Macron’s risky scorched earth strategy

France's President is losing sight of the real threat

A couple weeks ago, Emmanuel Macron gave a speech to the French nation explaining that he would dissolve the Parliament to hold early elections. Following this, I wrote a post on here trying to answer the question on everyone’s minds: “what the hell is Macron thinking?”

At the time I argued that they were two parts to Macron’s likely plan. First, to shock voters into action by highlighting the strength of the far-right, who had just comfortably come first in the European Parliament elections. Second, to boost the strength of moderate forces in French politics through non-aggression pacts with France’s main historic parties, the centre-left PS and centre-right LR.

On the surface, an interesting and viable strategy, reinforced by the fact that his own camp was very unlikely to win these elections. The only problem? It hasn’t worked at all.

At the heart of the problem is Macron’s own lack of popularity. While there are many politicians and voters on the centre-right and centre-left who want to see a strong moderate politics, a substantial chunk of them see Macron as absolutely toxic. As a result, even informal pacts with Macron and the coalition of parties supporting him are a non-starter.

In the case of PS, politicians have decided that they’re better off looking to their left and allying with the greens and far-left in a repetition of the left-wing alliance formed in 2022. It is notable, compared with that previous electoral pact, that there is much less dissent this time. The consensus within the party that a union of the left is the only way to resist the far-right, while offering voters something they actually want, has only strengthened. True believers in an alliance across the centre are now few and far between.

LR meanwhile responded to the call for early elections by almost immediately descending into a civil war. In a twist that almost defies explanation, the party’s leader negotiated a pact with the far-right but did so in such secrecy that no one else in the party knew about it. That turned out to be a notable flaw in his ambitions when LR MPs and Senators almost unanimously rejected the pact and started proceedings to try and strip party membership from their own leader. As of writing, the internal conflict is unresolved but the key point is that even those who reject working with the far-right aren’t friends of Macron either. Within LR, there is no meaningful pro-Macron faction, only a group that believes cooperating with either Macron or Le Pen would be the wrong decision for the party.

Being who he is, Macron is not taking this rejection lying down. In the past week, he and his lieutenants from the centrist camp have stepped up their attacks against the other parties. In particular, there is a concerted effort to tar the entirety of the left-wing coalition with the same brush, emphasising the place of the far-left in the alliance and telling voters that, as a result, both the left and the far-right are two sides of the same coin.

This is a dangerous game to play. It may help boost the poll ratings of the Macronist parties somewhat but it also risks normalising the far-right.

This hardly seems worthwhile when there is little evidence that voters are being persuaded in any significant numbers by Macron’s narrative. Few seem receptive to the idea that only the (very unpopular) Macronist parties can be trusted to govern France. In fact, the polls have barely shifted and the Macron camp remains firmly in third place, behind the left-wing alliance in second and the far-right in first.

It therefore remains highly likely that in many constituencies across France, the choice will come down to a candidate from the left or a candidate from the far-right. Granted, in some constituencies that will be a candidate from the far-left, populist La France Insoumise. Specifically, in 229 constituencies. That’s a substantial cut from the 326 they claimed in 2022. Meanwhile, the moderate PS will present the left-wing candidate in 175 constituencies, up from just 71 in 2022. The Greens will be fronting the alliance in 92 seats, only slightly down from 2022.

In other words, we’re talking about an ideologically broad coalition that has cut down the presence of the far-left and much improved the balance between populists and moderates compared to two years ago. To put this on a level footing with the far-right is simply disingenuous.

And in that context, the most likely outcome of Macron’s current campaign strategy is not to make the left appear more dangerous but to make the far-right appear more banal. In a world where the Macronists are expected to come third, this amounts to little more than a scorched earth strategy that will damage the candidates who will be the main alternative to the far-right throughout large swathes of France. Far from leading a sudden turnaround victory for centrism, Macron would then end up doing little more than assisting a far-right victory.

The first round of the election is taking place this Sunday. Rather than spending more time trying to paint the left-wing alliance as extremists, Macron and his allies would be better off preparing the ground for the necessary pivot to endorsing candidates from the left against their counterparts from the far-right. For many of them this will not be easy and will mean swallowing their pride. Yet the alternative future, of the far-right storming the corridors of power in Paris, is both dangerous and urgent enough that moderates must be willing to make sacrifices.

In 2017 and 2022, Macron’s victories relied on left-wing voters who held their noses and voted for the candidate they believed could block the far-right. Is now not the time to return the favour?