Macron back on top

At least Emmanuel Macron has not had to apologise for endorsing a bring-your-own-booze party at the Élysee. 

The French President got a lot wrong in his first three years in office, ending up reviled by large sections of society and – quelle horreur! – slapped in the face by an angry voter. 

But since then – unless you are an ardent anti-vaxxer – he has steered a steady course through the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting jobs crisis so that, if the polls are to be believed, he stands an excellent chance of winning round two of the presidential elections on 24 April. 

While Boris Johnson, who loves nothing more than getting one over Macron, whether on the vaccine roll-out, fishing rights or selling submarines to Australia, is fighting for his political life, the former banker from Amiens is once again the man to beat. Those who wrote him off a year ago, three months ago, even last week, are having to reassess their position. 

His rivals, meanwhile, are either irrelevant (the Socialist candidate Anne Hidalgo and the quasi-Marxist Jean-Luc Mélenchon) or else, on the right, locked in mortal combat with each other. 

Valérie Pécresse, the mainstream Conservative contender, still poses a threat. She is formidably bright, experienced and mentally equipped to take on Macron one-on-one. She is also the first woman since Joan of Arc who can plausibly present herself as the answer to a nation’s prayers, and, in a tight finish, her gender could spell the difference between triumph and disaster. 

Pécresse’s problem is that, in trying to maximise her support in round one, she has engaged in a cynical race to the bottom on the related issues of immigration and what needs to be done to end the estrangement of France’s six-million-plus Muslim citizens. 

Ranged against her, to the far-right and beyond, are Marine Le Pen, perennial leader of the one-time National Front, now the National Rally, whose Jeanne d’Arc days are surely done, and Éric Zemmour, the former television pundit, whose meteoric rise is starting to look as if it will end in burnout at the polls. Le Pen and Zemmour have, in the eyes of many, gone too far with their racist rhetoric, but Pécresse has joined them, and the danger is that she could end up in round two bound to an extremist position rejected by a majority of the electorate. 

The smart money (if there is any longer such a thing) has begun shifting to the incumbent, who, while deeply flawed, is perceived to have steadied the ship, bringing it within sight of land, demonstrating that now is perhaps not the time to drop the pilot. 

The most enduring criticism of Macron, in which Downing Street is heavily invested, is that he is too clever for his own good. He is scorned as an arrogant obsessive, steeped in hubris, whose unhinged antipathy to Brexit Britain, almost as much as his lofty stewardship of his country, will see him run out of town on a rail once his term of office expires on 14 May. 

It is possible, of course, that that is exactly what will happen, in which case Boris Johnson, or his successor, will be beside themselves with glee. But what if the opposite occurs and the current President remains in power, dedicated to French exceptionalism and a more anti-Brexit European Union? Will there be make-up sex or will the British bring down the shutters on the Entente Cordiale for a generation? 

Between now and then anything could happen. Pécresse may successfully disentangle herself from the cat-fight with Le Pen and “Z”. She could then choose to present herself as firm but fair, committed to laicité – the separation of church and state – and the requirement that all those holding French nationality should, in their civic lives, owe their allegiance first and foremost to France, not Islam. 

The problem with this is that it is precisely the position adopted by Macron, whose France First policy in respect of religion and la patrie has been a cornerstone of his presidency. 

Pécresse’s next problem is that she, as the standard-bearer for the centre-right, stands for law and order, big business, trade union reform, reduced taxation, longer working lives and a more affordable state pension scheme. 

Just like Macron, in fact. 

Insofar as the President has failed to push his programme through, it has been due to the protests of a populist movement, the gilets-jaunes (now more or less defunct), trade union militancy and the impact since 2019 of the pandemic. Though Pécresse could hope that the worst of the health crisis would be behind her on taking office, she would, from Day One, be confronted by the same coalition of the unwilling as the man she ousted and would be equally hard-pressed to fulfill her manifesto pledges without leaving a trail of blood in her wake. 

The French know this and they are asking themselves, is this the time to bring in a new brush that sweeps clean or should they allow the man who has steered the country through an unprecedented crisis the chance to finish the job? Both are defendable positions, but if Pécresse comes to be regarded as someone ready to provoke a fight with France’s still largely quiescent Muslim minority, voters may prefer to stick with Macron. That at least is what the opinion polls are telling us. 

There is no doubt that the man who once compared himself to Jupiter and – like Nicolas Sarkozy and François Hollande before him – lectured Parliament from the royal dias in Versailles, is damaged goods. The charge that he lacks the common touch is well founded. Macron not only believes that he knows best, he is frequently contemptuous of those beneath him and carelessly dismissive of others, including Boris Johnson, who come at problems from a different starting point or ideological perspective. 

If these were normal times, voters might very well have decided that enough is enough, as they did after five years of both Sarkozy and Hollande. They would be only too happy to send Macron back to Amiens to think again. 

But the last three years have been the toughest on record since the Second World War or, just possibly, the Algerian war of independence. The mass protests that characterised the first two years of the current administration, whipped up by the President’s efforts to push through the measures on which he was elected, are already fading into memory. 

At the same time, the Government has won praise, often through gritted teeth, for its resolute stand on tackling Covid, including Macron’s recent vow to “shit on” those who refuse to be vaccinated. The fact that, along the way, the economy has held up under extreme pressure has also been noted. 

Elections are, at best, snapshots of the public mood on a particular day, and events as yet unknown could yet unhorse Macron in the final stretch. Who knows what will be said or revealed over the next four months? Political reputations can be made and trashed in the space of a week. Macron could be humiliated or he could end up still in charge only to find that his En Marche party is reduced to rubble in the National Assembly. But unless Pécresse captures an extended centre-ground in the weeks ahead – always assuming that Le Pen and Zemmour cancel each other out, which cannot be guaranteed – he is starting to look like the once and future leader of his country.

Would that be such a bad thing for Britain? That depends on whether or not the current prime minister is still in Number 10 or back at home (wherever home is) writing his memoirs. But a Truss-Macron entente? Don’t rule it out.