France embraces election fever as Macron leans into the fight
What a month it has turned out to be for France and its luckless President, Emmanuel Macron.
First there was the submarines fiasco, widely perceived as both a national humiliation and a personal snub delivered by the Anglosphere to the President, who was kept in the dark throughout. The Cherbourg-based Naval Group that was to have benefitted from a €55bn deal to supply 12 diesel-electric submarines to the Australian Navy found itself gazumped at the last minute by the US, which then rubbed Macron’s nose in it by announcing a tripartite defence pact between America, Australia and the UK from which France was pointedly excluded.
If he is ever again to trust the word of Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison – or indeed assurances given by any English-speaking political leader – Macron will have to come down to Earth again from Jupiter with a bump, if not a crash.
Next up, the European Commission backed away from Macron’s public call for firm action against the British in response to their demand that the Northern Ireland Protocol be so watered down as to be no more than a diplomatic consommé. Not only did Brussels refuse to go along with the idea of a slap-down, it came up instead with a new package that, given luck and a following wind (admittedly in short supply these days), could actually give both sides the chance to claim victory. Thin gruel indeed for the Élysée and a hint of what may be to come should Macron win a second term as President and seek to project himself as Europe’s number one power-broker.
At least, as head of state, he didn’t have to take the rap for paedophilia in the Church. The new report, commissioned by the hierarchy itself, that revealed a shocking level of sex-abuse among the Catholic clergy down the years is, in reality, only confirmation of what was already known. Yet the impact was considerable. The Church was shamed, the French felt betrayed. Even the most fervent believers were forced to confront the fact that thousands of those they regarded as spiritual guides were in fact predators of the worst kind.
Macron has said that if he is still President next summer, it is his intention to attend the first celebration of mass in Notre Dame since the disastrous fire of 2019 that took out the cathedral’s medieval roof timbers and sent its spire plummeting to the ground. Should he do so, it will not be as a penitent, but as conservator of the building, overseeing its restoration as a national monument. The chances of him kissing the ring of the Archbishop of Paris, Michel Aupetit (still without his Cardinal’s hat) are said to be remote.
Throughout the most recent political turmoil, Covid-19 has continued to raise its ugly head. The pandemic in France, as elsewhere in the EU, looks to be fading, but its legacy will be around for many years to come. The fact that Macron just happened to be President when the virus hit and that his response was, in the end, above average, cuts little ice with those who feel that more could have been done, including the 20 per cent or so of voters who continue to insist that any enforced vaccination is an assault on their liberties.
It is no surprise that the French economy has suffered enormous damage as a direct result of Covid. The recovery, now underway, won’t peak until late next year, well beyond the spring presidential election, at which point it will be claimed by whoever is then in power, who may or may not be Macron.
But as if all that wasn’t enough, the President’s political opponents have been gathering strength in recent days. France hasn’t yet reached the level of psephological frenzy that consumes American politics the day after each and every election. Typically, the French give their new leader a good four years in office before looking to the succession. But once the starting gun has sounded, all the talk is about who and what is needed to Make France Great Again.
Last month, so many would-be candidates crawled out of the woodwork that it was hard to keep count.
The most intriguing so far is Éric Zemmour, an Algerian-born Jew whose anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant stance is so pronounced as to make Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Rassemblement National, or National Rally, look like a liberal. Zemmour, age 63, with a mistress 35 years his junior, is no joke. As a public intellectual (that is to say, someone who appears on television and writes wordy columns for the national press), he has a well-established persona. Anyone who has watched the many talking-heads shows that dominate much of the nation’s daytime and early-evening viewing will be familiar with Zemmour, whose lament for a lost France combines with his disdain for the EU and all its works.
He has yet to declare that he will enter the lists next year, but no one doubts that he is testing the water, which means, first and foremost, the resolve of Marine Le Pen. The veteran rightist, who has made two previous tilts at the Presidency, has never previously had to defend her leadership. The nearest she came was when her niece, Marion Maréchal, appeared bent on replacing her in the party’s affections, only to fall in with Zemmour and to put her national ambitions on hold. If Zemmour, wearing a gallic version of Donald Trump’s MAGA hat, mounts a bid for the Élysée and Maréchal supports him, the threat to Le Pen would be very real.
On the centre-right, three candidates are continuing to compete for the Republican Party nomination: in the lead is Xavier Bertrand, president of the Hautes de France regional council, followed by Valerie Pécresse, his opposite number in the neighbouring Île de France, centred on Paris, and, last, Michel Barnier, formerly the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator but latterly an unabashed, and seemingly unembarrassable, champion of French sovereignty. All three, while stressing their ability to get things done, have latched on to the anti-immigrant theme. All three have declared themselves defenders of La France Profonde. In the end, there can be only one, with the final decision due at a party convention in mid-December. Which it will be – with Barnier, to my surprise, gaining ground – is anyone’s guess.
To the left, all should be chaos. The Socialist Party was smashed to smithereens last time out. It even had to sell its prestige headquarters down the street from the Élysée to pay the bills. But the emergence of Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, has changed the equation. Hidalgo is a marmite candidate. You either love her or you loathe her. Her mission in the French capital has been to make it an ecological showpiece, which means she has the support of the Greens (not to be sneezed at) but is resented by the car lobby. Given that the Big Petrol vote rarely turns out for the Left, she has to believe that she is in with a chance. If the Far-Left France Insoumis (France Unbowed) party could only be persuaded to stand down in her favour, Hidalgo might even hope to make the run-off. But as they say in France, ce n’est pas demain la veille – tomorrow isn’t yesterday. Few expect the marxist Jean-luc Mélenchon, as vain as a Bourbon, to sacrifice his place in the national spotlight. He would rather die.
One final twist of the political kaleidoscope came over the weekend with the announcement by former prime minister Edouard Philippe – “let go” by Macron last year to make way for the current premier, Jean Castex – that he has formed his own party, Horizon, not to take on his former boss but to widen the centre’s electoral base. Philippe is widely seen as a safe pair of hands – at least as safe as those of Castex – but also as someone with modest ambition, content to play second fiddle. Now, though, with Macron’s party, La Republique en Marche, visibly losing all sense of itself, it could be that Philippe sees himself as a possible soloist, backing Macron this time round while building for the longer term.
As for the Élysée’s current occupant, only a fool would count him out of the reckoning. Over the last four-and-a-half years, Emmanuel Macron has taken it on the chin more times than Deontay Wilder in his most recent encounter with Tyson Fury, and he is still standing. Whichever of the contenders hopes to deliver a knockout blow against him next April should know that the contest will be hard-fought and bruising and that Macron, with everything he believes in at stake, has no plans to be counted out any time soon.