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Macron’s Gamble on Stopping Le Pen Now Risks Ushering Her to Power

The decision to call snap elections might backfire as polls show Marine Le Pen’s party winning the most seats in the National Assembly.
French President Emmanuel Macron at a Paris news conference Wednesday ahead of the early legislative elections. STEPHANE MAHE/REUTERS

French President Emmanuel Macron at a Paris news conference Wednesday ahead of the early legislative elections. STEPHANE MAHE/REUTERS

PARIS—President Emmanuel Macron has always aspired to become one of the great men of history, saving Europe from the fires of populism and setting its economy on course to compete with the U.S. and China.

The question now looming over Macron is whether he will go down in history as the man who ushered Marine Le Pen and her far-right party to the threshold of power in France.

Macron’s decision to call snap elections broadsided France and shocked the world. It was also vintage Macron: bold, risky and timed to catch his opponents off guard. Macron was operating under the assumption that he and his candidates for the National Assembly would benefit from the element of surprise, according to his aides. Leftist parties would have no time to form alliances crucial for making it past the first round of voting on June 30. That, in turn, would compel many of their voters to rally behind Macron’s pro-business party in the July 7 runoff as they had in Macron’s previous showdowns with Le Pen.

Those assumptions are now unraveling. A range of left-leaning parties have managed to quickly stitch together a coalition that will go toe to toe with Macron’s and Le Pen’s forces. Macron’s own party, meanwhile, is in disarray, with shellshocked lawmakers struggling to rally around a leader who they say acted unilaterally, without consulting them, much as he has since taking office in 2017.

Polls taken this week show Le Pen’s forces qualifying for runoffs and finishing with up to 270 seats. Such a haul would be just shy of a majority in the 577-seat National Assembly, but about triple the number of seats that Le Pen won in 2022. National Rally would become the biggest party in the lower chamber, and Le Pen would have a strong argument for picking the next prime minister.

 

Marine Le Pen arriving at her party’s headquarters in Paris on Monday after the European election win. PHOTO: GONZALO FUENTES/REUTERS
Marine Le Pen arriving at her party’s headquarters in Paris on Monday after the European election win. PHOTO: GONZALO FUENTES/REUTERS

 

On Wednesday, Macron bristled when a reporter asked what he thought of the idea of becoming the first president in France’s post-World War II history to hand the keys of government over to the far right.

“Everyone sees the rising water of the extreme right,” Macron said. The president then acknowledged a truth that haunts the political establishment: In 2027, Macron will finish the second of his two consecutive terms, the legal limit, leaving Le Pen to run for the presidency in a field bereft of major competitors.

Macron said he was unwilling to sit idle until then. Voters, in handing National Rally an overwhelming victory in Sunday’s European elections, were protesting in anger, Macron said. In calling national elections with much bigger stakes, Macron said he was providing voters with a means of “clarification.”“We’re tearing down the hypocrisy and the misunderstandings,” he said.

Macron, in turning the snap elections into a referendum on Le Pen, risks walking in the footsteps of David Cameron, who as British prime minister called a 2016 referendum on Brexit, expecting the public to vote it down.

“David Cameron bet the house and lost. He bet Project Fear would win. He was wrong. Macron is doing the same,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe for the Eurasia Group consulting firm.

Unlike Cameron, Macron’s forces have little time to prepare. The same lawmakers Macron is expecting to now hit the campaign trail were given no notice before Macron dissolved the National Assembly in a TV address Sunday, triggering the elections.

 

Supporters of the right-wing National Rally party in Paris reacted Sunday to the early results of the European election. PHOTO: ANDRE PAIN/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Supporters of the right-wing National Rally party in Paris reacted Sunday to the early results of the European election. PHOTO: ANDRE PAIN/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

 

“I learned about it in real time, watching his speech on TV,” said Huguette Tiegna, a lawmaker with Macron’s pro-business Renaissance party who found herself instantly out of a job.

For years, Macron has used his authority under the constitution to override parliament. Last year he raised the legal age of retirement without parliamentary approval. He also passed by decree a law making it easier to hire and fire employees. Macron’s tendency to run roughshod over parliament, however, didn’t prepare lawmakers for his latest maneuver.

“I was really depressed on Sunday,” said Patrick Vignal, who was until then a Renaissance lawmaker. “It was a shock. It was violent.”

Les Républicains, the mainstream conservative party, has also been reeling. On Tuesday, the party’s president, Éric Ciotti, announced a surprise alliance with National Rally. Les Républicains’ executive committee responded to the announcement by voting to oust him as president, saying he betrayed the party. Ciotti himself had on numerous occasions vowed never to back Le Pen. His departure opens the door for other Les Républicains members to follow him toward National Rally.

Markets have also been rattled. French stocks plunged the morning after Macron’s announcement, in the midst of fear that France was careening toward a hung parliament. That would make it hard for Macron to rein in the government’s ballooning deficit, leading to a bigger debt pile and higher borrowing costs. Ratings firm Moody’s warned this week that France’s “outlook, and ultimately the ratings, could move to negative.”

Perhaps the biggest casualty of Macron’s decision is his own prime minister. At 35 years old, Gabriel Attal was considered one of the brightest lights of Macron’s party. A gifted public speaker with boyish good looks, Attal was Macron’s protégé for years.

 

French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal preparing for a TV interview Tuesday. PHOTO: ZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/PRESS POOL
French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal preparing for a TV interview Tuesday. PHOTO: ZAKARIA ABDELKAFI/PRESS POOL


Jordan Bardella of the National Rally celebrating the early European election results Sunday. PHOTO: ANDRE PAIN/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
Jordan Bardella of the National Rally celebrating the early European election results Sunday. PHOTO: ANDRE PAIN/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK

 

When Macron promoted Attal to prime minister in January, many lawmakers believed the president was playing his ace in the hole, positioning Attal as a possible successor.

But Attal only found out about Macron’s plans on Sunday, hours before he dissolved the National Assembly, officials said, adding that both he and Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu were opposed to Macron’s move.

On Tuesday morning, Attal huddled with his defenestrated lawmakers and delivered a pep talk aimed at spurring their re-election campaigns. Instead, the lawmakers said they were angry and demoralized. Macron, said one lawmaker who was at the meeting, “was our best hope. Now he’s pulling us down.”

Meanwhile, Le Pen’s protégé, 28-year-old Jordan Bardella, has been doing victory laps since leading National Rally to a rout over Macron’s forces in Sunday’s European elections. National Rally officials now say Bardella is the party’s choice to replace Attal as prime minister.

In a sign of how dire the political map has become, aides to Macron said he is now open to withdrawing his party’s candidates from districts where conservative, socialist or the Green Party candidates have a better chance of beating National Rally.

“We are going to be sandwiched between the left and the far right,” one of the Renaissance lawmakers said, adding: “It’s going to blow up in our faces.”

 

French President Emmanuel Macron said he is dissolving the country’s National Assembly after his party suffered a crushing loss to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally in European elections. 

 

Photo: Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Write to Stacy Meichtry at Stacy.Meichtry@wsj.com and Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com

Author: Editors Desk, Stacy Meichtry and Noemie Bisserbe

Source: WSJ:

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