It has been predicted for weeks that the ultra-nationalist and far-right Rassemblement Nationwide would win the European elections narrowly and possibly by twice as a lot because the president’s get together household below the favored and colorless candidate Valéry Hayer. The one query that remained open is whether or not the socialists below Raphaël Glucksmann might additionally emerge from the Macron camp.
Election outcomes are not any shock
The precise outcomes of the poll confirmed this. The RN below Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella achieved 31.4 p.c of the votes forged, received fingers down and have become stronger than ever. However, the presidential majority checklist, often called “Besoin d’Europe”, translated: “Europe is critical”, managed lower than half of the results of the RN at 14.6 p.c and it was solely straight forward. Raphaël Glucksmann with “Awakening Europe”the checklist shared with the PS.
All this, it have to be clearly emphasised, was no shock. Bardella wouldn’t be calling for brand spanking new elections with the primary post-election forecast. Quite the opposite, nobody ought to anticipate in any other case.
Nobody anticipated Macron’s response
Emmanuel Macron himself brought on the tremors when he appeared earlier than the cameras round 9 pm to declare, “So on the finish of today I can not faux that nothing occurred,” after which requested the Instantly dissolve Parliament, to declare the Assemblée Nationale in accordance with Article 12 of the Structure and name new elections in three weeks.
On June 30 and July 7, earlier than the Olympic Video games, the French will probably be referred to as to the polls once more. And no one actually anticipated that, and so they could not anticipate it. This poor, even disastrous end result had been priced in for a very long time. Solely his closest advisers understood – if something – that Macron would react like this.
Macron’s most essential objective: To forestall Le Pen
To everybody’s shock, Macron introduced that he had determined “to let the French determine our parliamentary future by the election”. “This choice is severe and troublesome, however above all it’s an act of confidence,” he continued. “I, who’ve all the time believed {that a} united, sturdy and impartial Europe is nice for France, can’t come to grips with the results of the election,” stated the French president. The rise of the nationalists, the demagogues, is a hazard to France, but additionally to Europe. Due to this fact, the sovereign should additionally decide now.
Since his first candidacy for president in 2017, Emmanuel Macron’s most essential political objective has been to forestall Marine Le Pen from turning into president of the Fifth Republic. He wished and wished to go down within the historical past books as the person who stopped the rise of the fitting wing, and as decisively as doable. It was uncertain for some time whether or not he would succeed, however now he might even be a stirrup holder.
A decisive battle for the way forward for France
In the event you pay attention fastidiously to his phrases, Macron is asking for a form of decisive battle in regards to the query: Does France actually need a radical right-wing president? Poker gamers would say: He goes all-in. However poker gamers additionally know that that is what occurs when you don’t have any different alternative left. Final probability, the whole lot on this one card.
Macron has already largely failed together with his technique of all the time in search of a duel with Le Pen and her get together and presenting himself as the one guarantor in opposition to the far proper. Aside from his principled stance that Europe and the EU have to be on the middle of all politics, particularly to keep up nationwide significance, a lot of the political content material has fallen behind this technique. Extra exactly, the politics of post-hope have moved additional and additional to the fitting over time. Many liberal and progressive concepts have fallen behind.
Macron’s supporters are disillusioned and gone
In 2017, Macron’s promise of a brand new occasion earned numerous supporters who believed on this alternative. Alone, they’re disillusioned and gone. Macron has no get together base within the nation so his outcomes received worse with every election. And since each the fitting and the left are attacking him and his politics – generally with equal arguments – his recognition goes in direction of zero.
So he has the boldness that he can obtain not solely a greater however a basically totally different lead to three weeks nonetheless his secret. What he’s doing now’s an try to “push everybody else in line” in response to the slogan: All republican forces should stand collectively in opposition to the radicals and opponents of Europe.
Europe is vulnerable to catastrophe
It might be a catastrophe for all of Europe, after Italy and the Netherlands, that France, the third of the six founding states of the EU, could be ruled by a Eurosceptic get together, to place it fastidiously. It may hardly be denied that Macron is prepared to sort out this. Nonetheless, the strategies he chooses to attain this are questionable.
The morning after the election, Macron visited Tulle en Corrèze and Oradour-sur-Glane, two cities within the southwest of the nation the place a whole lot of civilians had been murdered by the SS in 1944. The photographs from Tulle present President Macron subsequent to his socialist predecessor Francois Hollande and subsequent to Claude Chirac, daughter and closest adviser to the conservative President Jacque Chirac. In Oradour, Macron will stand subsequent to Frank-Walter Steinmeier once more at midday. Evidently Macron wished to make use of these pictures to induce the nation to recollect what’s on the coronary heart of France: humanity and resistance to justice.
Is that sufficient? The RN itself has lengthy claimed the Resistance, with none concern of contact.