Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call early parliamentary elections is a gamble of a high stakes Las Vegas poker game.
By Tom Arms
Emmanuel Macron is either a political genius or—what is most likely—supremely arrogant. Or perhaps it is a confusing mix of two.
His decision to call early parliamentary elections is –on the face of it– a gamble worthy of a high stakes Las Vegas poker game.
But then, within hours of the president’s televised announcement, things were looking up for Macron as France’s political right started tearing itself apart. Then there is the strong possibility that a far-right victory could prove to be the poisoned chalice that keeps Marine Le Pen out of the Elysee Palace after the 2027 presidential vote.
That must be Macron’s goal. He is barred from running for a third term, but he firmly believes that Ms. Le Pen and her National Rally (RN) is an existential threat to France, Europe and the wider world. He is determined that his political legacy should not read: “The man who put Le Pen in power.”
Most pundits agree that Macron had to call an election soon, but they expected it in the autumnal afterglow of the Paris Olympics. The poll has been on the cards ever since Macron lost his parliamentary majority in 2022. Since then he has either had to shift to the right or resort to ruling by decree with Article 49.3. The latter meant that he would eventually face and lose a vote of censure which would have forced him to hold an election. This way he chooses the date and the context.
Marine Le Pen has worked hard to de-demonize the far-right National Rally founded by her father as the National Front. She went so far as to expel her familial predecessor from the party and changed its name to National Rally.
Bowing to opinion polls, she has even also diluted the party’s euro-skepticism. Calls for “Frexit” and withdrawal from the Euro have been abandoned. But some of RN’s other policies make it hard for the party to shed the extremist label. RN opposes French intervention in Africa; wants to leave NATO’s integrated command structure, supports economic intervention and protectionism; seeks a “privileged partnership” with Russia; is anti-globalist and supports a policy of zero tolerance on law and order issues.
But it is RN’s policies towards immigration and ethnic minorities which are both the biggest problem and opportunity for the party. Marine Le Pen wants a moratorium on legal immigration; the “de-Islamisation” of French society; the repeal of laws allowing illegal immigrants to become legal residents and the rewriting of the European Treaty to prohibit free movement of immigrants within the Schengen Area.
Wars, climate change have created record numbers of displaced persons. This has inevitably resulted in the immigration issue moving inexorably up the global agenda. RN’s political fortunes have risen correspondingly. In the recent European Parliamentary elections, France’s far-right won 32 percent of the vote—double that of Macron’s Renaissance Party. And opinion polls show Le Pen well ahead of any other potential candidate for the 2027 presidential vote.
Perhaps more significant was the recent passage of France’s Immigration and Asylum Bill. It was meant to demonstrate that Macron could be tough on migrants. But it was not tough enough for either the LR or RN and they blocked the legislation until Macron agreed to make it more difficult for immigrants to bring their families into France and delayed their access to welfare benefits.
Le Pen declared the amended legislation an “ideological victory” for RN. And after Macron called the election she said: “We are ready to exercise power; to put an end to mass immigration—that will be the issue” in this election.
Immigration is highly likely to dominate the campaign and the two-round vote on 30 June and 7 July. And the French public’s position on this emotive issue may result in an RN victory. But then the problems could start. Le Pen’s RN may find that more pedestrian problems such as French government deficit and the complications inherent in “cohabitation” may prove to be a poisoned chalice.
The constitution of the Fifth Republic was written by Charles de Gaulle for Charles de Gaulle. It is basically a republican monarchy. The president has total control of foreign and defence policy and, because he appoints the prime minister, de facto control of domestic policy—as long as the president’s party can command a majority in the National Assembly.
If the president loses control of the National Assembly then he (or she) has problems. This has been painfully demonstrated on three occasions since 1958 as each “cohabitation” resulted in political stagnation and constant battles as the Elysee and the Hotel Matignon fought for political supremacy.
The problems of “cohabitation” were particularly apparent after conservative president Jacques Chirac was forced to appoint socialist Lionel Jospin as prime minister. Jospin planned to use his tenancy of the Hotel Matignon as a springboard for the presidential vote in 2002. But Chirac successfully blamed Jospin for five years of political torpor and eliminated the socialist in the first round of voting.
The financial problems of the French government could be what keeps Le Pen out of the Elysee. Shortly before calling the election, Macron held a “crisis meeting” to discuss the government’s growing deficit. French public spending is now 110 percent of GDP, and it faces the prospect of an EU procedure at the end of this month because of excessive deficits.
This is a problem for RN. It is committed to reversing Macron’s raising of the retirement age (savings of $18 billion a year) and has a raft of other high-spending populist policies which will involve either raising taxes (unpopular) or borrowing (irresponsible). It was unsurprising, therefore, that shares on the Paris Bourse dropped dramatically at the prospect of a free-spending National Rally prime minister.
There is also the problem of cobbling together a government. It is unlikely that RN could win an absolute majority. They would almost certainly need a coalition arrangement with the Gaullist Les Republicains. But that party is divided. The grassroots membership wants to join forces with RN. But most of the party leadership continue to regard Le Pen’s party as toxic.
As soon as the election was called, the party’s leader, Eric Ciotti, called for an electoral alliance with Le Pen. But Senate Speaker Gerard Larcher said he would never accept a deal with RN and called for Ciotti’s immediate dismissal. Ciotti responded by locking himself in the party headquarters and declaring: “I am going nowhere.”
Ciotti’s antics inserted an element of high farce, but one must not forget the high stakes in the coming French parliamentary elections.
World Review
Benjamin Netanyahu and the Hamas leadership share a common interest: It is to neither’s advantage at this stage to end the Gaza War. But neither is in either party’s interests to be seen as the bad guy.
In the case of the Israeli prime minister it is the fact that once the war is over he will face an overpowering clamour for a general election. It is an election which he will almost certainly lose as the Israeli electorate will hold him to account for the events that led up to the October 7th Hamas attack.
And then, once he is out of office, Netanyahu is likely to exchange the prime minister’s official residence for a prison cell via a trial on charges of fraud, bribery and breach of trust. Fleeing the country is not an option because by then the International Criminal Court will have issued an arrest warrant for war crimes—unless he flees to America.
With Hamas the story is different. There are two wars being fought in the eastern Mediterranean. One is on the ground and in the air over a strip of land 26 miles long and 2.5 miles wide. The other is a war in the court of international public opinion. Hamas is losing the first and winning the second.
The longer the military war continues. The greater the disproportionate losses in human terms between Palestinians and Israelis and the greater the victory for Hamas. Already it has secured diplomatic recognition of a Palestinian state from six EU countries—Norway, Spain, Slovenia, Cyprus, Sweden and Ireland.
Hamas has repeatedly proven that it puts political objectives before Palestinian lives. A string of historical precedents would have told them that the October 7th attack and the taking of hostages would have resulted in a highly disproportionate number of dead and injured Palestinians. It is also clear that Hamas has used hospitals, schools and Palestinian civilians, as shields.
So, where does that leave the prospects for peace and the diplomatic brokering of the US, Egypt and Qatar? At the moment US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is focused on the lack of Hamas’s enthusiasm for the latest peace proposal. Hamas say they have responded with “positivity” but Blinken says that the Hamas’s “positivity” includes “unworkable” changes.
Part of the latest problem is ownership of the plan currently on the table. It was announced by President Biden. But in his announcement he said it was an Israeli plan. However, as Hamas’ has been keen to point out, no Israeli official has publicly endorsed the plan.
In fact, official Israeli pronouncements continue to focus on continuing the war until Hamas’s “governing and military capabilities have been destroyed and the hostages returned.” There is also the political problem that Netanyahu’s far-right coalition partners will withdraw from the government if the plan outlined by Biden goes ahead. This would result in an election which Netanyahu would lose.
Israeli problems and positions in turn appear to be in direct conflict with a Hamas demand that Israel commit in writing to ending the fighting before it agrees to any plan from anyone. Until this deadlock is resolved and the Americans come up with a plan that allows both sides to achieve the aims they want without fighting, then the war continues.
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Shortly after the Russians invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the West froze $325 billion in Russian assets.
Almost immediately the call went out to hand the money over to Ukraine to finance its war against Russia. But there was a problem with this tactic which can easily be summed up with one word—hypocrisy.
Putin was being condemned for contravening international law with his naked war of aggression. But confiscating Russian assets and handing those over to Ukraine would also break international law. And respect for international law is at the root of what Ukraine and the West is fighting for. Putin wants to create a world where might is right. America and its allies want to retain a world based on respect for international law.
So, financial planners came up with the idea of using the interest on the frozen assets to help Ukraine. That is about $3 billion a year, which is more than can be found in most people’s piggybanks, but an almost insignificant amount when compared to Ukraine’s war costs.
This week at the G7 summit in Puglia, Italy, the planners came up with the solution. The G7 countries would collectively loan Ukraine $50 billion (a significant amount) via the international banking system and the interest on the frozen assets would go towards paying back the G7 countries.
This arrangement provides much needed cash for the Ukraine war effort in a way that doesn’t cost G7 taxpayers a penny. With growing concern about how to pay for rising costs in almost every financial sector, that is a major consideration for all countries.
As expected, Vladimir Putin reacted to the West’s successful out of the box thinking with Russian fury. He called it “theft” and vowed that it would “not go unpunished.”
The problem of the frozen assets was not the only help extended to Ukraine this week. Presidents Joe Biden and Volodomyr Zelensky also signed a 10-year bilateral security deal. Zelensky said that the agreement provides a bridge to eventual NATO membership. For now it involves extensive training, weaponry and help in building a domestic arms industry. The agreement, however, does not commit any American troops to Ukraine’s defense.
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Tom Arms is foreign editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and author of “The Encyclopedia of the Cold War.” You can subscribe to his emailed blogs observationsofanexpat.substack.com.
