French election: Macron holds the cards but nothing is guaranteed
Just nine days to go and the French presidential election is moving fitfully into third gear. There is no “favourite” this time round, just a reluctant acceptance of the inevitable. Short of an electoral clusterbomb that changes everything, Emmanuel Macron should make it safely through the opening round and into the run-off on 24 April, when in all likelihood he will dispose of Marine Le Pen, leader of the “respectable” Far Right, or, just possibly, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, France’s Jeremy Corbyn.
In what my old editor Sir Peregrine Worsthorne liked to call the “chancelleries” of Europe, they will be praying fervently that events pan out as I have indicated. They need Macron to emerge unscathed from the contest, providing continuity at a time when the arrival in the Élysée Palace of either of his principle opponents – both accredited acolytes of Vladimir Putin – would risk the exclusion of France from the inner circles of both NATO and the European Union.
The emergence as French head of state of Le Pen or, worse, Mélenchon, at a critical juncture for Western diplomacy would send shivers down the spines of both the European and North American political establishments. Le Pen, heading the National Rally party (formerly the National Front), was until the war in Ukraine ready to promote herself as a close ally of the Russian dictator, whose world outlook closely mirrors her own. For his part, right up until 24 February, when Russian tanks first rolled into Ukraine, Mélenchon viewed Putin as a Lenin for the 21st century, taking tough decisions on behalf of the proletariat.
A strong France, resolute in its support for the Western alliance, is needed today more than at any time since the Berlin airlift, and Macron, for all his faults, embodies such an approach.
His approach to the Ukraine crisis has not been without its mishaps. He did not exactly cover himself in glory when he met Putin “at length” in Moscow in mid-February. The image of the two presidents sat either end of an unfeasibly long table talking rot to each other is not going to fade anytime soon. And just this week, he felt compelled to sack his director of military intelligence, Eric Vidot, for failing to warn that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was imminent and not, as he himself preferred to believe, an elaborate bluff.
But, both as France’s leader and as president-in-office of the European Council, Macron has since cleaved to the mainstream of western thinking, even working together with his foil, Boris Johnson, to present a façade of unity.
On the domestic front, his incumbency is likely to prove the decisive factor. The widely held view across France is that this is no time to drop the pilot. Le Pen may give the former investment banker a scare; support for Mélenchon may well demonstrate that the last communards have yet to flee the scene. But only an earthquake will remove Macron from the Élysée, and of that there is as yet no sign.
In most European countries, there is usually a choice of three, or at most four, plausible candidates for the top job – in the US, just two. The same is true of France, with the difference that the first round gives all manner of political hopefuls the chance to strut their stuff and show off in front of the cameras.
Thus, on 10 April, Macron, Le Pen and Mélenchon will be joined on the presidential ballot paper by nine others, ranging from the egregious racist Éric Zemmour to the Green Party’s Yannick Jadot and the Socialist mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo. Zemmour – “Z” – looks to be a busted flush. His Reconquete Party, with its proposed Ministry for Remigration (the expulsion of Muslims and other “undesirables”) is proving too much even for those who want the immigration issue settled once and for all. Jadot is well liked, even respected, but voters are not yet ready to sign up to his emerald-green agenda. As for Hidalgo, how are the mighty fallen? A year ago she was re-elected to Paris’s City Hall, once deemed the second-most important job in French politics. Now, according to the polls, she will be lucky to achieve better than eleventh place, just above Nathalie Artaud of the far-left Workers’ Party.
What, meanwhile, of Valerie Pécresse, the candidate for the centre-right Conservatives, currently operating under the name of Les Républicains. Twenty years ago, even five years ago, the centre-right was one of the Big Two – the other being the Socialists. Now, with Macron’s back-of-an-envelope En Marche party having stolen the soft centre and with harder-right voters drifting to Le Pen, Pécresse looks as if she will end up in fifth place, ahead of Jadot but behind Zemmour.
Round two is base camp in the race to the summit. And this is where the fight will be at its dirtiest. Can Le Pen, with all her Poutinist baggage, somehow convince millions of middle-of-the-road voters that she can provide France with a new start? Can the cardigan-wearing Mélenchon persuade the proletariat and their allies to storm the barricades one last time?
I say not. They may come close – too close for comfort – but still, in the end, no cigar.
The Ukraine crisis trumps everything – Covid, the economy and all the inequities, real and imagined, of which the French love to complain. Macron has been there from the start and has played a role that, while not obviously far-sighted, has nevertheless kept him at the heart of events. Le Pen or Mélenchon as President would, by contrast, be a throw of the dice that defied all reasonable analysis. They will lose – which is not the same thing as saying France will win.