The single headline across the front page of the centre-left daily Libération said it all: ‘La Gifle’. But much more than a slap in the face, Emmanuel Macron has taken a heavyweight sock in the jaw. With only 245 seats for his ‘Ensemble!’ grouping, the French president is a country mile from having a parliamentary absolute majority (289). Then there is the drubbing his lieutenants took with the ousting of three ministers, the president of the national assembly and the leader of his parliamentary LREM party. All lost their seats.
Sunday’s legislative results are a full-frontal humiliation for Macron personally, ideologically, politically and institutionally. Held in opprobrium, his globalist liberal ideas have been rejected and his Jupiterian political style and hyper-vertical management of France’s institutions scorned. Macron has run France constitutionally into a wall. The French regime will turn from being hyper-presidential to something far more parliamentary. But will the Fifth Republic’s institutions – designed by Charles de Gaulle to produce large governing majorities – hold, or will France be taken back to an unappreciated Fourth Republic split between three political groupings, unable to form stable governments and condemned to political immobilism?
Macron is crushed between radical left and right
Macron is crushed between radical left and right, despite proclaiming in 2017 that France under his beneficent management would eliminate extremes.
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