Aline-Florence Manent

Is Emmanuel Macron doomed to be a lame duck President from the start?

Emmanuel Macron is on the verge of becoming the youngest president in French history. If he is successful in defeating his far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen, it will also be the first time since 1974 that France elects a centrist president. But even in its early days, Macron’s presidency will face a huge test: his En Marche! movement is still very much in its infancy and it is unclear whether it will morph into a full-blown political party before June’s legislative elections. If it doesn’t, one of the main questions that voters will have is whether Macron will be able to govern in the absence of a clear parliamentary majority. Since the term of the presidency was cut from seven to five years in 2002, so that presidential and legislative elections coincide, the president’s party has usually been able to count on a majority of seats in the National Assembly to swiftly pass legislation. In Macron’s case, this is far from guaranteed. It’s true that the speed with which the mainstream candidates of the right and left, François Fillon and Benoît Hamon, encouraged their party-bases to rally behind Macron for the final round of the presidential race shows that a consensus may be forming behind Macron. Macron, building on his alliance with François Bayrou’s party, the MoDem, and his own movement, might succeed in being able to count on a degree of cooperation from the Republican and the Socialist parties. After joining forces against Le Pen, it is also a possibility that the Republicans and Socialist party will water down their hostility to Macron’s leadership – legislating with the presidential majority, instead of against it, as is usually the case in a bipartisan regime. But these are big ‘ifs’ and such a situation would be highly unusual in recent French politics. Yet a crisis of the two main parties in parliament does not necessarily bring the whole regime down with it.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in