After eight years in office, Emmanuel Macron is staring into the abyss of public disapproval. Ever since his botched dissolution attempt in the summer of 2024, the President has been losing the faith of voters. According to pollster Ifop, only 17% of the population have a favourable opinion of him — his lowest score ever. This is lower still than during the Gilets Jaunes protests in 2018. He’s even starting to rival his predecessor and ex-mentor François Hollande, whose approval ratings reached a dismal 13% in 2014.
Some 54% of voters are now strongly dissatisfied with the President, while support among pensioners — the country’s largest electoral bloc — has fallen to just 17%, despite Macron’s long-standing strength with this group. It was their overwhelming support in 2022 in the runoff against Marine Le Pen that gave him a decisive victory. Even among his 2022 supporters, only 45% are satisfied with his presidency.
There were rumours this summer that Macron wanted to dissolve parliament once again should he lose his Prime Minister François Bayrou. Bayrou was deposed by parliament but instead of calling for a snap poll, Macron swiftly nominated loyalist Sébastien Lecornu.
But it is not only voters that are disappointed with the President. Gabriel Attal, ex-prime minister, attacked his former boss this Sunday. In a speech to Renaissance, the party created by Macron in 2016 as En Marche and now led by Attal, he described a country eagerly waiting for 2027 to “turn a page, the page of chaos”. For those in the audience with any doubt as to whether Attal was targeting the man who founded their party, he doubled down. While he jabbed opposition parties for their irresponsibility, “the original source of instability is the decision to dissolve parliament”. A stunned audience eventually clapped.
A new book from Le Figaro journalist Wally Bordas has shed light on the strategic nature of the rift between Macron and his heir apparent. The President allegedly saw the dissolution as an opportunity to give Marine Le Pen a parliamentary majority. Her incompetence, as the thinking went, would then rule her out of any higher office come 2027. Whether the snap election was part of a Machiavellian plan, or whether this is just post-hoc rationalisation, the gambit failed on all accounts.
Blindsided by the call, Attal on the other hand worked with the Left to stop a RN majority. With many three-way runoffs across the country between the Lepenists, the centrists and the Left-wing coalition, Attal and the Left worked tirelessly to have the worst-positioned candidates retract their bid in favour of the best-positioned candidates. In a sign of the President’s waning influence, Macron called up three centrist candidates and urged them to maintain their bids — all three ignored his plea.
France’s impossible political-fiscal situation will only make Macron’s final years in power more difficult. He has lost both prime ministers, Michel Barnier and François Bayrou, in an attempt to slash the eye-watering post-Covid deficit. Knowing that Macron’s days are numbered and may end in ignominy, many of his previous ministers, such as Attal and the more conservative Édouard Philippe, are now jockeying for pole position in the coming succession struggle.
This is not to say that Macron will stand by idly. The French Constitution gives a lot of power to its executive, especially on foreign policy and security. Given his personal involvement in Ukraine, and the relative pro-Ukrainian consensus from the centre-right to the centre-left, he will continue playing an important role on the world stage.
Domestically, he could try breaking the stalemate by calling for another election, but another inconclusive result would heap massive pressure on his shoulders to resign. There may be time for one last well-timed gamble, but short of a proper reset like a presidential election or a clear legislative victory, French governments will lack the mandate to reform an ailing country.
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