Macron woos the Commonwealth on state visit to Nigeria

One way or another, it’s been an eventful week for the French. For some, the promise of August, when the entire nation puts its feet up, cannot come quickly enough.

But not everyone.

President Macron was in Nigeria this week continuing his imperial progress through what we used to call the British Commonwealth. With India already under his belt following a successful four-day trip in May, the French leader is determined to make inroads into English-speaking Africa in search of trade and influence.

He flew into Lagos from Mauritania, where he had addressed the African Union summit on security issues in the Sahel region and the need, with French help, to defeat islamist threats such as that posed by Nigeria’s Boko Haram. Last year, in the early days of his presidency, he visited Ghana, which aims over the next 15 years to become the Continent’s first developed country, and other Commonwealth members, including South Africa, are on his agenda.

At home, meanwhile, his prime minister, Edouard Philippe, was beginning a controversial process of formally reappraising his Cabinet colleagues a year on from their appointment, leading, in all likelihood, to several high-profile sackings. Philippe himself will be evaluated by the President at some point during the coming weeks, leaving Macron – the Jupiter President – as if he were indeed mighty Zeus taking stock of his delinquent children.

There could be no clearer indicator of the extent to which France remains in thrall to Macron’s iron will. In public, he has been trying to soften his image. In Nigeria, for example, he made much of a late-night appearance at a notorious – I mean, celebrated – nightclub in Lagos, known as The Shrine, which he says he used to frequent decades ago when he was an intern with the French embassy. How they laughed when he refused to say what he had got up to at the club back when he was young. “What happens at the Shrine stays at the Shrine,” he quipped.

No such fun and games for Edouard Philippe. According to reports, the PM, who has known Macron since they were post-graduate students at the École Nationale d’Administration, has been instructed not merely to approve or disapprove the performance of his colleagues, but to subject each of them in turn to the sort of profit and loss accountancy more usually associated with the banking sector, of which, of course, his boss is famously a product.

For those involved, Philippe included, it must be rather like a penalty shootout.

But Paris is not France, even if it sometimes seems that way. Elsewhere, beyond the Périphérique, riots broke out in Nantes after a young black man, whose car had been stopped by police for a routine traffic violation, was shot dead following his alleged attempt to reverse into one of the two officers at the scene. The authories subsequently claimed that the victim was wanted in connection with robbery and other offences, but the city’s large immigrant community erupted in violence, with molotov cocktails being used against cars and property.

Images of the nationwide disturbances in France’s teeming banlieues in 2005 and 2013 were immediately dusted off. Macron is already under fire from the Left for being the “President of the Rich,” interested only in defeating the trade unions and bolstering the profits of Big Business.  He has no desire to have suggestions of institutional racism added to the charge list.

Speaking of the unions, the French railway workers strike, organised by the CGT union, is almost on its last wheels. Though the schedule of strikes continues – today and tomorrow, for example – aimed at keeping work contracts exactly as they have been since time began, the reality is that nearly all cheminots have returned to work, allowing SNCF to operate a near-normal service. Macron won simply by sticking to his guns and bullying his party, La République en Marche, to pass the necessary reforms in Parliament in record time.

By doing so, he has alienated some of his former supporters who defected to his camp from the Left. But, equally, he has put the kybosh on attempts by the centre-right Republicans to make traditional, bourgeois Conservatism relevant again. In time, no doubt the Old-School Right, with its religious and paternalist overtones, will make a comeback – possibly when Macron goes for the still-bloated public sector,  but this is not yet that time.

Two other Cross-Channel developments are worthy of note. Across France, or “the Hexagon,” as they like to call it – the speed limit on two-lane A and B-roads has been cut from 90 kph to 80 kph (50 mph). The change, which came into force on Sunday, has been defended by the prime minister against widespread opposition from motorists and commercial transport bosses.

“The objective is not to irritate people,” Philippe observed somewhat wearily. “The objective is to ensure that there are fewer deaths and fewer seriously injured.”

Last year, 3,684 people were killed on France’s roads – most of them on minor roads – and another 76,840 were injured. The speed reduction will, it is said, reduce the death toll by some 400 a year – though how they reach that conclusion in advance I cannot say. If true, then the logic must be to cut the limit further, to, say, 50 kph, or to require that a man with a red flag precede each motorist, but that does not appear to be on the cards.

Finally, there was an embarrassing accident in Provence on Wednesday, resulting in the death of Wang Jian, one of China’s foremost industrialists. Apparently, Mr Wang, whose company, HNA, employs 400,000 people worldwide, fell off a wall in the tourist village of Bonnieux as he was having his picture taken. There is, as yet, no suggestion that the tycoon was pushed, but Paris will be keen to commiserate with Beijing and to assure the Chinese that in no sense is France to be held responsible.

Note, dear Leavers, that none of the above – plus the arrival of the windows for my new home extension after a three-month delay – has anything to do with the European Union. Not everything that is important in France’s national life has its roots in Brussels.