How Macron turned a personal failure into a potential disaster in the country

POLICY – Go all-in with a pair of deuces. President Emmanuel Macron, who was walking Sunday afternoon in Le Touquet in a leather jacket, aviator glasses and a smile, could only note, a few hours later, the crushing defeat of his camp in the first round of the legislative elections. The dissolution poker move did not work.

Caught in a vice by the New Popular Front and the National Rally, the presidential camp is reduced to having to block the extreme right, with no possibility of winning on July 7. The number of Renaissance, Horizons and MoDem deputies could be halved while the Le Pen party can aim for an absolute majority.

A very dark picture, also drawn on the front page of the international press, worried about the turn of events in France, which owes everything, or almost, to Emmanuel Macron.

The failure of the European elections

Back to June 9. The European election campaign ends in a delicate climate for Macronie. Nationalist “bad winds” are blowing across the continent, in the words of the Head of State, and the candidate he nominated late, Valérie Hayer, is struggling to bring together her electorate to counter the National Rally.

At the polls, the result was clear: the list led by Jordan Bardella swept everything in its path and garnered 31% of the vote. Far behind, the presidential camp crashed to 14.5%, just ahead of Raphaël Glucksmann. For the president, it was a personal snub that matched his commitment during the campaign.

“He thought he had turned the tide. That’s the level of denial.”

Convinced of holding the key to reversing the trend, the tenant of the Élysée has made numerous efforts to avoid the predicted failure. For example, he defended his European vision in a speech lasting more than two hours at La Sorbonne, before attending a campaign rally in Dresden, Germany. Not to mention his numerous appearances in the press. “ Until the end Macron thought that we were going to get between 20 and 22% for Europeans, and with a candidate sent to the box », confirms the entourage of Gabriel Attal a few weeks later, “ He thought he had turned the tide by getting involved. That’s the level of denial.” Cruel.

Rather than mobilizing his troops, the President of the Republic seems to have fallen into a triple trap. He has eclipsed his candidate, responded to the strategy of the National Rally wishing to make this election a referendum on his person and, in fine, fueled a vote of rejection after seven years in power. “ I got one in the back of the head.”he confirms, a few weeks later, in a podcast posted online before the legislative elections.

With this bamboo blow, Emmanuel Macron makes a battering ram. An hour after the publication of the first estimates on Sunday, June 9, he speaks in a solemn address and announces that he is dissolving the National Assembly. An eventuality that he had strongly ruled out during the campaign. Among his supporters, as well as behind the scenes, shock and anger compete with this decision that is as brutal as it is unexpected.

Dissolution misunderstood

On social networks, the head of state’s photographer published a series of photos showing those in charge of the presidential camp looking crestfallen, upon hearing the news from the mouth of the tenant of the Élysée. Among them, Gabriel Attal. The Prime Minister, like the President of the National Assembly Yaël Braun-Pivet, was only made aware of the dissolution late.

In the press, the various testimonies paint the story of a solitary decision, encouraged in particular by a handful of advisers adept at political coups… Which Bruno Le Maire would describe as ” cloportes » which “ hide in the grooves of the parquet floors. » For his part, the president is delighted to have launched “ a grenade with the pin pulled in the legs ” of his opponents, according to a little phrase that The world attributes to him.

An explanation after the dissolution? “Apart from a psychological response, which is not politically satisfactory, I don’t see,” Gabriel Attal’s entourage tells us, still in doubt a few weeks later. In any case, the whole thing leaves the impression of guilty levity surrounding a decision that is nevertheless dangerous.

In reality, even Marine Le Pen is still surprised by this calendar. “When you have a dynamic that carries your opponent, you do not encourage this dynamic”she points out in the columns of Mondewelcoming “to benefit from the effect of the European elections as a newly elected president benefits from the legislative elections that follow.”

Campaign against the left

In this context, the shortest campaign of the Fifth Republic took place in a climate of tension and incomprehension. The macronie displays its doubts and tries as best it can to distance itself from the president. Édouard Philippe accuses him of having “killed” the majority, Gabriel Attal promises a new method, and the Macronist candidates erase the leader from their posters after asking him, this time, to remain silent. Like an end-of-reign atmosphere.

Trapped between the RN (joined by Éric Ciotti and some LR troops) and an alliance on the left that he thought impossible, Emmanuel Macron then drew a perilous line: sending the New Popular Front and the Lepéniste party back to back with the same terminology “ extreme. »

According to several accounts, the strategists at the Élysée even agree on a “neither-LFI”, “nor-RN” instruction in the second round of the legislative elections, even if it means further confusing the points of reference of voters already incredulous in the face of this great upheaval. . This argument, developed over several days, particularly in the media, risks leaving traces, at a time when the presidential camp is changing its line and seems ready to blockade the arrival of Jordan Bardella at Matignon.

How, indeed, can one ask one’s voters to vote for one camp, the left, after having mocked it throughout the campaign? How can one encourage people to put a ballot in the box that was described as dangerous not long ago? The president may have believed in his pair of two, but his voters may have already gone to bed.

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