How Marine Le Pen silenced her critics

‘Stillborn’ is how Le Figaro describes Emmanuel Macron’s presidency after his Renaissance party failed to win an absolute majority in the National Assembly. On a wretched day for Macron, his coalition party won 245 seats in the lower house, dozens short of the number needed to secure the majority that would have allowed him to push through his reforms in his second term.

Jean-Luc Melenchon’s left-wing NUPEs took 131 seats. But the biggest surprise of the night was the success of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally. They won 89 seats, a result beyond the wildest dreams of Le Pen, whose party had only eight MPs in the last parliament.

‘We have achieved our three objectives,’ declared a triumphant Le Pen, who had been predicted to win around 25 to 50 seats. ‘That of making Emmanuel Macron a minority president, without control of power and that of pursuing the political recomposition essential to democratic renewal.