Is Macron’s gamble actually working? He has sacrificed France to stay in the game

A 10-second clip from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi has been doing the rounds on French social media. In it, a hooded, decaying Emperor Palpatine arrives on the “fully operational” Second Death Star, cackling “Everything is proceeding as I have foreseen”. It’s meant used to illustrate the destruction Macron has wrought on France, her institutions and her politics — and his hubris.

After an accelerated three-week national campaign, the first round of voting saw National Rally candidates polling 33% of the overall vote. The hastily cobbled together New Popular Front Left-wing Alliance managed to capture 28% of the vote, and Macron’s Ensemble party only took 21.5%. In a British election, this would seem to herald an easy win. Not so in the two-round French system, in which the two losers could decide to gang up on the leader for the second round of voting.

And that’s what Emmanuel Macron decided he, le grand virtuose, could achieve. He wanted to ensure a clear two-way contest, constituency by constituency, between the evil National Rally representative on one side, and on the other, all those brave members of the Front Républicain stepping up to bar the way to Fascism. So, anticipating this shotgun marriage of sorts, he urged anyone coming in last to pull out.

This is why, as news of his incumbents’ dismal performances landed through the night of the first round, Le Président kept smiling, convinced that he could clip the Rally’s wings and come through as the Great Saviour of Democracy. “I have been proven right,” the well-informed Canard Enchaîné quoted him as telling shell-shocked aides. “The abscess had to be lanced. We shall build a very large coalition of government with every party from the New Popular Front alliance, except [Trotskyite Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s] France Insoumise.” A few days later, he amended this to include F.I., even though, three weeks before, he had (accurately) described our version of the Corbynite sect as “anti-democratic, anti-parliamentarian, anti-Semitic, anti-nuclear power and pro-Russian”.

Then, in keeping with the urgent pace of the entire election, all names of candidates fighting the second round had to be registered by Tuesday evening. When the dust settled yesterday, the 306 constituencies where a “triangulaire” three-way battle would have almost automatically favoured the Rally had fallen to 89. Hence the clip of the Elysée Palace Palpatine: he feels his cunning plan has been validated.

It’s classic Macron. He approaches every problem by dissecting it coldly into abstract components. When plucked by President Hollande from his super-SpAd job in 2015 to be made Minister for the Economy (you don’t need to be an MP in France to be in the Cabinet), he complained about the “messiness” and “pointlessness” of politics, the “needless negotiations over trivia” and the “waste of time” it entailed. The ultimate mandarin, he treats his Cabinet like subordinates and his MPs like employees. Unimpressed by pollsters, he has made his own calculations, and believes he can reshape whatever National Assembly will come out of next Sunday’s vote into a body of legislators he can work with. After all, the reasoning goes, he already did not have a full majority in the previous House.

This infuriates not only his ministers, and all those MPs whose careers he sacrificed with his throw of the dice, but also the electorate. After all, in today’s times of mistrust and suspicions of stitch-ups, the only question is: will voters also go along with his cunning plan? In France, you pick your favourites in the first round, and arbitrate for the least bad in the second. So it’s not just politicians who feel betrayed at having to yield to adversaries: will Républicain voters agree to cast their ballot for politicians who, with a gun to their head, signed up for a Manifesto more radical than François Mitterrand’s in 1981?

The New Popular Front, that uneasy alliance of Socialist, Greens, Communists and Mélenchonista Trots thrown together in three days after Macron dissolved the House, advocates for high taxes, including 100% on all inheritances above a cap to be determined later; import taxes, export taxes, green taxes, Social Security taxes in addition to huge payroll taxes, and an exit tax in addition to a re-introduced wealth tax for anyone trying to leave France’s new paradise. There’s more Net Zero, no pesticides ever, Sri-Lankan style; fast-tracking of any migrants qualifying as “climate refugees” (that would be most of sub-Saharan Africa, a chunk of Oceania, and many Indian Ocean islands); union representatives holding one third of seats in companies’ boards. The EU should sever treaties with Israel; no fossil fuel-powered cars should be on the roads by 2040; building more nuclear plants should be subject to referendums… and on and on it goes. An indigestible smorgasbord of the kind of policies people who spent a good chunk of their adult lives sniping at one another will only agree to when they have to produce a text before 5am, with the printers hollering for copy.

As a result, the Front Républicain may not hold: Les Républicains, already divided when a splinter group led by Eric Ciotti decided to support the National Rally in the first round, are now refusing to tell their voters who to vote for. Macron’s popular first PM, the former Le Havre Mayor Édouard Philippe, a moderate who since the dissolution of the National Assembly has been calling Macron “psychiatrically insane”, insists that the Republican Front cannot include the Mélenchonistas — who, better organised, are contesting the most seats on the Left. And Emperor Palpatine’s youthful Darth Vader, PM Gabriel Attal, who nearly came to blows with Macron the evening he decided to “throw a live grenade” into the French political scene by calling a snap election without telling him, is now considering a presidential run in three years’ time — or sooner should the President’s grand gamble fail.

Judging by Macron’s walkabout last Sunday in the streets of Le Touquet, the Channel coast resort where he owns a holiday home, dressed in a leather biker jacket, a baseball cap and a big smile, he still believes he will be the winner. The Elysée is currently fast-tracking a series of nominations in the top civil service which will ensure Macron-compatible people will head the security services, the police, and other key posts. Should Jordan Bardella accept the job of cohabitation PM without a full majority in Parliament, everything is in place to give him a hard time. And should voters up-end Macron’s plans by deciding on Sunday that no-one will tell them which candidate represents democracy and which represents pure evil, the president has threatened to continue the Palpatine chaos, declaring that “constitutionally, I can dissolve the National Assembly in exactly a year”. Macron has sacrificed all to his vainglorious desire to stay in the game. Everything is proceeding as he has foreseen — and to hell with France.

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Anne-Elisabeth Moutet is a Paris-based journalist and political commentator.

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