Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron has described the left-wing coalition’s manifesto as ‘totally immigrationist’. The Popular Front, which brings together Communists, Greens, Socialists and Anti-Capitalists, was formed at the start of last week to contest the upcoming parliamentary elections. While there has been the odd divergence on personnel – notably who should be prime minister in the event the left wins the election on 7 July – one issue on which the Popular Front is agreed is immigration: the more the better. The French left describes immigration as ‘an opportunity’ for the Republic Its manifesto states that once in power it will establish a maritime rescue agency to help bring migrants across the Mediterranean.

France's prime minister was out and about on Monday mixing with the proles south of Paris. ‘I’m going to shake your hand because you’re all right,’ said one old man, accepting the outstretched hand of Gabriel Attal. ‘But you’ll have tell the president to shut his trap.’ Attal didn’t quite know how to respond, mumbling that he was campaigning for the parliamentary and not the presidential elections. The old man wasn’t finished. ‘Listen, you’re not doing too bad…but the president, he’s the one causing all the trouble.

Over a quarter of a million people marched through France on Saturday and I was among their ranks as an observer. According to much of the media, the march was against Marine Le Pen and her National Rally party, which dominated last week’s European elections. But among the tens of thousands of protestors in Paris I saw and heard as much opposition to Emmanuel Macron. The president’s name was on placards and in chants as the procession left the Place de la Republique for the Place de la Nation. So, too, was Jordan Bardella’s. The 28-year-old president of the National Rally – and the man who Le Pen says will be prime minister in the event her party wins the parliamentary election on 7 July – was the target of much hostility.

It has been the craziest week in French politics for decades but for the Republic’s police it’s business as usual. On Tuesday night, they were called to the Trocadero in the centre of Paris to search for four individuals who had violently mugged three Americans. Four youths of Moroccan origin, the youngest of whom was 11, were taken into custody. A day later in Marseille, a known drug dealer was gunned down in what police believe was a tit-for-tat killing between rival cartels. A few hours later, in the same city, a man was shot dead by police after he had thrown a Molotov cocktail at officers.

It is difficult to see how France will emerge from next month’s election peacefully. Flames are licking at the edges of the Republic and the man who lit the tinder was Emmanuel Macron when he called a snap election for 30 June and 7 July. Macron held a most unpresidential press conference on Wednesday in which he lashed out at his enemies but offered no explanation as to why he reacted the way he did on Sunday evening. There are some in France who believe it was a temper tantrum. Emmanuel Macron has suffered few humiliations in his effortless rise to the top. Sunday’s battering in the European Elections was the first and his response was one of petulant rage, like the small boy who destroys his toys on being denied what he wants.

The left in France may not be much good at winning elections but they are excellent when it comes to forming coalitions. Within 24 hours of Emmanuel Macron’s shock announcement on Sunday night of a snap election on 30 June, left-wing parties made a declaration of their own. A coalition of Communists, Socialists, Greens and the far-left La France Insoumise (LFI) – similar to the one formed for the 2022 parliamentary elections – would fight the election in a coalition called ‘The Popular Front’. Prime minister Gabriel Attal described his former party’s decision to ally with LFI as ‘revolting’ The first such ‘Popular Front' in France was created in 1936 and went on to win that year’s general election.

Emmanuel Macron visited Oradour-sur-Glane on Monday to mark the 80th anniversary since the village in central France was liquidated by SS troops. Laying a wreath at the site where 643 Frenchmen, women and children were massacred, the president of the Republic declared that: ‘We will remember Oradour, always, so that history never starts again’. That was a veiled reference to the success of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, which crushed the opposition in Sunday’s European elections. In 96 of France’s 101 Departments, the National Rally – led by Jordan Bardella – came out top, and their triumph in France’s towns and villages was overwhelming.

I sensed something significant was going to unfold on Sunday as I took my morning coffee at our village café. Enjoying the June sunshine I watched as a steady stream of men and women walked past on their way to the voting booth in the village hall. Forty-eight per cent of them cast their ballot for Jordan Bardella of the National Rally. The next best was Valerie Hayer, representing president Macron’s party; she managed 12 per cent. The people chose Macron, and got chaos The voter turnout in my village in Burgundy was 60 per cent, an eight per cent increase on the 2019 elections and 17 per cent superior to 2014. Overall in France, the turnout was 52.5 per cent, the highest in European elections since 1994. But this election was never about Europe.

Emmanuel Macron tonight dissolved France’s National Assembly and announced there will be new parliamentary elections with the first round of voting on 30 June and the second round a week later. The president made an unscheduled appearance on television one hour after exit polls declared a crushing victory for the National Rally in the European elections. Marine Le Pen’s party, whose election campaign was run by the 28-year-old president Jordan Bardella, is predicted a score of between 32 and 33.3 per cent, more than twice that of Macron’s representative, Valerie Hayer. She trailed a distant second on a projected 15 per cent, just ahead of the Socialist Raphaël Glucksmann.