“Demagogues and nationalists on the rise is bad for our nation, it’s bad for Europe and it’s bad for France’s place in Europe and in the world,” a stern-looking Emmanuel Macron said, dissolving the French parliament and calling a snap vote.
Macron’s Renaissance party was summarily routed by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in elections for the EU’s legislative body, where “routed” means Rassemblement National doubled him up with 32% of the vote to 15%. France elects 81 of the EU parliament’s 720 seats.
Le Pen declared the RN “ready for power” to cheers from well-dressed party officials who “clinked glasses to the sound of jazz piano,” as The Guardian put it, describing the atmosphere at “a smart party venue” near the Bois de Vincennes, the largest public park in Paris.
Macron himself wasn’t on the ballot of course. He has another three years on his term. French foreign policy, at least, is insulated from the far-right’s worst impulses until 2027.
That said, RN’s victory margin plainly suggested Le Pen has both the initiative and the momentum. Macron may or may not be able to reclaim the latter, but as head of state, the former’s his for the taking.
Macron’s decision to call an ad hoc, national legislative election was widely billed as a “high-risk gamble,” an apt description to be sure. If the RN repeats its EU ballot success in domestic elections set for June 30 and July 7, it’ll suggest French voters believe the party’s capable of managing, and, just as importantly from a symbolic perspective, ideologically fit to manage, the affairs of a P5 state.
It’s important to note that the legislative process in France was already suffering from paralysis (the unhappy result of a lost majority for a centrist alliance two years ago). In that regard, the snap vote’s a procedural effort to clear things up as much as it is a national sanity check. But as Macron made abundantly clear, this is an early referendum on Le Pen.
The bet isn’t that Le Pen won’t register gains. The National Rally will surely increase its representation. The gamble, rather, is that the results won’t deliver anything like the resounding mandate implied by RN’s margin in the EU ballot.
That’s probably a safer bet than it seems. Although not exactly inconsequential, the vote for seats in the EU’s transnational assembly can be a kind of pressure valve for domestic discontent — a throwaway ballot that serves as a conduit for the protest vote. National elections, on the other hand, are closer to home, figuratively and literally. Maybe you’ll get drunk and tag Brussels with some lewd graffiti, but you probably won’t paint a swastika on the side of your house.
Macron’s assuming French voters will gravitate towards the center when the Le Pen threat becomes “real.” There’s precedent for that. When Le Pen lost to Macron in 2022, she called the results “a stunning victory.” For herself. The margin was damn near 20ppt. It says something about how marginalized you are when a 20ppt loss in a presidential election counts as a resounding success.
But Le Pen’s the furthest thing from a neophytic lightweight. Le Pen — not Giorgia Meloni, not Geert Wilders, not Alice Weidel — is Europe’s far-right standard-bearer. There’s an argument to be made that she’s even more important to the “cause” than Viktor Orbán. That’d certainly be the case if she were to win the French presidency. She is, for lack of a better way to put it, the global far-right fairy godmother. She’s also the mother of all Western political tail risks.
The messaging from National Rally and its ideological brethren on Sunday and Monday was familiar. RN says it, and it alone, can address the everyday concerns of French voters. Those concerns include crime, inflation and, of course, immigration. “When the people vote, the people win,” Le Pen declared. “People have become more anti-European. That’s why we’ve done well,” Weidel said, after AfD ran up 16% of the vote in Germany. “People are annoyed by the bureaucracy in Brussels.”
To outside observers, this has an air of farce to it, but make no mistake: It’s not a joke, although Le Pen is the daughter of a cartoon villain. Macron’s bet could go horribly awry, and with disastrous consequences not just for France, but for the world.
In December, Les Républicains conducted a poll, later leaked to the press, which suggested Le Pen’s National Rally could conceivably cross the threshold for a majority in an early vote. That scenario’s viewed as unlikely (extremely unlikely, even), but if it were to become a reality, Macron would presumably have to nominate an RN prime minister. That, in turn, would set up Le Pen protégé Jordan Bardella (the face of the RN’s EU election campaign) to become France’s youngest-ever PM, at 28.
Again, that isn’t likely. Rather, a hung parliament’s the most likely result. Failing a durable alliance with France’s center right or left, Macron will probably be left staring at the same old gridlock. On Monday, the Socialists, Greens and Les Republicains all appeared to reject his overtures.
Underscoring the stakes, Bruno Le Maire described France’s upcoming snap ballot as “the most consequential parliamentary election… in the history of the Fifth Republic.”
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the National Rally somehow manages to replicate its performance from the EU vote at the national level in three weeks, the course of history could be forever altered. Le Pen’s odds of usurping the office she’s sought three times unsuccessfully would increase materially. I dare say Le Pen in the Élysée would be a coup no less consequential than Donald Trump in the White House.
The Kremlin on Monday said Vladimir Putin will be watching the snap vote in France “closely.” Macron’s decision to dissolve parliament came just three days after the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Belgium too. 1930s echoes?
It is too bad that Macron did not listen more carefully to what the French voters have been trying to tell him, especially with respect to green energy and immigration (and the resulting problems of crime, homelessness etc.).
An effective leader should be able to not only set a vision for the future of the country, but also respond to the current needs of the people. Not an easy path to navigate, but it appears he wasn’t listening as carefully as he should have been.
We have the same problems the US/Biden has.
The laws that govern asylum seeking are broken. To me, they seem to assume that asylum seekers will be few and generally honest (i.e., they’re really running from governments that seek to jail/kill them specifically). In practice, it’s become a way for whole population experiencing difficulties/tragedies at home to run to a safer, better place.
Reforming those laws is therefore crucial. But right wing parties are loath to actually do so when they’re not in power. It’s too damn comfortable to always have a stick to beat the opposition with. And, tbf, at least in the case of the UK, even when they’re in power, they don’t always bother to fix the problem anyhow. Not sure if Orban actually did something.
But, yeah, it feels like a big gamble for Macron. Maybe he thinks that, even if he has to tolerate 3 years of cohabitation (sharing power with a RN prime minister), it’ll be to France’s advantage as they’ll have to run on their track record and, obviously, they’ll fail to fix crime, inflation and immigration (as those problems would require smarts, an iron will, loose morality and an ability to convince our European partners to fix).
My main fear is that Ukraine pays the price if the gamble fails. Ukraine first and then everyone else, as the authoritarian camp adds France to its nauseous Axis…
Yeah, and I mean what happens if Le Pen wins in 2027 and it turns out she’s — you know — actually her father’s daughter, not this cleaned up, polished, relatively moderate version she’s worked so hard to cultivate?
Personally, I don’t doubt it for a second.
Sure, they’ve dressed up and have tighter message discipline. But they’re still fascists at heart. Every time you dig into their entourage background, you get the same load of skinheads, neo-nazis etc
They’d love Putin even if they weren’t paid/bought by him.
I do not understand the UK at all. The people voted for Brexit and then the country continued to have immigrants at a rate of several million/year- under Tory leadership, no less.
Huh?
They needed them, to replace all the EU citizens they discouraged from staying… It’s hilarious, really. Oh, you’re pissed off with the Kowalskis and their Polish ways? Well, welcome Mr. Abubakar, from Nigeria. We hope the culture shock will be less.
The times they are a-changin’…
As a general statement, you, sir, and Bob D are correct. The thing is, how much can they change and still leave our investments/economy, in some balance. There is a tip point where too much change will destroy our asset values and the wealth distribution in our country will be significantly disturbed. People who know my comments know that I frequently point out that the US consumes 25% of the world’s resources to serve only 4% of its population. As more and more nations choose nationalism, they will wake up to this truth and seek redress for better pieces of the pie, surely at our expense. Among the biggest problems will be India and China with equal populations totaling around 2.9 bil people, 35% of the world’s total. India has a per capita GDP of around $2500/yr and China checks in with 5x that much. The US records about $81,000 in per capita GDP, by comparison. Nationalists, I strongly suspect don’t care for this situation very much. There will be no changing of “times” that will benefit the US in the long run. India and China are dividing a total GDP of 20 Tril over 35% of the world while we spread our 25 Tril over just 4.3% of the world. We just can’t keep that up forever.
We either will have to face the reallocation of the pie, as you stated, or we develop a new, unlimited, energy source for all (nuclear and/or solar).
I am, figuratively and literally, voting for the development of unlimited energy.
https://www.terrapower.com/downloads/grounbreaking-press-release.pdf
+1
The pie isn’t fixed. The economy is very much not a zero sum game…
US real GDP/pp may hold while China + India real GDP/pp grow. China has demographic challenges, in addition to other oft-discussed problems. India has all sorts of challenges, including political, education, infrastructure, and (it was pointed out to me) AI.
Its also possible that Macron wagers/hedges, in his Brexit-like gamble with the snap elections, that if the French vote in enough RN representatives, and Bardella is installed as PM, the country will see their inability to govern…and that will forestall the election of Le Pen. And yes she would govern as her father’s daughter, as well as continue being dumb-as-dirt. I’ve watched Macron debate her and she came across like an angry Jehovah’s Witness arguing on your front step before you close the door….
I disagree. Macron is a master debater and knew the subject-matter far more deeply than she did (the man had once an 8 hour marathon session with French mayors in fairly free form Q&A – he had to handle their questions on a very wide range of topics in ways that could satisfy them. That he managed that is nothing short of amazing)… but she’s not stupid and she knows her talking points well.
I’d actually go as far as to say that her sometimes intelligent remarks are wasted on her crowd. They ignore all the not-dumb points she make and only react when she’s throwing them red meat (with shouts of “on est chez nous!” – we’re in our home)
Leaving for a couple of weeks in France tonight. Excellent timing!
The Olympics? God help you!
Mais non! Wine tour of Bordeaux.