After his party decisively lost to the far-right National Rally (RN) in the European Parliament elections, French President Emmanuel Macron shocked everyone by dissolving the National Assembly and announcing early elections. He defended his decision, claiming that the elections would "clarify" the political situation, but his compatriots did not share this opinion.
Even those who don't worry that Macron's gamble will bring the far right to power are anxious about the chaos that could ensue. As Macron's prime minister, Édouard Philippe, said from 2017 to 2020, the president has unnecessarily "stifled the presidential majority." A non-partisan parliament with the National Alliance as the largest party is now considered the most likely outcome. Nevertheless, Macron's decision clarifies one thing: his strategy to establish a strong centrism in France has failed. Other European leaders should take note of this.
Legend has it that Napoleon's first question for an officer was not whether he was talented or not, but whether he was lucky. When Macron won the 2017 presidential election, he was very lucky. The incumbent president was so unpopular that he didn't even bother to run for a second term, and the would-be conservative winner was lost by scandal. Macron seized the moment to propose what one might call "the second coming of the third way". Like Tony Blair, the leader of the British Labour Party who came to power in 1997, Macron argues that the old ideological split between the left and the right is outdated and that the centrists should simply choose the "most effective" policies.
Macron appealed to socialists and conservative Gaullists, provided that all rational people could be happily united in the middle of moderation. On the contrary, anyone who refuses an invitation is an unreasonable extremist. For a time, this approach was attractive because Macron's seemingly expanding centrist was the far-right Marine Le Pen's National Front (now the National Rally), and the far-left instigator Jean-Luc Mélenchon's French Liberation Front. But the technocratic approach – "if you're not with us, you're unreasonable" – ultimately failed to change the political landscape.
In the first round of the French presidential election, the far-right, far-left, center-left and center-right still tended to win at least one-fifth of the vote on average. But center-right Republicans have been losing votes to the National Alliance, prompting the party's leader, Eric Jyoti, to support an alliance with the far right. This is important because Macron received overwhelming support in the second round of elections in 2017 and 2022, when he was confronting Le Pen, in large part due to voter hostility to the far right rather than the heightened enthusiasm for Macronian technocrats.
On the contrary, technocrats tend to provoke a backlash because it creates an opportunity for populists to legitimately argue that there is no single reasonable solution to complex problems, and that democracy should be about choice and popular participation, not about elites ruling that there is no alternative. Macron's arrogant style – back in 2017, he let people know that he wanted to rule like "Jupiter" – certainly didn't help. Rightly or wrongly, this makes him an unusually hated politician. But apart from the personal failures of a man who claims to be the king of philosophers, a centrist project that aims to draw the best from the left and the right is always more likely to alienate both sides than to reconcile their conflicting agendas.
After Macron lost control of the National Assembly in 2022, his prime minister, Elisabeth Bornet, heroically tried to piece together a provisional majority to advance the president's agenda. But on more than 20 occasions, she took constitutional shortcuts, forcibly passing measures that clearly lacked popular support.
Macron's centrists not only seem increasingly authoritarian; It also slopes to the right. As a result, his hard-line interior minister even accused Le Pen of being soft on Islamism, and Borne introduced an immigration law that seemed to legitimize the far-right's long-standing rhetoric. If you keep leaning to the right, you will eventually reach a point where you can no longer blackmail voters with the argument that you are the only one standing in the way of right-wing extremism and the end of the republic.
Some commentators have speculated that Macron wants the National Alliance to remain in power until the 2027 presidential election, arguing that it will prove itself incompetent and lay the groundwork for a triumphant transition to centrism. But this quasi-teaching program, in which the principal shows students that substitute teachers don't know how to do the job, is misguided for several reasons.
First, not all far-right populists have oversimplistic policy ideas or are amateur administrators. Even if they do show incompetence, their fate will be restored. In 2000, when Austria's Machiavellian Christian Democratic Chancellor, Wolfgang Schussel, brought Jörg Heidel's far-right Liberal Party into government, the populists did descend into infighting and exposed their incompetence and corruption. But after splitting and licking its wounds, the Liberals won a resounding victory in last month's European elections.
Moreover, because the French system allows for "cohabitation" – when the president and prime minister belong to opposing parties – a seemingly incompetent ruling party can simply accuse the other of tying its hands and feet. With the extraordinary power of the French president, Macron will undoubtedly find his way out on the international stage. But it is sobering that his vision has been relegated from the "revolution" of 2017 to the "revival" of 2022, and it is now. Macron has failed to transform the movement he launched into a proper party that does not rely on charismatic leaders. His charisma is gone, and the outlook for 2027 does look bleak.