Macron retakes the lead in France. Le Pen second. The rest nowhere.
It may have escaped your attention, what with the Brexit shenanigans and the Congressional hearings over the probity or otherwise of President Trump, but La Marseillaise – the newspaper, not the anthem – is this year celebrating its 75thanniversary.
Originally published by Communist Résistants during the German occupation, it became an established daily in 1944 immediately following the liberation of Marseilles and its region, and has remained a Communist-leaning organ of the Left ever since.
I don’t think I’m breaking a confidence when I tell you that the paper is not a big fan of Emmanuel Macron. There is mounting concern its ranks that the President, having unfairly survived the gilets-jaunes insurrection, is deceiving voters by presenting himself as being on their side in the lead-up to the European elections in May while in fact making only minimum adjustments to his original platform.
Such cynicism is easy to understand. Macron has been on the stump almost non-stop this year, listening, listening, listening, but most of all re-establishing his brand as the one politician in France with a plan, as distinct from a point of view.
His undoubted success in persuading the French that he has changed from de haut en bas to humble without actually dropping any of his reformist agenda, is dismissed by La Marseillaise as a skilfully executed optical illusion. What really bothers the paper, however, is that with the governing LREM party once again ahead of Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, less than 40 per cent of voters say they plan to take part in the European elections.
The fact is that the Left – whatever that currently means – has lost all focus. The once-mighty Socialists have been reduced to fringe status, while the hard-Left, led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon, have dropped to 14 per cent in the polls. Les Républicains, representing what remains of old-school conservatism, are equally floundering, leaving the future direction of France to the amorphous centre, led by Macron, and the anti-immigrant far-Right.
If the polls are to be believed, Macron’s LREM will emerge victorious in May, with Le Pen snapping at his heels. As for the Gilets-Jaunes, Macron fancies he has seen them off. Having originally given ground to them, he now feels they have shot their bolt. Protesters are tired of spending their weekends blocking roads and roundabouts, and the number prepared to descend on the capital every Saturday morning to take on the CRS has declined markedly in recent weeks. The President has in fact out-waited them and is poised for business as usual in the months ahead.
Disturbingly – certainly as viewed from the Left – many of the yellow vests have turned out to be “class traitors,” more likely to vote for Le Pen than for the quasi-Communist Mélenchon. They may demand increased benefits, lower fuel prices and improved workers’ rights, but there is also within their ranks a strong element of anti-Muslim sentiment, most obviously in Marseilles itself, where as much as 40 per cent of the population is of North African descent. Aware of this, Mélenchon has recently spoken out against “uncontrolled” Muslim immigration, but to the average protester in the street this is too little too late. If you want more Europe, wrapped up in reform, you vote Macron, if you want less Europe, more France and fewer immigrants, Le Pen and the RN are the obvious option.
It is early days. The Euros are still two months off. But if current trends continue, the likelihood is that Macron will come out on top, with the RN in second place and the rest in a descending order no one can reasonably predict. Events could, of course, intrude. They usually do. But that is how things appear today. What needs to be borne in mind is that the European Parliament, remote as it often seems, is steadily gaining in power. Should the populist Right command a large number of the seats (with or without UK involvement), the drive in Brussels towards increased centralisation (more “Europe”) could be thrown into disarray. Attitudes towards Britain and Brexit could also be affected. For Macron, as leader of the Big Europe movement, the elections are therefore important not only as a test of his personal endurance, but as the means of securing his bid to take the EU into a new era of institutional growth.
None of this is evident just now in the streets of Aix-en-Provence, where the sun is unseasonably hot and the student population has taken to the streets not to demand the resignation of the President, but in order to have a few drinks and to forget the state of the economy into which they will be released all too soon. La Marseillaise led this morning with a headline that read: “Macron under fire in the streets, ahead in the polls – why?”
Why, indeed? The man has balls.