“There’s no doubt President Emmanuel Macron wants to take on a mantle of global leadership and reverse faltering Western support for Ukraine, but French politics will make that a hard role for him to pull off,” Politico reports.
“All French opposition forces have already rounded on him. Marine Le Pen, on the far right, has pilloried his assertion that Western troops in Ukraine ‘shouldn’t be ruled out’ as toying with ‘the lives of France’s children,’ while far-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon said it was ‘madness’ to pitch ‘one nuclear power against another nuclear power.’ More mainstream forces, such as the Socialist Party and the conservative Les Républicains, also condemned the French president’s muscle-flexing.”
“Those are arguments that resonate strongly with voters in France — at a time when Macron’s centrist liberal party is polling far beneath the far left and far right ahead of June’s European election.”
