Starmer and Le Pen’s similarities

Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call a snap election in France is turning out to be a blunder of Sunakian proportions. His second term as president lasts until 2027 and he could have struggled on with a hung parliament in which his was the largest single party. But when Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won 31 per cent of the vote in the European Parliament elections, to his party’s 15 per cent, he decided to call French voters’ bluff. In a parliamentary election, would they really back Le Pen and put in Jordan Bardella, her new 28-year-old party frontman, as prime minister?

It is becoming clear that they may well do that. Macron’s Renaissance party, which won 39 per cent of the vote in the last legislative elections two years ago, is now polling at about half that. National Rally, which won just over 17 per cent last time, looks like running away with the election on 33 per cent. Even the pensioners, Macron’s most loyal voter cohort, seem to have deserted him. The 25- to 34-year-olds are also backing National Rally over the Popular Front, the socialist alternative, by a significant margin.

Bardella may not end up as prime minister, given that he has said he will only seek to form a government if his party wins an outright majority. But Macron is likely to be humiliated, and he will feel the loss of authority for the remainder of his term. There has been some speculation that his plan is to orchestrate a constitutional crisis which would require him to stand again and sidestep the ban on presidents serving more than two terms. Regardless, if he stays in office, he will almost certainly have to cohabit with a much more hostile National Assembly.