Gavin Mortimer

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.

If there is one place to avoid this week it is Normandy. The global elite are in town to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day. Along with as many as 25 world leaders there will be upwards of 12,000 of their security staff invading this normally sleepy part of Northern France. In addition, 43,000 gendarmes, police and military personnel will be deployed on land, sea and in the air. A restricted traffic zone will be place throughout the region, and residents are being advised to stay at home on Thursday and Friday. Some schools will be closed on those days because of the disruption.

New Caledonia must not become the ‘Wild West’ declared Emmanuel Macron last week during his flying visit to the Pacific Island. For two weeks the indigenous people, the Kanaks, have been in revolt against a voting reform they believe will marginalise them. The French President’s visit achieved little. Not long after Macron’s departure an insurgent was shot dead by police. Seven people have been killed in the unrest and the material damage is estimated at more than one billion euros. It is not only the Overseas French Territory that is in danger of resembling the Wild West. Mayhem has become a characteristic of Macron’s France, and rarely does a week pass without an act of barbarity. On Sunday afternoon in Lyon a man with a knife wounded four passengers in the metro.

‘Sometimes when we turn on the television we get the impression that nothing’s going well in France,’ Emmanuel Macron said on Monday. ‘I don’t think it’s true.’ France's president has developed a knack of being overtaken by events – and so it has proved once again. A huge manhunt is underway after two prison guards were shot dead near Rouen in Normandy. The security officers were gunned down as they transferred a prisoner, described by police sources as a notorious drugs smuggler nicknamed ‘The Fly’, whose real name is Mohamed A. Two vehicles blocked the prison van on the A154 motorway and, as the prisoner was sprung, two of the guards were killed and three wounded in a fusillade of gunfire.

Donald Trump made headlines this month when he claimed that London and Paris are no longer recognisable because ‘they have opened their doors to jihad’. It was a characteristically provocative statement from the former US president, and one that had his many enemies huffing and puffing with indignation. Trump was wrong to describe the two cities as ‘unrecognisable’ but he was right in saying that a ‘jihad’ is being waged. The Brotherhood’s most successful achievement has been the introduction of a new word: Islamophobia ‘Jihad’, at least to non-Muslims, has violent connotations but the word means ‘struggle’ or ‘utmost effort’, and so there are also ideological jihads. This is the jihad that is being waged against the West this century.

Try as he might Emmanuel Macron and his party are unable to arrest the popularity of the National Rally. A month out from the European elections, the latest poll has their principal candidate, Jordan Bardella, on 32 points, double the score of Macron’s representative, Valerie Hayer. The latest head of state with dubious ethics to be courted by Macron is Xi Jinping Hayer and Bardella have clashed twice in recent days in live television debates, and on both occasions Hayer has condemned as ‘shameful’ the National Rally’s benevolence towards Vladimir Putin in the years leading up to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. That this strategy doesn’t appear to be working for the presidential camp is not a surprise.