On the night of June 9th, French president Emmanuel Macron dramatically pulled the pin. Twenty-eight days later, the grenade went off.
Responding to a humiliating defeat to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally in the European elections last month, Macron sought to wrong-foot those to both his right and left. The hope was that by calling a snap parliamentary election in France he would force voters to choose between his centrist coalition or the anti-immigration, anti-EU, National Rally.
After the first of two rounds of voting the momentum had been behind the far-right party, which looked like an outside bet to secure an outright majority, and failing that to become the largest party in the parliament.
In the end exit poll projections from the decisive second round of voting on Sunday put the National Rally finishing third, behind the left-wing coalition of the New Popular Front and Macron’s centrist alliance. The broad left-wing coalition is made up of France Unbowed, which is the radical left-wing party of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, alongside the centre-left Socialist Party, the communists and greens. The left-wing parties successfully united in an uneasy marriage of convenience under the Popular Front banner shortly after the snap poll was called, allowing the group to position itself as the main alternative to the far right.
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The result is better than expected for Macron’s camp. But if the president believed the surprise election would bounce voters into handing his centre coalition a fresh majority, he was mistaken. Instead, the far right is projected to have significantly increased its seats in the National Assembly and the left has replaced the centre as the biggest force in the parliament.
France, the second-largest economy in the European Union, is now potentially set for a period of political instability. If the numbers are there for a grand coalition between centre and left-wing parties, it will be a shaky one.
Public dissatisfaction with Macron – even among many centre voters – turned to vitriol in recent weeks, for springing the snap election that nearly handed the far right the keys to power.
The results had been expected to be much worse for the centrist camp. Many of those who voted for the president’s alliance in run-off races across constituencies on Sunday will have only done so as the alternative on the ballot was the National Rally.
The early days of Macron’s rise to the top of French politics, when he won the 2017 presidential election on the back of a wave of enthusiasm for what he promised would be a new type of politics that was neither traditionally left nor right, seem very far away now. His initial election was backed up shortly afterwards with a resounding majority in parliament for his coalition.
Five years later Macron’s margin of victory over Le Pen for a second term in the Élysée Palace was narrower. The centrist coalition then lost its majority in parliament, with a resulting minority government struggling to get the president’s legislative agenda over the line for much of the last two years.
Exit polls indicate his political project is now being outflanked by growing support for those on his left and right, leaving the centre a diminished force led by a weakened president.
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