The political calendar is accelerating in France, while the left yesterday formed a popular front to prevent the victory of the National Rally in the legislative elections, Emmanuel Macron will hold a press conference today to clarify his party’s project. He will not entrust anyone else to fight the battle.
Emmanuel Macron’s strategy is based on two elements, surprise and speed. The surprise was Sunday evening when he announced the dissolution. Total surprise, including in his camp. Only a handful of faithful, including Gabriel Attal, had discussed it with him at the start of the evening.
The Prime Minister, opposed to this decision, had offered to sacrifice himself by resigning. “I am the fuse”, he would have said. But Macron wanted to strike a big blow.
Second element, speed. By limiting the campaign to three weeks, he hoped to prevent his opponents from organizing. Applications must be submitted by Sunday evening at the latest. However, there are 577 constituencies in France and generally, parties take weeks to choose who will represent them. But not this time. The RN was already ready and worked all night from Sunday to Monday. And the left, although divided, yesterday reformed a Popular Front which will each time present a single candidate, from the four parties PS, LFI, communists and environmentalists.
As for the Republicans, they refused, before the Europeans, the hand extended by the Macron camp. This dissolution is also a way of punishing them.
The first polls put the RN in the lead with 34% ahead of the United Left, 22%. And the presidential Renaissance party, 19%. But it is a two-round election and we must find additional forces to pass 50% in the second round. Currently, projections grant at best 265 deputies to the RN. But it takes 289 to obtain a majority. However, apart from Marion Maréchal who met Jordan Bardella yesterday, the far-right party has no ally. And this is where Emmanuel Macron thinks he can, once again, play the role of unifier by uniting all the opponents of Marine Le Pen behind him, even if it means withdrawing his own candidates in favor of another representative of what he calls the republican arc, moderate left or right.
Mathematically, it is playable, even if afterwards, he will have to appoint a government resulting from this composite majority united by the sole rejection of the extreme right. But that obviously doesn’t pose a problem for him.
In the French constitution, it is the president who has the upper hand and he likes to play president. If it works, we’ll call it genius. If it doesn’t work, he’ll live together or he’ll quit. But that’s another story.
