Événements, mon gar, événements: Macron assaulted on all sides

And now he’s tested positive for Covid. The litany of woes confronting Emmanuel Macron would drive most men, or women, in his position to thoughts of retirement, relieved by a lucrative book deal and membership of the Carlyle Group.

Last week, the French President attended an EU summit in Brussels. Yesterday, in Paris, he had lunch with the Portuguese prime minister, Antonio Costa. The list of those who must now be tested (and re-tested) for Covid is extensive, and growing. Macron has announced that will be self-isolating for the next seven days while continuing to meet remotely with ministers and officials. He is only 41 and in good health, but the fact that he may have contracted the coronavirus is yet another signal that no one is safe.

Typically, meetings of the French Cabinet begin these days with an opening statement from the President followed by a briefing from Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin. The next time ministers meet, it could well be on Zoom or with Macron as a disembodied voice.

Either way, the Prime Minister, Jean Çastex, is sure to take the lead on Covid, backed by the minister for health and “solidarity Oiliver Véran, at one time a Socialist, who last month berated the Opposition for not falling into line behind the Government’s handling of the crisis.

Castex won praise during the first wave of infections when he was a top public official charged with coming up with the resources needed to keep France safe. But since being appointed Prime Minister, replacing the overly popular Édouard Philippe, he has found himself in the lion’s den, taking the blame for the ever-shifting pattern of lockdowns and the increasing number of dead and dying.

Vaccinations in France, as elsewhere in the EU, are due to start early in the New Year. For now, however, in the lead-up to Christmas, more of the same – confinement, masks and social distancing – is all that is on offer, and the French are not best pleased.

On security, the situation has continued to deteriorate without ever quite going critical. The Far Left, taking its lead from the anarchist fringe, sees its role as goading young people, bored and angry after nine months of Covid-19, into attacking the police. The most recent rationale given for the ongoing violence is the Government’s all-purpose Security Bill, which, when introduced last month, included a clause – Article 24 – that would make it illegal to publish images, including mobile phone video footage, that could identity police officers going about their duties, even if those duties include splitting heads.

The Left – supported by the media – maintains that such a prohibition would make it more difficult to expose police brutality of the kind that surfaced recently after four officers in Paris were filmed beating up a black music producer inside his own studio.

Once it became clear in which direction the wind was blowing, Macron and Darmanin were quick to pull back on Article 24. But their undertaking to “revise” the relevant legislation has fallen largely on deaf ears.

Other clauses in the Bill, aimed at extending the long-established principle of laîcité (secularism) to the the country’s six million Islamic citizens, are equally contentious. Critics say that the legislation would have the effect of stigmatising Muslims by permitting the surveillance of mosques and imams deemed to be radical and by introducing curbs on home-schooling by Muslim parents who don’t want their children educated alongside non-Muslim pupils.

The Government has responded by pointing out that its Bill would also tighten the law on online hate speech and on the intimidation of public officials on the basis of their religion. But no everyone is listening. A spokesman for President Macron noted that following the recent beheading of Samuel Paty, a teacher who had shown his pupils a caricature of the Prophet Mohammad during a lesson on free speech, one well-known mosque had issued a video condemning not the killer, but Paty.

While hardline protesters, known as “Ultras,” have officially embraced the Muslim cause, it is clear that the real object of their ire remains the police, which, in keeping with French tradition, gives at least as good as it gets when the going gets rough. More moderate voices, who join the anti-government demonstrations each week without seeking either to assault officers or to end up on the receiving end of a CRS baton, are usually drowned out by the extremists who, ironically go to great lengths to conceal their own identities while demanding the right to “expose” those of the police.

Should the Government manage to bring Covid under control by the spring or early summer and should the current spate of street protests turn out, like the previous Gilet-Jaunes phenomenon, to have a limited shelf life, Macron will, you might think, have earned himself a breathing space. Unfortunately for him, no one ever said anything about fair. January could bring long lines of trucks stuck at the Channel ports by the outworkings of Brexit with or without a trade deal. It could also, assuming no resolution of the fisheries question, witness flotillas of French trawlers blockading the same ports to prevent UK fishermen from landing their catch in France.

Meanwhile, looming over everything, is the prospect of an economic recession longer and deeper than anything seen in France since the 1930s.  Hundreds of thousands of jobs are set to go, along with a myriad of businesses large and small. The EU is pledged to help and has raised nothing short of a hundred billion euros. But with everyone, from Dublin to Warsaw, by way of Madrid and Rome, out for what they can get, Europe’s magic money tree is being shaken at least as vigorously as that in the UK.

Who would be President of France in 2021? Answer: the same man who plans to be re-elected to the job in 2022.  Macron may not be enjoying the heat, but he has no intention of getting out of the kitchen.