France’s June parliamentary elections dealt a heavy blow to President Emmanuel Macron and his place in France’s political arena. Holding an outright legislative majority in 2017, with 345 of 577 seats, his parliamentary group shrunk to 245 – a drop of 100 seats. That left him 34 short of the 289 required to have an absolute majority.
The results in 2022 contrast with the praise heaped on the French president by the English-speaking media since his rise to power in 2017. Macron has variously been depicted as “young, clever and eminently reasonable” (The Economist), “solid” and “urbane” (MSNBC) and a “striver” (Politico). In the United States, he was seen by some Democrats as a model to emulate. A year into his mandate, the Financial Times marvelled how he had turned France “into a refuge for entrepreneurs”.
Such views are anything but universally held in France, however, a point brought home by the drubbing that Macron and his party took in the June elections. Simply the difficulty of pigeonholing the him can inspire suspicion. Ever since entering the public eye, Macron has revelled in paradoxes. In a 2018 speech, he said:
