'Russian roulette' Centrists alarmed by a wild week in French politics

The prime minister, Gabriel Attal, stared ahead with his arms folded while another minister covered his face with his hands.

- Angelique Chrisafis

As the French president, Emmanuel Macron, gathered top government figures at the Élysée on Sunday 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".

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. Some party supporters said their world had been turned upside down. "We're going to do our best," said a government minister.

Macron's opponents on the left have meanwhile this week deemed it utter folly to call a sudden French parliament election at a time when the far-right, anti-immigration 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.