Thread by @gcapoccia1

BREAKING Macron dissolves 🇫🇷 Parliament after the RN obtains 31.5% against 15.4% of the Renaissance list. New elections on June 30 and July 7 #Europeanelection2024

On the 🇫🇷 parliament dissolution and the early elections called by Macron for June 30: quick 🧵1/n

Macron’s move is quite shocking at first sight, but it is probably the correct one given the situation.
By calling a national election he dramatises (rightly) the situation and takes RN out if the rather comfortable situation in which it has been in the past 2 years 2/n

Given the absence of a majority in parliament, Marine Le Pen could just oppose anything that the government did, while gaining votes through a strategy of outer “respectability”, which gained gained currency especially vis-a-vis LFI’s (radical left) excesses 3/n

Macron now calls the RN to a real confrontation, in an election where turnout will be higher, and the stakes *much* higher, than in these European elections. The campaign is likely to be dramatic add a call to arms against RN.
4/n

This may concentrate the vote of the anti RN electors on Macron’s list, thus stopping RN’s rise. A similar effect may happen on the extreme right, with electors of Zemmour’s Reconquete and other small ER lists flooding to Le Pen /5

Macron’s list might lose, of course, in which case the scenario is a three year cohabitation with Jordan Bardella as PM. Given the incompetence of Bardella and the RN leadership in general, Macron’s calculation seems to be that this will damage the party while in government
6/n

Their incompetence has not damaged them in the EP campaign, but probably Macro’s calculation is that it would when they have government responsibility.

At the same time, Macron will remain President so he will sabotage them by making them look even worse than they are 7/n

This may give the centrist a better hope for the 2027 presidential campaign — certainly better than staggering on in the current conditions and then lose badly in 2027, at which stage Le Pen would be President AND Bardella PM, with much worse consequences for 🇫🇷 and the 🇪🇺 / ends