French Letter: Voter frustration sweeps through France

The headline in Le Figaro summed it up. “Macron: le changement dans la continuité,” or, as my old French teacher “Dutchy” Holland used to say, “plus ça change, boys, plus c’est la même chose.” 

But you know what I mean. 

Election fever ought to be taking hold by now. But if it is, I have yet to see the signs. There are no posters on display in the town square and no information leaflets confirming the relevant days, the location of the polling stations and the hours on which they will be open. 

This will change — and yet not. The President isn’t expected to show up at our maison communale, though the local gendarmes would surely relish the excitement and the mayor would be ironing his sash. Nor can we expect visits from the far-right firebrand Éric Zemmour or his fractionally less extreme rival, Marine Le Pen, to say nothing of the current darling of the Left, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. 

The drama, if that is what it is, will be largely confined to our television screens. Such rallies as are planned will be confined to the cities — Nantes, Rennes and Brest — leaving the rural heartland prey to those competing for seats in the National Assembly in elections not due until June. 

That is not to say that our votes (or, rather, their votes, as my wife and I remain scandalously disenfranchised) can be taken for granted. It’s just that there aren’t enough of us to make a difference. The Argoat, meaning, in Breton, the area by the forest (or neck of the woods), has a population of less than 75,000, and falling. Seen from Paris, we barely exist. 

The only time Macron visited the Côtes-d’Armor department, of which the Argoat is part, was in April 2019, when he addressed a gathering of the region’s mayors in the coastal metropolis of St Brieuc, which just happens to be connected to the capital by TGV. At the time, the gilets-jaunes were in full flood and there were fears that protests might get out of hand. But in the event, not many demonstrators turned up and the President was back in Paris, unmolested, in good time for dinner. 

In 2017, our department didn’t quite echo the national mood. In the first round, Macron, leading the charge for his recently formed En Marche movement, scored 28 per cent of the vote, with the quasi-Marxist Mélenchon, rather than Le Pen, in second place. In the nationally-determined runoff, with Mélenchon excluded from the ballot, it was a walkover for the arriviste ex-banker, who achieved a whopping 73.47 per cent of votes cast, against 26.53 per cent for Le Pen.  

In our village, on a high turnout, Mélenchon actually came out on top in the opening round, taking nearly 29 per cent of the vote against 23 per cent for Macron, with Le Pen, on less than 17 per cent, in third place. But when I tell you that there are less than 200 entries in our local phonebook, you will perhaps appreciate how marginal our contribution was to the outcome.  

Last time out, being unable to vote myself, I elected to cover the second round in Carhaix, a town of 8,500 souls in neighbouring Finistere some twenty kilometres to the south. The problem was that no one I asked would tell me how they intended to vote. When I enquired, they looked shocked, as if I had asked them the last time they had had sex. The vote, it transpired, was not only a private matter, but sacred, like the Confessional. By lunchtime, I almost expected them to genuflect on the way in and to cross themselves on the way out. 

On April 10, a little over three weeks from now, the final result, we are assured, will be little different from 2017, except that in Round One there may (possibly) be some alteration in the order of precedence, with Mélenchon going forward to round two, having risen above the Zemmour-Le Pen cat-fight and the increasingly sorry challenge of the centre-right’s Valerie Pécresse. 

But who knows? The war in Ukraine is making waves across Europe, even here in the Argoat, where the first refugees are expected any day. Prices are rising in the shops. Diesel is becoming a precious commodity, its fluctuations a recurring topic of conversation in bars and doctors’ waiting rooms. People are wondering if they can afford to go on holiday this year.

Next month, as the ballot boxes, or urnes (not to be confused with the pots containing the ashes of the dear-departed), come to be counted, the result may reflect short-term anger and frustration rather than rational political judgement. And, on a bad day, that could yet spell danger for Macron. When the President offers them more, many of the French will be asking themselves if he doesn’t just mean more of the same.