Barnier (almost) ready to take a punt on the presidency

One of these days soon, he’s going to have to come out and say it. Michel Barnier plans to win the nomination of France’s centre-right Republican Party to be its candidate in next year’s presidential elections. 

Definitely. Probably.  

The former EU Brexit negotiator has been toying with the French press for several months now, never actually confirming that he’s entering the list but hinting like a cut-down version of de Gaulle in 1958 that he is ready, if that is what the people demand, to answer his country’s call. 

An early indication of his direction of travel came with his setting up of a US-style political action committee, in which he declared himself to be both “European” and “patriotic.” In itself, this was a break with his past, when such an allegiance might have been dismissed as an oxymoron. There was also the fact that he had quietly retired from his role in the European Commission, where he had been kept on as its post-Brexit supremo, charged with keeping the UK in line with the terms of the withdrawal and trade agreements signed with a quill dipped in lemon juice by Boris Johnson. 

Then came the interviews. Just last week, there was a seven-page spread in the centre-right weekly magazine Le Point, complete with a picture of Barnier “at home” in the foothills of the Alps. But some indication of the mountain he has still to climb could be discerned from the observation by the article’s author that “Michel Barnier has had a densely packed political career for the last 50 years, but the French still don’t know who he is”. 

And, of course, there is his memoir, La Grande Illusion, in which he unburdens himself on everything Brexity, shaking his head in sorrow at the incompetence of his British counterparts up to and including the “baroque” figure of Boris Johnson, while at the same time lamenting the tragedy of the separation for both sides, Europe as well as the UK. 

Over the weekend, with speculation mounting that he was about to confirm what everybody already thought they knew, he told a conference organised by Le Figaro and the broadcaster RTL, that he had “immense ambition” for France, which I think we can decode by simply removing “for France”. 

To show that he means business, he even came up with a populist policy: a three-to-five-year moratorium on immigration into France from non-EU countries. “We need to halt the arrival of whole family groups and to put procedures in place to ensure only an agreed number of residence permits,” he said. “We have to rebuild a national consensus.” 

There was a “new savagery” in the political air, he went on. There is a risk of explosions because real fractures have appeared, notably on the question of immigration. “I don’t want to be a spectator when this is happening, I want to be a player in the political debate.” 

Lest he be seen to be too obviously stealing the clothes of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, Barnier sought to assure his audience that he wasn’t interested in being compared to the far right leader and had no intention of getting into a bidding war with her on immigration.

“This is not the moment to take an individual stand. What our political family needs is to put all its talents round the table so that we make a collective force”.

What Les Républicains will make of Barnier in his latest guise as new kid on the block, aged 70, remains to be seen. They are still getting used to the idea. If there was anyone else of real stature in the centre-right firing line, the likelihood is that his years as a creature of the European Commission would count against him. The French have a grudging respect for the Commission. That doesn’t mean they have to like it. But, for the moment at least, the number of papabile with the skill to take on Macron and Le Pen is less than at any time for the last 50 years. The party has imploded almost as efficiently as the Socialists. Though they hung on to 112 seats (against just 30 for the Socialists) in the 2017 parliamentary elections, just a handful of deputies are household names even in their own households. 

For Barnier, who probably knows Britain these days at least as well as he understands France, a presidential run is bound to be a long-shot. Macron at least had the advantage last time round of being a novelty. Monsieur Brexit, by contrast, is that political oddity, an enigma who is also wearily familiar – the suit who stood up for Europe against the Brits without ever raising his voice. His reputation as both a safe and a well-manicured pair of hands may be enough to get him onto the ballot paper in 2022, but will it be enough to get him into the second round?