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Emmanuel Macron gambled, and lost. He invested himself personally in the European elections by presenting it as a referendum on himself. That, he thought, was the best way to stop Marine Le Pen from wining, by replaying the final match of the 2017 French presidential election, which he had won.
It didn’t work. Le Pen’s National Rally, led by the young Jordan Bardella, arrived first with 23 per cent of the vote, just 1 per cent ahead of Macron’s La République En Marche (LREM), at 22 per cent.