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Macron: finally 'a president for all' or just the beneficiary of fear of Le Pen?

Emmanuel Macron once again beat off the threat of rising extremism and defeated Marine Le Pen, by a margin that exceeded the best opinion polls had predicted. France remains divided, a worrying number of its citizens believing the far right has some kind of coherent answer and in some cases believing in the face of all evidence that it is not far right at all.  This is my analysis

for The National ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In Emmanuel Macron’s moment of triumph, there were broad smiles, embraces and clenched fists as the newly re-elected French president moved through a crowd of excited supporters beneath the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

But challenging times lie ahead as he attempts to heal the deep wounds and divisions of a fractured, restless country.

 

Merci a France 2

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Who is Emmanuel Macron, the French president who promised tax cuts to stay in office?

In the end, Mr Macron won his second five-year term with a more comfortable majority than polls had predicted, 17 points ahead of his far-right rival, Marine Le Pen.

But less than two months remain before France votes again, to decide the make-up of parliament.

After sweeping to power in 2017, also at Ms Le Pen’s expense but more emphatically than on Sunday, the fresh appeal of a modern, enterprising president gave Mr Macron's centrist La Republique En Marche party (LREM) a landslide victory in the legislative elections.

 

In June, the LREM faces a stiffer test, the outcome made even less certain by Sunday’s high abstentions — 28 per cent, a reflection of widespread disenchantment with politicians. An unwillingness to choose “between the plague and cholera” became the mantra of countless non-voters.

Emmanuel Macron defeated his far-right rival Marine Le Pen with a 17 point margin of victory. EPA.

Ms Le Pen’s National Rally seems too poorly organised across the country to have a serious chance of forming a majority in the Assemblee Nationale in June.

But the far-left France Unbowed leader Jean-Luc Melenchon, who narrowly failed to reach the run-off in the presidential contest, is urging a coalition of left-wing and Green parties. He hopes to become a powerful opposition prime minister, making government a nightmare of “cohabitation” for what is already termed “Macron Season Two”.

In itself, Mr Macron’s win was impressive after five years of perpetual crisis, with the disruptive anti-government Gilets Jaunes (yellow vests) revolt followed by the pandemic and now the rocketing cost of living. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine brought him a “war bounce”, as he emerged as a key figure in Europe’s response, but this proved short-lived.

National Rally party candidate Marine Le Pen was defeated after centre ground voters formed a united front to keep the extreme right out of office. EPA.

His substantial lead over Ms Le Pen had much less to do with approval of his own record than the French electorate’s habit of forming a united front against the extreme right.

 

Even that “republican barrage” now looks less solid. In her three presidential campaigns, Ms Le Pen has boosted her share of the vote from 18 per cent in 2012 to 41 per cent on Sunday.

Her party blamed pro-Macron media propaganda for denying her what mainstream western opinion would have seen as an alarming outcome. “Even a TV weather girl told us we had to vote Macron,” said a senior National Rally strategist.

Mr Macron’s daunting task, as he acknowledged in his victory speech on Sunday night, is to persuade hostile voters and non-voters he can unite a country split — after the collapse of conventional left and right parties — into three major blocs: the centre and opposing extremes.

He must first choose a reshuffled cabinet and, in particular, a new prime minister should the LREM form the next government alone or in coalition.

He praises the “extraordinary” efforts of Jean Castex, a decent, competent but dour prime minister. But Mr Castex will announce his resignation within a week, to be replaced by a man or woman charged with making ecological change central to his or her duties.

 

Supporters of Emmanuel Macron celebrate after he won the French presidential election, at the Champ de Mars, in Paris. AFP

Beyond her harsh programme of populist nationalism, including a ban on headscarves, sweeping immigration curbs and protectionist measures undermining the EU, Ms Le Pen had hoped to win over voters with promised tax cuts and retirement from the age of 60.

Mr Macron denounced her populism and mocked the budgetary “incoherence” of her cost-of-living pledges. He only slightly modified his pension reform plans so that under his presidency, the age of retirement will rise steadily from 62 to 64 by 2027-28, not reaching 65 before 2031.

Perhaps the biggest winner on Sunday was the European Union and its defenders.

As Mr Macron made his way to the stage at the Champs-de-Mar, flanked by wife, Brigitte, and children of campaign workers, the rousing melody of the EU anthem, Beethoven’s Ode to Joy, sent defiant messages of European solidarity to Eurosceptics in Hungary and Poland, as well as to Ms Le Pen’s supporters and, possibly, a troublesome neighbour — Boris Johnson and his Brexit government in the UK.

But the true measure of success or failure in the coming five years will be how well he lives up to his commitment to respect those who voted for the far right, or not at all, and prove himself “a president for all”.

Updated: April 25, 2022, 12:52

FRANCEMACRONMARINE LE PEN

Macron, Le Pen (and Christelle Chollet): deep into pensionable age and a first-time voter in France

My final eve-of-poll thoughts on the French presidentials - plus, as a bonus, the wonderful Christelle Chollet's brilliant parody of election promises. It's in french but there subtitles, also in French but not too hard to follow ...

French bureaucracy is rightly renowned, though feared is perhaps a better word, the world over. I've experienced worse - the loss or, more likely, theft of my wife's passport when we lived in the UAE springs to mind -  but it can formidable enough to challenge the will to live.

I wanted to vote, having acquired dual nationality (UK/French) last year. And at the Gendarmerie Nationale on the rue Bonaparte in La Londe-les-Maures, just along the Med coast from my own home in Le Lavandou, I successfully negotiated the last of various hoops, some created by my own misreading of the instructions, and instantly received the crucial e-mail authorising me to use a French citizen in London to vote on my behalf at the French Consulate, where I am registered as a voter.

 

Macron vs Le Pen: haughty putdowns and Frexit fantasies in the big debate

 

As mentioned by me at Facebook, the much-anticipated French TV debate between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen ahead of Sunday's presidential decider confirmed the defending Elysee incumbent as a man in complete control of his brief but given to condescension and arrogance. 'Madame Le Pen...', he kept repeating in an exasperated tone that belied his concluding expression of respect for his far-right rival. She did not win the debate but fared infinitely better than in the equivalent encounter just before the election that saw Macron cruise to power five years ago.

Le Pen insisted she did not wish to haul France out of the EU but sounded a lot like a Frexiter, the French version of the Brexiter she claims she no longer is. I could swear l've heard this before: 'Don't confuse Europe and the EU - I adore this continent' followed or preceded by assorted anti-Brussels whinges. Her defence of positions on Russia (not least the loan her party took from a Moscow bank), immigration, Islam, crime, tax concessions to improve the spending power of ordinary people was sometimes muddled and always unconvincing. That said, although she may not have secured many extra votes and will probably still lose, it wasn't a repeat of the 2017 car crash of a debate. Only 15m viewers bothered with it - half the record set for such debates.

I am grateful to the editor of The National for permitting me to reproduce my work here. I am also indebted to my confreres at Ouest France and AFP for this tale of proprietorial interference in journalistic integrity: staff at Marianne magazine are up in arms over a not very subtle change to the front cover dictated by the Czech major shareholder Daniel Kretinsky. They are right to be so; the original version was ethically sound, the cover as changed wasn't far from being a party political pamphlet ...

 

 

 

What have Christian Clavier and Chantal Lauby done to deserve a Le Pen link?

A likely cinema hit if the success of its two predecessors is a guide: Qu'est-ce qu'on a Tous Fait au Bon Dieu? What have we done to deserve this? or, to use the weak English translation Serial (Bad) Weddings came out in France a few days before the first round of the presidential elections. It is well acted, especially by Christian Clavier and Chantal Lauby as the narrow-minded Verneuils whose disappointment at their daughters' choice of men gives the film its theme.

It has nothing, strictly speaking, to do with the campaign but the script does mock, among other aspects of French society, the sort of attitudes that lead people to vote for xenophobes (as they did in large numbers in my own Mediterranean town). I made the mischievous connection in this comment piece for The National, reproduced with thanks to the editor for her consent ...

In cinemas across France, audiences laugh out loud at the third film in a hugely popular series depicting a bourgeois, provincial French couple's struggles to accept that their four daughters have avoided suitably solid Frenchmen in favour of Maghrebi, African, Jewish and Chinese husbands.

Against the backdrop of a presidential election in which race plays a key role and would be dominant but for the cost-of-living crisis, it feels impossible not to make the connection, however innocent the timing of the release.

Whether or not they all realise it, the filmgoers' amusement is necessarily laughter at precisely the attitudes that have helped propel Marine Le Pen from the marginalised political wilderness of the far right to the brink of presidency.

Cats on Trees: when French music travels - or deserves to

 

 

 

Concert debout, it said on the printout of the ticket. I saw that only after I had booked. The realisation that it would be standing room only for the Cats on Trees concert in Puget-sur-Argens, just back from the Mediterranean resort of Frejus, came too late to have second thoughts. I am glad it did.

The era of masks, the passe sanitaire - a QR code proving vaccination status - and now social distancing are behind us, even if Covid itself is not. Far too old to act like groupies or teenypop super-fans, we nevertheless avoided the claustrophobia of standing in the middle of a big audience at the Mas d'Hiver and stood within easy infection distance, directly in front of the quartet on stage. Again, I am glad - pending any positive test - that we did.

 

 

 

French presidentials: three-horse race with Macron ahead but little between far left and far right

 

 

My thanks, as usual, to the editor of The National (UAE) for permitting the reproduction here of my work for that newspaper, which I am proud to have helped create. All images are simple mobile phone snaps from France 2's admirable election night coverage ...

 

What would France look like under Marine Le Pen?

April 10 update: relief so far with the first round results (subject to change but putting Macron five points ahead) … 

 

 

 

This is my last look at the French presidential elections for The National before voting starts on Sunday. I am, as ever, grateful to the editor for permitting its reproduction here.

My own efforts to vote have come to nothing. Unwillingly, as one able to take part in a French election for the first time having obtained dual citizenship, I'll be counted among the large number of expected abstentions. My constituency is that covered by the French Consulate in London and I am in the south of France. I was unable to vote by proxy as I would have needed to find another London voter to help.

So the far right can breathe a sigh of relief. Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour need have no fear, after all, of my vote for pretty much anyone but either of them. As it happens, I would have gone without massive enthusiasm but faute de mieux for Emmanuel Macron, a decent if aloof statesman. He is to the right of my own political tastes but the main left candidate, Jean-Luc Melenchon, is too far the other way and the Parti Socialiste's Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, languishes on the level of support cranky contenders attract in the UK ...

 

 

 

 

France's presidentials: Macron, Le Pen and simple lessons from Serge Gainsbourg's life

If I can work out a way of voting in the French presidential elections (for the first time, thanks to my new status as a dual citizen), I shall go faute de mieux for Emmanuel Macron, head and shoulders above the rest in terms of statesmanship and dependability if rather too right-wing for my own tastes. The impediment for me is that I am registered as a French voter in the UK but find myself in France. Proxy voting seems complicated to say the least. As this article for The National - thanks as ever to the editor for permitting its reproduction here - tries to explain, the far right polemicist Marine Le Pen is the main obstacle to what until recently seemed an easy canter to his second term.

Last night, I watched an absorbing France 3 documentary, slightly behind the 31st anniversary of his death, of the enfant terrible of French music, Serge Gainsbourg. There were some wonderful memories and insights from his daughter Charlotte Gainsbourg, Charlotte's mother Jane Birkin, Jane's dad, Francoise Hardy and others.

But there was also a chilling reminder of what far right can mean in France. Those attached to it, and who would if still alive vote either Le Pen or - worse - Eric Zemmour, would doubtless agree with the hoodlums who saw it as entirely normal to prevent Gainsbourg performing because he - a Jew! - had created a reggae version of the national anthem, La Marseillaise. Me, I love it and I could never vote for anyone who wanted to suppress it ...

 

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Evian, a 'phantom museum' and moves to commemorate the historic accord intended to end Franco-Algerian conflict

 

Vladimir Putin's obscene attack on a neighbouring sovereign state, accompanied by the deliberate targeting of civilians, strikes many as a barbaric criminal enterprise carried out by a deranged dictator without trace of humanity or compassion. It reminds us, too, of an unquenchable global thirst for conflict. The Second World War ended 77 years ago but few visitors to Salut! would struggle to add to my list of the wars that have polluted post-war history: Korea, Israel-Palestine, Northern Ireland, the Falklands, Kashmir, Sri Lanka, Iraq, Iran, Syria, Yemen ... and, of course Algeria.

This is my piece for The National, a newspaper published in Abu Dhabi and which I helped to create, on today's 60th anniversary of the signing of the Evian Accords. The editor kindly permits me to reproduce my work here:

 

The signing of the Evian Accords on this day 60 years ago officially ended not only a bitter and bloody war of independence between France and Algeria but 132 years of colonial rule.

Named after the spa resort on the shores of Lake Geneva, where the French and Algerian delegations met to ratify its text, the 93-page agreement was meant to herald a new era of mutual respect and friendship.

From l'Algerie Mon Amour, an art exhibition marking the year of Algerian independence from France. It will continue ar the Institute of the Arab World in Paris until July. This item is listed as 'Baya, Musique, 1974, Gouache sur papier' and was donated by Claude and France Lemand

 

 

Reporting the Troubles. As Putin's odious war on Ukraine rages, journalists remember another conflict

 

 

A few minutes ago, I noticed on Facebook that a great French pal of ours, Hervé Amoric, is among the small army of brave journalists covering Putin's horrendous war, in his case from the western city of Lviv (Putin calls his invasion, and slaughter of civilians, a peace-keeping mission and apologists in the West swallow it whole).

Please stay safe, Hervé, and anyone working with you - I am thinking of poor Oleksandra 'Sasha' Kuvshynova, a young Ukrainian 'fixer' killed with a cameraman yesterday.

Hervé is based in London and Belfast. Few journalists know Irish politics and the story of Northern Irish Troubles better. A second volume of Reporting the Troubles has just been published; if a third edition should ever be planned, Hervé should be encouraged to contribute.