Since President Emmanuel Macron dissolved the national assembly in June 2024, France has been going through its most acute political crisis in more than 50 years.
The election that followed split the assembly into three factions - centrist parties previously loyal to the president (“Macronie”), left-wing parties grouped around La France Insoumise (LFI), and Marine Le Pen’s right-wing Rassemblement National (RN) - each accounting for a quarter of the seats. Bouncing between them are the two traditional but shrunken parties of government - the Parti Socialiste (PS) and Les Républicains (LR) - neither of which is large enough to any of the three a majority even if they wanted to. At any other time, this political quagmire would be inconvenient. Today, when France needs difficult decisions made to address chronic budgetary shortfalls and a rising public-debt stock, it’s a crisis.
Wally Bordas, Le Figaro’s parliamentary correspondent, has written a gripping account of the 2024-25 political crisis in his new book Palais Bourbier (Quagmire Palace). In it, he reveals why Macron took the reckless decision to dissolve the assembly against the advice of his prime minister. He would either restore his absolute majority or force the RN to govern, fail and lose the 2027 presidential election.
“Emmanuel Macron’s approach was to let nature take its course,” says Bordas. “If the voters, by choice, put the RN in power at that time, let them do it”.
The Twenty-Four Two podcast is hosted by Tim Gwynn Jones at www.242.news.
