“It was a huge shock,” Jon says of Macron’s address to the nation on Sunday night, in which he dissolved parliament and called an election. “It’s a massive, massive gamble, a monumental risk – you have to hope his calculations will prove correct.”
Macron told the country the strong RN vote had created a “situation which I cannot countenance” and he had therefore “decided to give you back the choice of our parliamentary future with a vote”.
Jon says Macron has been struggling since he lost the parliamentary majority in 2022 and been “reduced to using controversial and unpopular constitutional tools to push through unpopular measures like pension reforms”.
At the same time, the RN the largest opposition party with 88 seats, “sits in a very comfortable position slamming everything the government does and steadily climbing up the [opinion] polls”.
“Macron wants a confrontation,” says Jon. “He wants to ask the French people the real existential question: ‘You have voted for this party in ever increasing numbers, time and again, over the past 20 years – I just want to ask you now, do you actually want to be governed by these guys?’”
Why did Macron call parliamentary elections now?
The parliamentary elections were not due to be held until 2027, but Macron – as president – has the power to call them early. Jon says Macron is thinking strategically. “He may have lost in the European elections, but they are very different to national elections,” Jon says.
“They are traditionally seen as an opportunity for a protest vote, a low-cost, low-risk way of giving the government a bloody good kicking, but not necessarily a reflection of how voters would vote at national elections. It is similar to how Ukip used to do well in the UK’s European votes.”
What if the RN wins the election?
Jon says the odds are against Macron’s centrist Renaissance party and its allies winning a majority,but that the RN are also unlikely to win one. “The most likely outcome is very messy scenario, with the RN winning more seats but not enough for a majority,” he says. “The next three years until the presidential election in 2027 will be like trench warfare.”
If RN does get a majority, convention would dictate that Macron ask the party to field a prime minister. “That would most likely be Jordan Bardella, the telegenic, slick 28-year-old RN president who plays a bloody good game on TikTok,” Jon says.
Who is Jordan Bardella?
Bardella (pictured above to the right of Le Pen) was elected to the European parliament five years ago when he was just 23. He grew up on a housing estate in Saint-Denis, at the heart of the low-income, multi-ethnic Paris suburbs that have been so stigmatised. He describes himself as a part of a generation that grew up in the “embers” of the 2005 urban riots, in which young people living in estates across France rose up after the deaths of two boys who died hiding from police.
“He represents youth, speaks well, looks like the ideal son-in-law, is modern – that is what people want, and he’s reached a level of superstardom,” Aymeric Durox, a RN senator, told Angelique Chrisafis for her profile of Bardella, who – as the son of Italians who arrived in the 1960s – is presented as a “good immigrant”. A protege of Marine Le Pen, he also has close ties to the family and is in a relationship with Le Pen’s niece, Nolwenn Olivier.
Jon suspects Macron is gambling that if the RN do win and Bardella does become PM he could struggle with the “nitty gritty of hard choices”. “Macron will hope that with three years to go until the next presidential election, in spring 2027, the RN will have long enough to show themselves as fundamentally incompetent at the business of government ,” he says.
“The huge risk, though, is they might – heaven forbid – do a good job, and then you have invited the far right into power,” he says. “You can’t overstate how massive a gamble this is.”
What about the rest of Europe?
Initial fears of a far-right surge were overstated. “There was a far-right advance, and they have ended up with a record number of seats,” Jon says. “But it’s still less than a quarter of the assembly with about 145 MEPs, compared to the main centrist block who are going to have about 450 out of the 720 seats.
“Those far-right gains almost all come from three big countries: France, Germany and Italy. Elsewhere, the far right actually underperformed compared to expectations.”
In Germany, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) won 16% of the vote – more than any of the three parties that make up the beleaguered coalition of the chancellor, Olaf Scholz, but behind the conservative CDU-CSU opposition. In Italy, Brothers of Italy, led by the Italian prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, was a big winner too, scoring 28%
“But outside those big three member states – and Austria, where the Austrian freedom party (FPÖ), as long predicted, finished first on 26% – the hard right’s scores often underwhelmed. Vlaams Belang underperformed in Belgium, scoring less than 14%, as did the Danish People’s party (6.4%). The Finns (7.6%) and the Sweden Democrats (13%), both of which are either in or supporting rightwing governments, disappointed.”
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