Last week, a columnist for Le Monde memorably described Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call a snap parliamentary election as a “choice to play France at poker”. Humiliated by Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party (RN) at this month’s European elections, Mr Macron opted to call the French electorate’s bluff, calculating that the prospect of a radical-right prime minister in the Élysée would “clarify” its thinking.
A week away from the first round of a poll whose consequences will reverberate around Europe, this reckless gamble shows no sign at all of paying off. Quite the opposite. According to one survey, RN could increase its vote share to 36%, a few points up from its historic high on 9 June. Mr Macron’s centrist Together movement languishes in a distant third place, well behind the New Popular Front (NPF), an alliance of leftwing and progressive parties which is set to be the main challenger to Ms Le Pen in numerous contests.
How that dynamic plays out remains to be seen. But choosing to gift Ms Le Pen the immediate chance to build on the momentum of the European elections was a grievous mistake. Although RN is still short of the kind of numbers required for an absolute majority in the national assembly, it appears to be within striking distance. That in itself is remarkable. In equivalent elections in 2017, at the beginning of Mr Macron’s first presidential term, Ms Le Pen’s party finished with a mere eight MPs. Having pledged to halt the rise of the extreme right in politics, Mr Macron’s invincible self-belief and penchant for aggressive risk-taking has destabilised France.
Ms Le Pen is playing her own cards cannily, hedging her bets on more controversial pledges such as lowering the retirement age to 60. Her 28-year-old protege, Jordan Bardella, has stated that he will only accept the post of prime minister in the event of RN winning an absolute majority. A more likely outcome is a chaotic stalemate in which Mr Bardella leads the largest party, but no coherent government can be formed. For Ms Le Pen, with her eyes on the prize of the next presidential elections, the more dysfunctional mainstream French politics becomes, the better.
Against this backdrop, precipitated by an unforced error, the “republican front” that has kept the extreme right at bay in postwar France is now on life-support. Having alienated much of the left, while continuing to rely on its support in presidential runoffs against Ms Le Pen, Mr Macron has exhausted its voters’ goodwill. On the right, a political space he has steadily colonised, a section of the Republicans party has entered into an electoral alliance with RN. Mr Macron’s rightward drift on issues such as immigration and multiculturalism has legitimated agendas once seen as beyond the pale, and emboldened voters to take a chance on the real thing.
France thus finds itself entering uncharted territory. Normalisation of the party founded by Jean-Marie Le Pen is one thing, its consolidation as the most popular political force in the country quite another. For France’s 6 million-strong Muslim population – already targets for RN’s nativist hostility – the current polls make for dire reading. The party’s “France first” policies on employment and benefits are, meanwhile, intended to place Paris on a collision course with the European Union, at a time when the radical right is on the rise elsewhere.
In a two-round contest, tactical voting by progressive and moderate voters may yet mitigate some of the damage. But the crucial strategic error has already been made by Mr Macron in calling this election. Nemesis may follow hard on the heels of that act of hubris.