Emmanuel Macron dissolves French parliament and calls snap elections

A carnival of reaction against the surge for Marine and the French working class.

What a gift to the far right from Macron, still three years left on term too, surely beat option could have trundled along..

Sounds like another W for the conspiracy theorists

'Les tallies' must be monumentally shyte for President Neoliberal.

While our lot have repeated over the weekend that the EU elections are 'second order' elections, the French political set believe the opposite.

But then again, they along with Germany run the thing so they'd probably actually know.

As someone who lives amongst them (my neighbours voted 44% for the Front National [yeah, a change of name doesn't make them any different] and the region where I most frequently work gave them 56% of the vote) all I can say is they're all bred from the same thick-eejit MAGA and Brexiter stock. Everything they complain about on a local level is something that's within their power to change, but instead of voting for the guy (or girl) who promises to do something radical to change it, they vote for candidate that promises a return to the glories of the stone age. Then they complain that they didn't get what they were promised, so vote for him again because it's a vote against "the System", "the elite", "the immigrants".

I reckon Macron is following the advice of my aged artist friend and laying down the challenge: "you think the Far Right would be good for France? Fine - vote them in and let's see what happens". And d'you know what? I think it's a good move. I'd happily put up with 5 (4 … 3 … 2 years) of having the FN in government fecking up the country if it meant that they were thoroughly destroyed at the election after that. But then again I'm one of those much despised economic migrants that came over and took their houses and jobs. :-p

Euro football Championships and Olympics on as well. Poor Frenchies

Yeah, and d'you know what - they're almost exclusively populated by French citizens. Of course they're the "wrong kind" of French - wrong colour, wrong religion, wrong name, whatever; but they're a hell of a lot more French than I am.

Same bigotry from the same short-sighted xenophobes - Irish, British, French, German, American …

An interesting facet of these results is what we're also seeing happen in GB: the traditional right, in chasing marginal Far-Right voters have shot themselves in both feet and the head. Where the left-of-centre PS was almost wiped out two elections ago, they've come in a tight third, less than 1% point behind the governing centrists. On the other hand, the traditional Right (of centre) have been relegated to 5th place. No-one wants a "Far Right Light", nor do they want a "Righter-than-Before" party. Going by the shambolic campaigning so far "across the water" it wouldn't surprise me to see the same fate befall the Tories.

Far right got 16% in Germany?

Now, it is beginning of the end of EU. Well done to Putin and Orban.

Marine Le Pen’s anti-immigration, nationalist party is estimated to get around 31-32% of the votes, a historic result more than double the share of Mr Macron’s Renaissance party, which is projected to reach around 15%.

Mr Macron, who lost his majority at the National Assembly in 2022, is taking a big risk with the move that could backfire and increase the chances of Ms Le Pen eventually taking power.

https://www.breakingnews.ie/world/macron-dissolves-french-parliament-and-calls-snap-election-after-eu-vote-defeat-1635939.html

Mi-figue mi-raisin 😊

Sanchez did something similar n Spain. Poor display in local elections so he called a general one and stemmed the rise of the right, practically removing the far-right on a national level in the process.

Very personal opinion that but not shared by everyone. Poland has had an incredible rise in strength and wealth under the PiS. GDP growth has been collosol. More than halving the unemployment rate. Polish cities have statistically some of the lowest crime rates in Europe and you really feel that in the city centres there compared to Irish and other European cities.

It has struggled with rampant inflation that much of Europe also faced but made worse by having their own currency. Now they've shifted left but only to the centre right EPP.

Interesting that the brexit disaster has managed to transform parties to the right across Europe into something that looks electable by them abandoning similar exit policies.

And that the UK is now swinging back the other way.

What are you talking about? Our GDP didn't hike in any way. Stays just average.

And the latest GDP growth.

While our debt sky rocketed especially outside budget. They also ruined our judicial system and if they stayed in power for 4 more years, we would have Russia system in Poland with oligarchs making their wealth from stealing public money. Not even mentioning rampant corruption, cronyism and nepotism.With hatred propaganda non stop on our public TV. Good luck in wishing anyone to live in a such country.

And crime rates were even lower during socialism times because we were a police country, so it is not an achievement of PIS.

Your view is very naive.

a bit of an overreaction I'd say. There were pretty much zero rumblings from anywhere about any new Brexit's in the EU.

Macron made 2 mistakes …. the first was being too hardline on the so-called 'pension reform' and not listening to the concerns of the people during protests about that …..

The second mistake is hardline rhetoric regarding Ukraine …. too much talk of sending troops to Ukraine etc …. in other words inviting WW3 as a real possibility …. such bellicose language only emboldens the hardliners in Russia and Putin is more likely to give them concessions if Macron is talking like that …. ultimately shifting Russia's government further to the far right …. Macron meanwhile scares the French people and nobody wants to hear talk of NATO troops from their country going in to fight against the Russian army ….

As if the European Elections and upcoming UK, Iranian and US elections were not enough …. this French election is thrown in as well …. we will have to wait and see …. this Marine Le Pen? …. will she be a real far right lunatic like Trump or Hitler or will she be more a French Georgia Meloni ?? … one thing is she is not her father and is more moderate …. in other words she may not be far right at all …. I do not consider Meloni to be real far right as she is too pragmatic and Marine Le Pen may be more like that than the lunatics in the US Republican party ….

Ultimately we will have to wait and see …… Macron was a bit of a disaster and turned off large swathes of his electorate …

PS … where is your man Sarcozy thesse days ??? Would he attempt to revive himself and grab an opportunity ?? …

Ah, I see the slightly more aggressive version is posting today.

The benefit, I think, is puncturing expectations about a coming far-right wave. He hopes to show that people will vote for far-right parties in euro elections in numbers that simply won't be replicated in national elections with a change of government at stake. Plus he hopes that the rigours of actually holding any office will take further shine off the Le Pen movement.

The prize here is the next French presidential election. Macron can't stand — there's a two-term max — but he will hope to hand over to a centrist successor, not to Le Pen.

Indeed, some risk of course that voters take umbrage to a perceived "when it comes down to it, Monsieur Tout-le-Monde will fall into line" arrogance — but Macron appears to be banking on not allowing months of narrative to build up.