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Hello and welcome to Election Confidential! I’m Marie Le Conté. As a French person, it’s fair to say this has been an eventful week. On Sunday night, just hours after the results of the European Parliament elections were announced, President Macron announced he would dissolve the National Assembly and call general elections.
It’s a huge gamble: if far-right parties won nearly 40% of the vote last week and Marine Le Pen’s National Rally wins the most seats, President Macron would be forced to choose a prime minister from her party.
What is he up to? That has been the question on both sides of the Channel in recent days. Macron’s decision not to field candidates in constituencies previously won by the centre-left and centre-right was seen by some as an attempt to allow the traditional parties to re-establish themselves. The president once touted himself as the only person capable of stopping the far-right, but now he sees the error of his ways.
Another theory is that, conversely, Macron’s plan is to completely crush the left and establish the center as the only mainstream option. This would explain the very short timeline: the first round is at the end of this month, giving left-wing parties, who are difficult to get along with at the best of times, very little time to form a coalition government.
Finally, the most prevalent argument so far is that Macron is acting like a parent who finds his teenager smoking, making him smoke an entire pack as a punishment. Do voters want a far-right government? Well, hopefully. The president’s hope, according to some, is that the party will fail to govern so badly that Le Pen will fail decisively in the 2027 elections.
At the very least, it’s a bold bet. In any case, it’s still too early to speculate on how things will play out in France, and since this isn’t the Election Confididentielle, we should probably return to more familiar issues.
This week’s election campaign felt particularly British, as Rishi Sunak told ITV’s Paul Brand that his family didn’t watch Sky television as a child, and the public erupted in ridicule at his insensitive comments. Naturally, Keir Starmer joined in, saying: Sun He says that when he was younger he didn’t watch Sky TV and his family was poor so the broken windows were never repaired.
If you’re reading this and would like to take this opportunity to talk to me about your own background, your upbringing and what social class means to you as a British citizen, then please feel free to email me at Iwaskidding@donotemailme.aboutthis.
Men are falling from… Ifest?
If it were up to me entirely, I’d dedicate this section to Gavin Williamson’s decision on Wednesday to Photoshop a picture of his dog (er, Dawg) onto the cover of Vogue.
Unfortunately, I suspect you’d prefer to read about more pressing issues, so I used WhatsApp to ask some Conservative advisers what they thought about the manifesto launch, and more broadly the state of their election campaign.
“Cut taxes!!!” was the snappy, if slightly hysterical, reply. When pressed for details, they replied, “Seriously, our manifesto launch went well. Labour is talking about raising taxes. So [we’re] “We are doing quite well,” they said. “It’s still a big challenge, but we’re all resolutely focused on what needs to be done,” they added.
Another aide offered a less optimistic view: “Congressmen say he [the election] The speech was given in the early hours of the morning, without prior notice, and was delivered in the rain with D:ream playing in the background, creating an even more moody atmosphere.
“National service was a strange first step and it didn’t occur to us until the first debate that ‘tax’ was the key dividing line between ‘change’. D-Day changed everything and now, instead of saying ‘give us five more years’, we’re running a ton of adverts showing the Conservatives coming in third and warning voters not to give Starmer a ‘super majority’.”
“Mood: Dark” was their conclusion.
Things are generally getting better for the Labour Party, and as a result, it seems fair to say they’re getting worse for me. I asked several Labour activists and staff what they thought of the manifesto, and three of them, jokingly, said “good.” Well, one of them followed it up with a smiling face emoji, which was a nice touch.
When asked what they liked about the manifesto, one person I spoke to said it “takes seriously the global context in which we operate”, “is quite radical about constitutional reform, which is long overdue”, and “actually aims for economic growth and national prosperity”.
On education, another expert said Labour’s proposals were “very sensible”, “not picking unnecessary fights” and showed “Labour cares more about young people than previously thought”.
Another campaigner told me: ‘When I read it I was so overjoyed I started speaking in tongues.’ Truly, CCHQ could only dream of achieving such levels of message discipline and party unity.
Flowery language aside, what my failed attempt at exposing corruption shows is that the Labour ship is incredibly stable. There have been some vague complaints from younger Labour members about the lack of adequate proposals on trans rights, but otherwise not much. If there have been serious and genuine disagreements on policy, Labour, perhaps for the first time in their history, have kept it to themselves and away from the press. They should enjoy the peace as long as it lasts. God knows what will happen if they win the election.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering, the fake Vogue headline was “Dog on the Cover: The Nicest Dog in the World.” In fact, I think Williamson won this week.
He is behind you!
Will Nigel Farage win Clacton in July? Will Nigel Farage then defect to the Conservative Party? Will Nigel Farage then be elected leader of the Conservative Party? that? It leaves a lot to be desired, but for some reason, it has become a hot topic recently.
Some on the Conservative right have already said they want to leave the door open to a Reform leader after the election, as they believe the party will be in such a broken state by then that bringing its greatest enemy into the party’s ranks might improve its chances.
It is seen as increasingly likely, but if you don’t mind a bit of commentary, I just struggle to understand it. Firstly, the Reform Party and the Conservative Party are two different parties, each attracting different voters.
A Deltapol poll found that only 41% of Conservative voters and 27% of Reform Party voters would support an electoral pact in which only one party would stand in a given constituency, while 33% of Conservative voters and 41% of Reform Party voters were opposed.
Similarly, just 38% of Reform Party voters and 37% of Conservative voters would support a more formal arrangement in which the Reform Party would not stand in Conservative seats in exchange for giving Farage a Conservative leadership role; 36% of Reform Party voters and 38% of Conservative voters opposed the idea.
“Both parties are fundamentally split down the middle on this,” said Joe Twyman of Deltapol. “It’s not a clear cut story at all.” Farage will have similar problems within the Conservative party. It’s true that Conservative MPs, particularly on the right, have spoken fondly of him recently, but they will not be the only ones left in the House of Commons after the election.
Asked about the possibility of Farage joining their camp, a current minister said: “He’s applied to join before and been turned down. He’s failed to win a seat seven times. It’s unlikely to happen.”
Another member of the centrist One Nation group said analysis that Farage would join “fundamentally misunderstands the makeup of parliamentary parties and, as usual, gives undue weight to right-wing voices”.
“The simple fact is that FPTP requires broad church support to win an election. If you think Nigel Farage should lead the Conservative Party then you either don’t count or you don’t want to see the Conservatives in power again.”
In short, I can confidently predict that if we are proven wrong, there may be plenty of hat-eating going on over the summer, but Farage will stick around. Well, if not, he’ll head straight to the US to work with the Trump campaign. Either way, it seems unlikely we’ll see him in a Democratic seat anytime soon.
Until next week,