Can anyone stop Emmanuel Macron?

If they weren’t insufficiently weary of politicians, the French will be invited to vote all over again for the Assemblée Nationale, the nation’s parliament, on 12 and 19 June.

Citizen lassitude notwithstanding, the election may produce a louder, if not assuredly more effective, opposition to the prolongated reign of the second Sun King, the newly reelected President Emmanuel Macron.

When fresh-faced Macron was first elected in 2017 in a stonking landslide, his portmanteau political movement, La République En Marche!, went on to win a commanding presidential majority in the National Assembly elections that followed. This bloc of deputies has loyally enabled Macron ever since – though the deputies themselves have proved a motley crew, one of them was caught last week buying lingerie with her parliamentary credit card.

This time? I have predicted for months that after having been re-elected with a reduced majority, Macron’s coattails will prove too short to give him his majority.