Thread by @Mij_Europe

There is no precedent in modern French politics for a President calling an early parliamentary election from a position of weakness. @EmmanuelMacron has taken an enormous gamble - with his own reputation & legacy, as well as on the future of France. What is he thinking? Thread 1/

It was very likely Macron was going to be forced into an early parliamentary election in the autumn in any case. He's judged that he wd gain advantage from seizing the initiative with an early poll & make a virtue of “going to the people” before he was cornered into doing so 2/

Why forced? A volley of censure motions was expected on 2025 budget. If @GabrielAttal lost one or more of these, Macron wd have been more or less obliged to dissolve assembly. But while early elections have been my basecase before year end, I didn't expect them this soon 3/

Macron's hope is that the arguments which failed in the EU election campaign - support for Ukraine against Russia; the survival of EU; the confused & incoherent economic and EU policies of Le Pen etc - will cut through to voters when their direct interests are at risk 4/

Or more starkly: Macron believes he can defy the polls by confronting France with a stark choice between the pro-EU, pro-Ukraine & centrist status quo vs the existential risk of a far right Govt which remains viscerally anti-European & has a history of Putin worship & support 5/

Calculated risk or mad gamble? The 32% score for @MLP_officiel Rassemblement National in yesterday's European elections is a new high for the far right & puts Le Pen in a very, very strong position ahead of the two round vote on 30 June & 7 July 6/

But Le Pen's good EU score won't necessarily translate into a majority in a national election. Just > 50% of French voters turned out yesterday. Normally 70% do in national elections. No party that has “won” an EU election in France has gone onto win the following national one 7/

There are other reasons too, which I won't detail here, which will make the bar higher & harder for Le Pen. But unlike UK election (obvious @UKLabour win) or yesterday's EU elections (clear centre would hold) the risk of an accident here is much greater. France is restless 8/

Most of the concern has been over what a Le Pen President would mean for France & EU. A lot less attention has been paid to what a Le Pen (or her deputy, @J_Bardella) PM would mean for France & the EU. Luckily we've done a lot of work on this given our early election basecase 9/

If Le Pen won a majority or the largest number of seats, the implications for Fr & EU wd be profound. There have been 3 previous cohabitations between presidents & Govt's of different pol persuasions - but none between politicians so ideologically opposed as Macron & Le Pen 10/

The French constitution is both ambivalent & untested in such a situation. In large part that's where the risks will come from. I'll have more to say on this later. But France is likely moving towards a bad equilibrium - whether under a far right PM or another hung parliament END