France Snap Election: Macron Says he Won’t Resign No Matter What

President Emmanuel Macron threw down the gauntlet to the French people and the right-populist opposition on Sunday, calling a snap election to save his leadership, but now says he won’t resign even if he loses.

France will elect a new Parliament on June 30th after an astonishingly short election campaign of just three weeks after the fresh vote was called on Sunday just hours after President Emmanuel Macron’s political faction was handed a humiliating defeat in the European elections. The National Rally (RN) right-populists of Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella got twice as many votes as Macron’s group, the highest proportion of any French political party in 40 years.

Macron’s ‘put up or shut up’ challenge to the French people could risk everything if the RN wins, particularly now a putative unite-the-right coalition to win the election is coalescing around Le Pen. But high-stakes or not, Macron has now insisted even if he suffers a second massive defeat, he won’t surrender the Elysée Palace and will attempt to continue to govern a country clearly opposed to him, and without the support of parliament.

Per Le Parisien, Macron invoked the French constitution to insist that while two back-to-back mega defeats may feel like the right time to bow out, nevertheless he’d cling on. He said: “It is not the RN which writes the Constitution, nor the spirit of it. The institutions are clear, the place of the president, whatever the result, is also clear.”

He had called the election to “clarify” the political situation in the country, Macron said, while calling on the French to make sure they vote, stating: “I’m [doing this] to win!”.

As things stand, if RN outright won the election, which will be held in two rounds at the end of this month and on July 7th Macron would probably have little choice but to appoint RN president Jordan Bardella as Prime Minister. With so much still up in the air, it remains unclear what this would mean for France and its political fortunes.

French Presidents have governed with an opposed Parliament before, and Macron does not even control Parliament now. It has also been floated that Macron envisions Bardella and Le Pen taking power in Parliament as part of his long-game plan, a trap set for the right by giving them a taste of power, which the centrist-globalist would presumably be relying on them messing up.