'Russian roulette' Macron's ballot box gamble is the stuff of centrist nightmares

The prime minister, Gabriel Attal, stared ahead with his arms folded while another minister covered his face with his hands. As the French president, Emmanuel Macron, gathered top government figures at the Élysée on 9 June to make the shock announcement that he would dissolve parliament and call a snap legislative election after a surge at the polls by Marine Le Pen's party, the mood, the prime minister said, was "grave".

- Angelique Chrisafis

One senior centrist figure said they had not slept properly since the announcement of a campaign that is the shortest in modern French history at barely three weeks.

Macron's opponents on the left have meanwhile deemed it utter folly to call a sudden French parliament election at a time when the far-right National Rally (RN) is at its highest level of support in history. "It's Russian roulette," said several politicians.

Le Pen's renamed National Rally - which as the Front National founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was for decades regarded as a danger to democracy that promoted racist, antisemitic and anti-Muslim views-topped the European elections with a record 31.4%. This was double the score of Macron's centrists, who are at their lowest ebb. Le Pen's support is also increasingly solid - her party came top in over 90% of the communes of France in the European poll.