“His prime minister was among the last to know. That is how secretive, how confined to a small group of advisers President Emmanuel Macron’s shock decision to dissolve Parliament and call French legislative elections was,” the New York Times reports.
“Gabriel Attal, 35, was a personal favorite, his wunderkind, when Mr. Macron named him prime minister in January. Yet, just months after entrusting Mr. Attal with the task of revitalizing his government, Mr. Macron snubbed him as he considered one of the most important decisions of his presidency: whether to call an election at the very moment the anti-immigrant National Rally party had surged.”
“Mr. Macron’s style has always been intensely top-down, but this time he has played with the possibility of ushering in the once unthinkable in the form of a far-right government. The small group making the decision was so insular that even many of his ministers and supporters were left dumbfounded at his readiness to take such a gamble.”
