Exhausted Macron isn’t in Johnson’s sorry state, but the going is tough in the Élysée

What wouldn’t Boris Johnson give to have the problems faced today by Emmanuel Macron? The French President was comfortably re-elected in April only to find himself 39 votes short of a majority in elections to the National Assembly held just six weeks later. He now presides over a minority government that faces opposition from all sides of the political spectrum. 

But – and it is a big but – no one is any longer calling for Macron’s head. His place as leader of the Fifth Republic is assured until the summer of 2027. It is what happens in the bearpit of the Assembly that will determine whether or not he is remembered as a president of note or just the latest in a sad parade of political nonentities.

It is reported that, after months of campaigning and coping with the pressing issues of government, notably the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Macron is exhausted and no longer at the top of his game. He looks older than his 44 years and has lost the spring in his step that in 2017 marked him out from the general run of French leaders in recent times. He will certainly be looking forward to time off with his wife at the Fort de Brégançon, the presidential retreat just off the Côte d’Azur, where three years he entertained the Russian President, Vladimir Putin. 

But official business continues with or without the President, and today Elisabeth Borne, Macron’s recently appointed prime minister, delivered her “general political statement” looking ahead to long-term pension reforms, a graduated increase in the retirement age and measures to assuage both the cost-of-living crisis and the struggling, post-Covid health service. The government’s green agenda would not be stalled, she told MPs, to which end she vowed to make France energy independent and to bring the electricity giant EDF into 100 per cent state ownership. 

A centrist technocrat, who once, briefly, flirted with the Socialist Party, Borne makes no pretence to leading a revolution. Instead, she hopes to work with the President to instill resilience into the economy at a time of global instability, with an agenda built around jobs for the many, affordable energy and, if at all possible, a balanced budget. 

It is customary for the prime minister, having announced the Government’s programme, to call for a vote of confidence. But not this time. The risk was too great. Instead, she left it to the opposition parties to patch together a motion, or motions, of their own, relying on the fact that, though united against the President, they are otherwise in a state of ideological disarray. 

The June elections certainly undermined the authority of the President and his En Marche party, the latter bizarrely rebranded as Renaissance. But the re-slicing of the parliamentary cake also means that no one faction can expect to see its manifesto come out on top. Compromise has to be the name of the game from now on. Transactional deals, agreed over lunch or in smoke-free committee rooms, are the new order of the day. There is even a chance – admittedly far from assured – that with those at either end of the spectrum largely cancelling each other out, the dissonance will gradually give way to a form of hard-nosed pragmatism. 

“The prime minister is working round the clock,” one senior minister told AFP this week. “She’s meeting everyone, she’s calling everyone. She’s really committed to listening, so we’ll manage.” 

And perhaps she will. 

In the new Assembly, the far-right National Rally, led by a resurgent Marine Le Pen, finally has the seats, denied to it in previous elections, that reflects its following in the country. Le Pen may have lost twice to Macron in the fight for the presidency, but she is far from done. Her hardline populism is in the ascendant, and she has the numbers – 89 deputies, up from just eight – to be a constant thorn in the President’s side. 

The irony is that if Le Pen keeps her word to work with the system, not against it, Macron could actually turn his weakness into a form of strength. He could allow himself to accept, if not exactly embrace, legislation that toughened up laws on immigration and – in keeping with his own instincts – further enforced the cultural assimilation of France’s growing Muslim minority. 

At the same time, one-hundred-and-eighty degrees to the left, the hardline Socialist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, believing himself to be the one true voice of a divided nation, must look in from the outside. He didn’t stand for election, fantasising that he would be propelled into government as an insurgent prime minister. But he still has the numbers to hurt Macron. His France Unbowed Party won 75 seats last month and leads a 131-strong coalition of the Left that, however fragmented, forms the second-largest block in the Assembly. 

Again, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that Macron will adapt to a leftist challenge by putting forward measures addressing the concerns of ordinary working people, including adjustments in benefits for the less well-off and a modest increase in the tax take from corporations and wealthy individuals. 

In legislative terms, it will be a case of horses for courses. The conservative, once-dominant Republicans have 61 seats in the Assembly – less than a third of what they were used to in past times. They are likely to support pension reform and an increase in the retirement age, as well as any measures designed to make life easier for business. The Left, though riven with disagreements over policy and characterised by mutual loathing, can probably be bought off by targeted tax cuts and a concerted drive across all departments aimed at keeping prices down in the shops and filling stations. 

The alternative to transactionalism is open war, with all aides pitted against each other – an eventuality, with France in its present mood, that cannot be ruled out. In that event, with nothing getting done, the patience of voters, already sorely tried, could quickly run out, giving way to mass protests and the possibility of another round of elections. Should those elections then deliver another multi-option assembly, democracy itself could run out of road, leading to … who knows what? 

But today it is the turn of Elisabeth Borne and her newly reshuffled cabinet. If the 61-year-old one-time fonctionnaire can somehow strike the right note and persuade a majority of deputies that Armageddon is not a good look for France, the government – and the President – should be able to find a way to stumble on. At least, for now, no senior members of the Administration are putting in their letters of resignation, the one minister charged with sexual offences has been fired, and there are no howls from the government benches for the leader of the party to be put on a one-way tumbril to the Place de la Revolution. 

It’s a start.