October 12, 2024
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
Those scanning the top table for a liberal savior will be disappointed. Macron’s centrist coalition risks being wiped out in a vote spanning two rounds — on June 30 and July 7 — by the left as well as by the far right. The president’s allies, meanwhile, appear to be seeking an exit strategy rather than glory in a famous last stand.

France is ‘going to the dogs,’ Macron’s inner circle despairs

In their hour of greatest need for a liberal successor to the country’s president, France’s centrists are in panicky disarray

PARIS  — It has the air of a last supper. The black-and-white photograph captures the angst and frustration of President Emmanuel Macron’s inner circle, presumably at the very moment he briefs them he’s about to bet big on a high-stakes parliamentary election.

Macron is seated at a table — with a small carriage clock before him — in an opulent chamber of the Élysee palace, while a palpable tension grips his closest lieutenants opposite. It’s perhaps an unusual image for the Élysée’s official photographer to post on Instagram, but no one doubts it fairly reflects the nerves wracking the president’s inner circle.

Humiliated by the far-right National Rally in the EU election, Macron delivered a bombshell announcement June 9 that he would try to hold back the advances of the right with a national election. Since then, Macron’s top team has been conspicuous for their doubts, grumbling and low spirits.

Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire — a pillar of Macron’s Renaissance liberal party — won the award for most apocalyptic diagnosis on a campaign stop in northern France after Le Figaro quoted him bemoaning that “the country is going to the dogs.”

More…

Loading

Visited 2 times, 1 visit(s) today