A former Yellow Vest leader told the Express that Emmanuel Macron’s grip on power is slipping and that he will be forced to resign if Marine Le Pen becomes prime minister.
The French President shocked France’s political establishment after dissolving parliament and calling snap elections in the wake of his party’s trouncing in the European elections.
Le Pen’s party secured twice as many votes as the President’s in a humiliating setback for Macron.
In a further blow to the embattled French President, France’s mainstream rightwing party – Les Républicains – has proposed an electoral alliance with Le Pen, boosting the chances of a new government led by the National Rally.
Fabrice Grimal, who stood as a candidate in the European election for the bloc “We the People” (NLP), said the proposed rightwing alliance was unprecedented and could transform French politics.
“We have never seen something like this, it’s revolutionary,” he said.
“What is most likely to now happen is that Le Pen will win a qualified majority, missing maybe 50 representatives that will be provided by Les Républicains in a government alliance of the rights.
“Macron will have to resign and then we’ll start again with the new presidential election and then afterwards new legislative elections.”
“So all this is a mess – a big, big, big mess,” he added.
Mr Grimal said the rise of support for Marine Le Pen was down to a number of issues, namely Macron’s broken promises and immigration.
He argued that the French President’s support had relied on a broad coalition of the left and right in the country.
However he had betrayed his supporters with controversial policy decisions, such as his pension reforms and the selling off of strategic national industries to foreign investors.
“It’s a risk when you are elected saying that you are not from the right nor from the left and that you want to do everything at the same time.
“The problem with that is that you satisfy someone by displeasing someone else and then you do it the other way around. And in the end, you betray everybody, the left and the right.
“He is too much of a traitor for everybody who cares about the French national interest.”
Le Pen’s support is also surging because of fears about the numbers of immigrants arriving in France.
A 2021 census carried out by the French National Institute of Statistics counted nearly 7 million immigrants, representing 10.3 percent of the total population.
In 2021, France also received 278,000 new immigrants on a long-term or permanent basis, 20 percent more than in 2020.
Mr Grimal said France was not a racist country but that “enough was enough”.
“Immigration is not bad in itself, but it’s a matter of quantity and quality,” he said.
“In France we have a big, big quantity for a long time with low quality. I mean low quality when you have no qualifications, when you don’t know the language and when you come from territories where you have not the same references culturally, the same way of dealing with women, you know. And so we had all of this concentrated in France.”
Mr Grimal pointed to the election results in Brittany, as evidence of how important the topic of immigration had become in French politics.
Normally a staunch left-wing bastion, the region voted in a National Rally MEP, Gilles Pennelle.
