Summer is a coming and Macron is back
Whisper it soft, but the sense of crisis that consumed France as little as two months ago looks to have dissipated – at least until the next crisis erupts.
The country is in a holding pattern as Emmanuel Macron adjusts his posture and focuses on the Big Jobs scrabble in Brussels. The general view, even among his opponents, is that he is drifting back, slowly but remorselessly, from the depths to which he sank during the dark days of the gilets-jaunes protests. It had been forecast that he would be hard-hit by last month’s European elections, but in the event his En Marche party, though narrowly beaten by Marine Le Pen’s Rassemblement National, not only ended up with the same number of seats as his arch-rival, but comfortably saw off the challenge of the centre-left Socialists and centre-right Conservatives, both of whom performed dismally.
Macron’s calculation is that in the long run-up to the 2022 presidential elections, the fight will be between his business-oriented, reform agenda, with its emphasis on further European integration, and the anti-immigrant, anti-Establishment platform of Le Pen and her cohorts, rooted for the most part in the far North and Southeast of the country. He reckons that with the cities and big business behind him, and with the trade unions lining up with the perennially doomed Marxist Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the way will be clear for him to inflict another crunch-time defeat on the Right, with the Far-Left nowhere in sight.
The gilets-jaunes – now increasingly identified with Le Pen – are fading fast, sustained only by a continuing sense of grievance against the police. At the same time, the once-powerful Socialists and Républicains are at their lowest ebb ever, leaving the field clear for the Centre, having withstood last winter’s storms, to confirm its dominance. Macron may not be popular with the ideologues of left and right, to say nothing of the rural working class, but, even in aggregate, these are not France. As many as two million demonstrators probably took to the streets of Paris and other urban centres in the early days of the gilets-jaunes protests, supported to a greater or lesser extent by millions more of the permanently discontented. But France has a population approaching 67 million and it is safe to say that the 60 million or more who chose to sit on their hands are not demanding a revolution, but rather some semblance of stability and the promise of better times to come.
To take one rather startling example, Brittany, traditionally regarded as one of the poorest regions of France, has become something of an En Marche stronghold. It was for decades a Socialist redoubt, with a solid seasoning of National Front support. Today, due, it is said, to the fact that it is largely agricultural, and therefore protected by Brussels, it is more prosperous and content than at any time in its history and voted in large numbers for Macron. It may not, stuck out on the far northwest of the country, have much in the way of industry, but then it never did. Instead, it has chosen to modernise its farm sector, expand tourism and increased the number of jobs in retail, banking and services – all with help from Paris and Brussels.
Bretons, generally speaking, are not wealthy (though some are), but they are looked after. Health care is excellent. The elderly, aged over 75, are guaranteed room and board in a well-endowed maison de retraite if that is what they want. State pensions are significantly higher than in the UK and living costs are low. Most locals display a healthy disdain for Paris, but still regard it with pride as one of the world’s great capitals. They were dismayed by the desecration of the Arc de Triomph by casseurs during protests last December. They were equally upset over the fire that came so close to destroying Notre Dame.
Only a minority of provincial gilets-jaunes took part in the demonstrations on the Champs-Élysées that led the news every weekend from November to March. They preferred to make their voices heard closer to home, where their main complaint was the price of diesel and the 80 kph speed-limit, plus – depending on their proximity to a big city – the threat of increased Muslim immigration. They are not Les Misérables; rather, they are the Disgruntled.
As far as Brexit is concerned, I suspect most Bretons, like a majority of citizens across rural France, don’t give a stuff what happens. Insofar as they think about it at all, they alternate between admiration for the courage of British voters and contempt for the subsequent ineptitude of the Tory Government. On a practical level, there is concern over the potential impact of any deal that adversely affects the Anglais among them, aged typically between 55 and 80, who cause no trouble and routinely spend the sort of money that keeps many shops, bars and restaurants in business that might otherwise have closed.
Last weekend, there weren’t more than half a dozen demonstrators manning the roundabout close to where I live. Spring has given way to summer, keeping the farmers busy, and the annual mass-influx of tourists is just around the corner. In short, in the absence of an unforeseen convulsion, the country is moving back onto a more even keel. There are no important elections in prospect, and with Le Grand Départ looming, the French have lost their appetite for conflict. “Give it a rest” probably best sums up the national mood.
But I could be wrong. Évenéments, mon gars – évenéments! Maybe there will be a terrorist outrage, or the banlieues will rise up, or an armada of boat people from Libya will wash up on Riviera beaches. But other than that, unemployment is drifting slowly down, consumer spending is edging up and the elevated minimum wage is coming into force. Macron will be looking forward to trying out the new swimming pool he has had built in his Presidential retreat on the island of Brégançon, off the Var coast. And here in Brittany, bees are busy in my garden.