 seats it now holds.
Many candidates removed his face from their campaign literature. Much good it did them. They discovered a visceral dislike for the president on the doorstep. I suspect they knew they were going down in flames. Last night, his party HQ in Paris was deserted. Not even a wake was being held.
President Macron has gambled and failed in his attempt to knock out the populist right with his shock election which has seen his party hammered at the polls
Macron has not just lumbered France with a populist Right – the second biggest grouping in the National Assembly will be the Left-wing New Popular Front, dominated by France’s Corbynistas and Communists. It won 28 per cent of the vote
Macron has not just lumbered France with a populist Right – the second biggest grouping in the National Assembly will be the Left-wing New Popular Front, dominated by France’s Corbynistas and Communists. It won 28 per cent of the vote.
These were elections Macron did not have to call and had no chance of winning. It was entirely predictable they would give a boost to the hard Right and Left, at the expense of the once mainstream centre-Left and centre-Right.
If, as seems likely, France is gripped by chaos and confusion, its president has nobody to blame but himself.
Macron’s legacy – after seven years of elitist, centrist posturing – is a French parliament dominated by opposing extremes, well outside traditional mainstream politics.
The centre has not held. France’s centrist president has been its executioner. He has opened the door to political and economic instability.
The financial markets are already giving France the thumbs down, dumping French assets. Rich folks are preparing to move out; some already have. Companies, looking at the anti-business policies of the hard Left and Right, are making contingency plans to invest elsewhere. Welcome to France’s Liz Truss moment – on speed.
This is not just a crisis for France. It is a crisis for the European Union, one of whose most important founding members will have a parliament – and perhaps even a new government – packed with Eurosceptics opposed to the EU’s ‘ever closer union’ pretensions, and politicians who despise the soft-Left technocratic consensus that rules in Brussels.
Whatever the outcome on Sunday, Macron will see out his remaining three presidential years as a busted flush.
With Olaf Scholz already the walking-wounded Chancellor of Germany, at a time when Europe faces a revanchist Russia to its east and the possibility of the return of an anti-Nato, anti-EU Donald Trump to its west, Europe will be bereft of leadership when it faces serious peril.
The National Rally winning just over one-third of the vote might not seem decisive to British eyes. But in the first round of legislative elections, when there is a huge variety of candidates, it is the French equivalent of a landslide.
It is not easy, however, to translate the share of the vote into seats. In the past, traditional parties would gang up against Le Pen’s party in the second round, in which the choice is usually between just two candidates, to keep it well away from power.
But that gambit is fraying at the edges. The choice in many places next Sunday will be between the hard Right and the hard Left. Polls suggest that will be to the National Rally’s advantage.
There can be little doubt Le Pen’s party will be the largest in the new parliament. Early seat projections suggest it will be shy of a majority of seats, but the Republicans – France’s old centre-Right – could have enough seats to give the National Rally an overall majority should it so choose.
If the National Rally is the outright winner, Macron will be obliged to ask it to form the next French government.
Though Le Pen has somewhat cleaned up her party’s act in recent years, France – which was under the Nazi jackboot only 80 years ago – would be governed by a party with strong neo-Fascist roots, following the example of Italy, which is now run by a party with similar far-Right antecedents.
Le Pen’s young protege for prime minister, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, has said he will not accept the premiership unless his party has an overall majority. It remains to be seen if that stance holds when the prospect of power, so elusive for so long, is now dangled in front of the National Rally.
If nobody is prepared to form even a minority government France faces instability, uncertainty and probably unrest. There are no good outcomes from yesterday’s results.
Keir Starmer could be the beneficiary. As Britain prepares on Thursday to transfer power, without panic, disruption or chaos, from a centre-Right government with a big majority to a centre-Left government with a massive majority, the markets are likely to see Britain as an island of stability. Good for an incoming Labour government.
But France is also a warning for Starmer. The populist Right has gained ground across so much of Europe because people have been rebelling against the very centre-Left policies Starmer stands for: an expensive obsession with Net Zero, a lax approach to immigration, and ever increasing taxes.
Who knows when that particular worm will start turning in Britain. As Sir Keir Starmer prepares to bathe in the glory of a famous victory, he should perhaps spare a glance across the Channel, where he may well glimpse the seeds of his own future destruction.
