Gambler Macron wins chance to be kingmaker

French President Emmanuel Macron, the inveterate gambler, has won the right to keep playing.

In the final round of France’s snap parliamentary election, voters delivered an emphatic "non" to Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally, but only a hesitant "maybe” to her rivals on the left and in the center. The faintest contours of something approaching the new British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s path are visible as Macron prepares to rally Greens and Socialists to his cause, but it will not be easy — and the broader risk is that fragmented politics in the eurozone’s No. 2 economy is here to stay.

Just as the snap election itself felt worthy of a Netflix drama, the results look even more so. Macron might allow himself a trademark wink of self-satisfaction at seeing arch-nemesis Le Pen trail the pack with an expected 143 seats. A tactical alliance in the second round between Macron’s centrists and the left-wing New Popular Front clearly worked to strengthen the so-called "republican front,” but Le Pen’s vague policies and her party’s inexperienced candidates also made it harder for her to win a bigger slice of the vote.

Higher up the leaderboard, things are much less clear. Macron’s centrist bloc is second, with a projected 168 seats, also well short of the 289 needed for a majority. While tactical voting limited the damage, the president remains deeply unpopular — with even his own camp feeling betrayed — and has no more political capital left to ram through his reforms.

And yet he has still managed to keep his bloc in the game as a potential coalition partner. After all, the winning left-wing bloc, whose program bears the obvious influence of firebrand Jean-Luc Melenchon of France Unbowed, is tipped to only get 182 seats.

In other words, Macron has gone from king to kingmaker and he will likely be looking to the left rather than the right for a first shot at a coalition. Financial markets, no doubt relieved that no party has the freedom to implement their most unrealistic and costly policies, may have to shift their thinking.

What initially seemed to be a scenario reminiscent of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for the French far right could now be a Starmer scenario for the French far left. Just as the Labour Party in the United Kingdom became more electable after ejecting its previous leader, Jeremy Corbyn, the New Popular Front’s path to power might involve breaking with Melenchon to build a more centrist coalition — combining Macron’s group with the Greens and Socialists could get quite close to 289 seats.

As center-left politician Raphael Glucksmann put it, there is a parliamentary arc that can be built that is neither Jupiter, nor Robespierre — neither Macron, nor Melenchon.

This is all risky stuff. Even successfully emulating Starmerism will not bring the kind of big majority the British premier currently enjoys. Whatever coalition ends up being cobbled together will take time and will be vulnerable to a level of political division that is virtually unprecedented in the Fifth Republic’s history.

At a time of spiraling deficits and a growth trajectory that is below the eurozone average, that will mean tough decisions — like tax increases — and little capacity to address deep-seated issues like productivity, innovation and demographic decline. Christopher Dembik, strategist at Pictet Asset Management, also expects any coalition to water down some of the impact of Macron’s reforms, from pensions to welfare benefits.

For now, there is an audible sigh of relief that the European Union’s second-biggest economy has chosen to defer its right-wing populist moment. But what comes next may prove rather fragile. With only three years to go before presidential elections and Le Pen relishing the chance to keep attacking Macron from the opposition benches, France is far from back to normal.