Macron promises blood, sweat, tears and a new beginning for France after Covid-19

It went on for half an hour without a single change of tone, but in the end it was worth it.

The only actual news to come out of Emmanuel Macron’s latest address to the nation on Monday evening, trailed by the media as a key moment in the fight against the coronavirus, was that the lockdown in France is to continue until May 11.

Even then, while schools and shops will progressively re-open, cafés, restaurants, cinemas, sports venues and other places of public recreation will remain shuttered for the foreseeable future. The only opening bars will be those of the Marseillaise, played as ever when the President, speaking from the grandeur of the Élysée Palace, feels the need to unburden himself on national tv.

But this was no Address from the Throne. The Jupiter President has come down to Earth with a bump in recent months and is none the worse for it.

Having thanked the French people “from the bottom of my heart,” for their response to the crisis, he looked straight into the camera and asked:

“Were we prepared for this crisis? I think we have to say, no, we were not. But we have to admit to our errors … We have seen failings in our system – insufficiencies. We didn’t have enough surgical gowns; we didn’t have enough antiseptic gel; we didn’t have enough masks for our medical staff and for those caring for the elderly or looking after people in their homes … But when you are on the front line it is very often hard to hear clearly the message that there just isn’t enough available in the world. So we placed orders and our French workers and our French companies answered the call.”

From the moment the gravity of the situation revealed itself, everyone in government and positions of authority across the country had worked tirelessly, together with millions of their compatriots, to bring an end to the present scourge. While more deaths were inevitable and normal life remained some distance off, there was now a realistic expectation that the corner would soon be turned.

The background to his remarks was stark. At some point today, the number of people to have died in France from the coronavirus is expected to exceed 15,000 – with at least another one hundred thousand known to be infected. The French death toll is some 3,500 higher than in the UK, where the contagion is generally reckoned to be a week-to-two-weeks behind its European neighbours.

Experts believe that the impact of the virus will peak in the course of the next week or ten days, but there are fears that if the lockdown is lifted, or even relaxed, too early it could return in a more virulent form later in the year, or next year, and Macron is taking no chances.

The President was respectful of his audience – not an obvious character trait during his first period in office. He spoke clearly and earnestly, as if he wanted them to know that he was taking them into his confidence and would spare them nothing in his search for truth. There was no light relief. Macron could no more joke about how all doctors in Paris seemed to be called “Nick” than Boris Johnson could begin a talk from his desk in Downing Street to the dying strains of God Save the Queen.

But while the Frenchman is out on his own when it comes to the mea culpas, the two men have a similar message to deliver. Macron wanted his “chèrs compatriots” to know that the French economy, though hard hit and due to enter an open-ended recession, would recover.

Not only that, but it would restart on a different basis. No longer would France – or Europe, he implied – rely on China to produce goods that it was perfectly capable of making itself. The era of casual outsourcing was over. French agriculture and French industry would re-tool and step up, not only reducing the country’s dependency on outside powers whose motives were often suspect, but providing much-needed employment for millions of French workers.

This will have gone down well, with the trade unions – and even, one imagines, with the now quiescent gilets-jaunes. Macron promised his countrymen and women blood sweat and tears. But he also held out hope and the prospect of a new beginning.

France’s underpaid, who were proving their utility every day in dealing with the demands of the crisis, would have to be better rewarded in future. In the same way, the debt owed to Europe by developing countries struggling to contain the virus with scant resources ought to be annulled. “We need to pull the world together.”

Boris Johnson would probably not demur from any of this. Of the two, however, Macron has thus far had the better war. He was slow out of the blocks, but thereafter more decisive and, you would have to say, more “presidential”. Perhaps, though, that goes with the job. Johnson’s trump card – the fact that he almost died for his country – is not one that Macron would wish to draw.

Not that there has been any shortage of criticism of the President. Marine Le Pen has led the charge here, heaping opprobrium at every turn, joined in unholy alliance by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the Far Left.

There is also the small matter of a series of suits brought by citizens and organisations across France alleging chaos and incompetence at the heart of government that must in theory be heard by the specially appointed Court of Justice of the Republic. The suits generally name the prime minister, Edouard Philippe and his cabinet colleagues, but there can be little doubt who we are supposed to see as the principal villain of the piece.

In the meantime, life goes on in France in its curiously truncated and joyless form. The weather has picked up. The sun is shining and the birds are in full voice. In the countryside, wild boar and deer roam free, untroubled by their human masters. If only we could go for a beer!