"Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has announced that he is dissolving the national assembly, and calling for legislative elections on June 30 and July 7.
The French president said that he can’t pretend nothing has happened, that the outcome of the EU election is not good for his government and that the rise of nationalists is a danger for France and Europe."
WTF, why would he do that… This gives me David Cameron / Brexit referendum vibes.
Maybe he hopes that left-leaning voters will get mobilised by the election outcome today.
It’s a bold strategy, let’s see if it pans out.
Fantastic use for this
He called during his televised speech to get rid of the “ruckus causers”, separately from the far right.
The current largest leftist party had (until last night) close to a third of Parliament, and have a reputation of loudly contesting shit they don’t stand for.
I really don’t think Macron’s intention is to give them a chance at more votes. If anything, he’s hoping this forces leftist voters to move towards the center, seeing as how his own party barely cleared 14% (the largest far right party did over 30, and a smaller splinter party got around 7% on its own).
Thanks for the insight. I didn’t know about the leftist party, we only read about Le Pen here.
I’m definitely more mobilized than ever
My cynical take: he wants to let the far right win the legislative elections while he still has close to 3 years left in his term.
He thinks this will “show” their electorate that voting far right doesn’t get you what you want.
At the same time, he can take advantage of the media bashing the leftist party has been getting for their vocal opposition to Israel’s actions since October 7 2023, and run them out of Parliament. At least, it’s a gamble he’s willing to make.
He is just as much of a clueless, egotistical liberal as David Cameron was, so your analogy is sadly pretty accurate.