Emmanuel Macron's official photographer, Soazig de La Moissonnière, photographed him on Tuesday, June 18, on the plane taking him back from the island of Sein Finistère, where he celebrated the 84th anniversary of General Charles de Gaulle's call to resistance. In the picture, Macron looks out of the plane window, his features drawn, looking tired. What is he thinking in that moment? The French political landscape has exploded. His majority is in tatters, with many MPs from his party Renaissance and its allies fighting for political survival in their constituencies, caught between the far right, leading in the polls, and the left. "He's personally affected by what's being said and written," said one of his advisers.
Since June 9, the president has been going to great lengths to defend his decision to dissolve the Assemblée Nationale, on the evening of his defeat in the European elections – a decision met with widespread criticism, unanimously so in his own coalition. "This is not a solitary decision!" Macron exclaimed, speaking to journalists who were invited to lunch with him on the Isle of Sein on Tuesday. Yet that is exactly the accusation bitterly and painfully brought by his supporters and allies, including those who were with him from the very beginning, against the man they have admired and sometimes loved so much. An egotistical and solitary headlong rush, reckless and risky, with potentially very serious consequences: an absolute majority for the far-right Rassemblement National or an ungovernable Assemblée; cohabitation or paralysis of the system.
After seven years of undivided reign over his camp, Macron finds himself severely criticized and challenged. This week, in the space of 24 hours, the heavyweights of his majority abandoned him. On Thursday, June 20, speaking to TF1, former prime minister Edouard Philippe spoke out, with cold anger, accusing Macron of having "killed the majority": "Very well, we move on to something else!"
The same day, speaking on TV5Monde, Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire called the Elysée Palace's advisers "woodlice," while Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin announced the following day that he would not remain a minister "one day longer" after the elections if the governing coalition were to lose, even with the Olympic Games, which he has been preparing for years, just around the corner. Even Prime Minister Gabriel Attal distanced himself, calling on voters to "choose" him as prime minister, promising that there would be "a before and an after (...) in the practice of power and the balance of institutions."
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