Macron could end up ‘sandwiched’ between RN and left-wing coalition

With me now to discuss is Mark Perelman, our French politics editor. And Mark, look, if this alliance holds, polls suggest the left could do pretty well in this election. So actually, these conversations happening today are key, aren't they? Absolutely, they are key. They will define the election clearly because those discussions have been going on. They're parallel discussions. One is about a platform, a common platform in a rush I should say. Four parties need to get together and essentially layout 1012 ideas that they want to push during those elections. That's number one on the parallel track. You have 577 seats up for grabs and they have to figure out how to feel only one candidate in each circumscription as they're called here in France in his constituency. And that's obviously a tall orders because you have four parties. Let's not forget in 2022 they managed to do this. This was also a surprise alliance, but they had more time to do it. And at the time there was really one party that had the upper hand, France involved because they were coming off the 22% score by their leader Jean Luc Milan at the presidential election. That's not the case anymore. The European elections, we've seen the Socialists do 14% France and about 10% the Communists. And the Greens are really single point percentage. This was really not a good election for them. So now they have to figure out how many seats will each party have and who will go. And so this is right now, and they have up until Sunday to register the candidates. So they're running against the clock right now, but they have to have an agreement if they want to survive because the polls show if they go together, they can have a sizable, even maybe a majority in parliament. That's a big if. But if they go divided, then they're essentially dead because they'll have a dozen MPs there, a couple of dozens there, but they will have no leverage whatsoever nationally. So that's why despite bitter disagreements, I mean, especially since the war in Gaza, we've heard vivid accusations sometimes of personal insults flying between them. They've now decided we have a big danger. The National Rally is on the cusp of power. We need to get united. Forget our disagreements. Let's get together and form this alliance. This will be key in the coming hours. We'll know if this will bear fruit or not right? And where might that leave Emmanuel Macron, the president if that left wing alliance holds? Because we know that the far right have the significant base of support. We saw that in the European election. So we could up end up in a situation where the left does pretty well, the right does pretty well and doesn't leave a lot for the president and and the centre. No, he would be in a world of trouble if this happens. Obviously, when he decided to dissolve the National Assembly, I guess his idea was that there will be fracture on the right. We are seeing this happen and there would be division on the left. And that's exactly what's not happening. And so this means that instead of how of how he envisioned this, which he laid out yesterday during a long press conference, that he would be a centrist bloc fighting off the extreme left and the extreme right, he could end up being sandwiched between clearly a strong national rally and a unified leftist coalition. And there was a projection by our colleagues from the figure hall this morning. This is extrapolation, but taking the results from European elections and trying to see what this would mean in a legislative election. And out of the 577 seats, it shows that it's 536 of them. So essentially 90% you would have a National Rally candidate versus a leftist candidate. And there will only be 40 or so cases where Macron's candidate would be able to make it to the second round. Obviously, this is just an idea and a hypothesis, but this would be a catastrophe for Emmanuel Macron because he would be really a lame duck president until 2027. He already said that he would never resign. But clearly, if this happened, this would be the nightmare scenario and a scenario unleashed by one person, Emmanuel Macron. Fascinating. Thanks very much. Mark Perelman for us there.