Macron’s nightmare is complete

French president Emmanuel Macron has been humiliated by voters, weeks after being re-elected by an unenthusiastic electorate.

The hyper-president with ambitions to lead Europe looks like he will not even be able to lead France. His legislative project, headlined by pension reform and raising the retirement age, appears doomed. France looks more ungovernable than ever. There’s a possibility that parliament might be dissolved within a year and new elections held. It is a ‘nightmare scenario’ for the president, admitted Le Monde this morning.

The result of the election is much worse for Macron than almost anyone anticipated. For the first time in the fifth republic the president has failed to win a parliamentary majority. He lost crucial parliamentary allies including Richard Ferrand, the president of the National Assembly, Christophe Castaner, his former interior minister who presided over the brutal repression of the gilets jaunes, Amélie de Montchalin, the environment minister, Justine Bénin, a secretary of state for the sea and Brigitte Bourguignon, minister of health and social solidarity.

Macron’s prime minister Élisabeth Borne, a technocrat parachuted into what was thought to be a safe seat, and who has the political charisma of a carrot, barely won against an unknown candidate of the Mélenchonist Nouvelle Union Populaire Écologique et Sociale.