Macron shares Cameron’s aloofness, invulnerability and catastrophic urge to call voters’ bluff

Shortly after the European elections, struggling like everyone else to understand why Emmanuel Macron had chosen this moment of political weakness to call an unnecessary parliamentary election, Le Monde described a bizarre conversation he had with an adviser who asked if he was depressed. “The head of state grinned: ‘Not at all. I’ve been preparing for this for weeks, and I’m delighted. I’ve thrown a primed grenade at their [the far right’s] feet. Now let’s see how they get out of it’….”

The election gamble was planned, it appears, as part of a bold strategic play whose logic defies everyone.

The Elysée has denied the story, but Le Monde stands by it. It has the ring of truth

Consummate gambler, Macron is a man supremely confident of his own political judgment, but completely lacking in self-awareness – “he has no clue that people loathe him,” one voter told Liberation. His prime minister Gabriel Attal described the decision as “brutal” while another minister complained of “being thrown under a bus”. His party colleagues have asked him not to campaign.

Paul Howard: I never loved an animal as much as I loved Humphrey. For 13 and a half years, he was my constant companion

---

Your top stories on Monday: Far-right surges to early lead in French elections; elderly man dies in Achill quad bike crash

---

The most pimped concept in sport is heroism but Arthur Ashe was a hero

---

‘There can be violent outbursts or total apathy’: Principals call for counselling supports at primary level

---

The disastrous election call is every bit as mistimed and every bit as consequential for his country, and potentially for the EU, as that monumental misjudgment by British prime minister David Cameron in 2016, his unnecessary referendum on Brexit. It is France’s Brexit moment. And not unlike Rishi Sunak’s own surprise general election, with all the polls running against him, it has the potential of a near-complete parliamentary wipeout.

[ Macron gambles on France: ‘People don’t understand why he did this’ ]

Old Etonian Cameron confidently believed, as Macron does now, that he could personally stem the tide and disastrously misread the dynamics of the Brexit debate. He believed it would go his way and settle once and for all the Tories’ raging internal rows over Europe. Instead of putting the EU question to bed, however, Cameron ignited a firestorm that has come to divide his party and the country ever since.

Macron, the product of France’s elite Ecole Nationale d’Administration, shares much of Cameron’s aloofness, self-confidence and sense of invulnerability and has launched a process also likely to produce the opposite of the desired effect, the real possibility of a first far-right government since the days of Vichy.

Cameron, according to biographer Tim Bale, had huge confidence in his own leadership abilities and more than any prime minister in recent times ,”a ‘taste for big bold gambles’. He told a nervous former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg ‘Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing’ and Herman Van Rompuy, former president of the European Council, that he believed he could easily win.

And saw himself, like Macron, moulding history, confronting not accommodating issues – “shaping it, leading the debate”.

A delusional Macron told Le Figaro he did not think the far right could repeat its European success in a domestic election. They were using the election to let off steam, he argued, and he spoke of listening to the “silent majority”. He would call voters’s bluff. But he is not a listener, not least to any silent majority, but far more inclined to lecture them.

“Politics,” he told Le Figaro puzzlingly, ”is a dynamic. I’ve never believed in opinion polls. The decision I’ve taken opens up a new era.” He was looking into his heart, much like Dev and his hero De Gaulle, for the true spirit of the country that only he understands.

Macron previously promised, way back in 2016, that he would take on the far-right in Europe and France by sparking a “European renaissance” that re-energised the EU and rekindled faith in it. It never happened, and now his Ensemble alliance languishes on about 20 per cent, in third place. Most of its candidates will not even reach the second round of voting.

[ Opinion: Macron called an election to avoid ‘bedlam’. It is a mad gamble which he may not win ]

Some observers see in Macron’s gamble not so much a bid to take on and defeat the Rassemblement National at the ballot box, but to expose its incompetence and political naivety when confronted with the challenges of governing. The French people would see, the argument goes, that either in a minority – most likely - or majority government, the RN would precipitate major economic crises and social confrontations. And then be rejected by voters at the crucial 2027 presidential elections.

Yet there is no guarantee voters will do that, and in the interim the French people will be condemned to years of misery. And for fellow Europeans, there is the grim prospect of another Victor Orban at the high table. Europe taken hostage by Macron’s gamble, as Le Figaro puts it. History will judge Macron as unkindly as it does Cameron. No matter how much he disparages the far-right personally, he will be the man who opened the door to the RN in government, either immediately or in the presidential election in 2027.