The pres­i­dent of France’s far-right Na­tion­al Ral­ly claimed his­toric gains for the par­ty Sun­day and blamed French Pres­i­dent Em­manuel Macron for “push­ing France in­to un­cer­tain­ty and in­sta­bil­i­ty.”

In a somber speech af­ter the sec­ond-round leg­isla­tive elec­tion, Jor­dan Bardel­la de­nounced the po­lit­i­cal ma­neu­ver­ing that led the Na­tion­al Ral­ly to fall far short of ex­pec­ta­tions.

An un­prece­dent­ed num­ber of can­di­dates who qual­i­fied for the runoff stepped aside to al­low an op­po­nent to go head-to-head with the Na­tion­al Ral­ly can­di­date, in­creas­ing the chances of de­feat­ing them. De­spite pro­jec­tions wide­ly con­sid­ered dis­ap­point­ing for the an­ti-im­mi­gra­tion, na­tion­al­ist par­ty, it still in­creased its seat count in par­lia­ment to an un­prece­dent­ed high, ac­cord­ing to polling pro­jec­tions. No par­ty won a ma­jor­i­ty, threat­en­ing to plunge France in­to po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic tur­moil.

“Tonight, by de­lib­er­ate­ly tak­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to par­a­lyze our in­sti­tu­tions, Em­manuel Macron … is con­se­quent­ly de­priv­ing the French peo­ple of any re­spons­es to their dai­ly prob­lems for many months to come,” Bardel­la said