“By playing with fire, the head of state could end up burning himself, dragging the entire country into the fire”

HASsorcerer’s apprentice? Poker player? Firefighter arsonist? Sunday evening, on television sets, the same words came back to those who were responsible for commenting on Emmanuel Macron’s decision to dissolve the National Assembly, on the evening of a historic victory for the National Rally (RN). Before announcing it gloomily to the French, the President of the Republic presented a handful of Macronist leaders, received shortly before 8 p.m. at the Elysée, with a fait accompli. Very few around him participated in the discussions upstream, even if several heavyweights from the majority advised him to “go all-in” and of “put the country face to face with its responsibilities”including the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, and the president of the MoDem, François Bayrou – he pleaded for a dissolution in September –, as well as several advisors to the Elysée.

The small circle of initiates (“only eight people”, according to someone close to the Head of State, including three advisors to the Elysée, Alexis Kohler, Bruno Roger-Petit and Jonathan Guémas, and two ministers Stéphane Séjourné and Gérald Darmanin), who saw Mr. Macron slowly moving towards this solution radical (the technical feasibility of which had to be studied), knew how to keep the secret. This is something we welcome at the palace, where the failed dissolution of Jacques Chirac – it was leaked in 1997 – was set up as a counter-example. “For the president to regain his room for maneuver, there was no other choice but to go to the people”insists one of his advisors.

One thing is certain, Mr. Macron was looking for ways to save himself, on the evening of a humiliating defeat. Even though he was fully engaged in the campaign, using all the levers at his disposal (commemorations of the D-Day landings, war in Ukraine, dramatization of the issues of the election, etc.), he was unable to stop the slide of the list. led by Valérie Hayer. This election further weakens a power which, deprived of an absolute majority, was already forced to navigate on sight, hampered. And which failed in the main objective it had set itself, to block the RN: in fact, the supposed “bulwark” collapsed. “Macronism is over”began, before the surprise announcement, to chant the oppositions, in unison, from the “rebellious” Somme deputy François Ruffin to the president of the Les Républicains (LR) party, Eric Ciotti.

By responding to one clap of thunder with another, Mr. Macron, who refuses to let himself be erased and cannot come to terms with the disenchantment of the French, wanted to show that he remained master of the game, bravado. The dissolution operation has several advantages in his eyes. In the immediate future, she hides her personal failure and creates a diversion: while this electoral evening was supposed to be that of the others (of the RN, which came first; of the Socialist Party, which achieved a good score…), it will first be hers . It also exonerates him from any questioning in the face of the RN’s score, which has never been so high, seven years after his arrival at the Elysée.

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