French voters deliver Macron another blow
If Emmanuel Macron ever thought it would be easy ushering in a second French Revolution, one built around rationality rather than chaos, he has been sorely disabused of his presumption.
Today, it is not La République En Marche, the party – “neither left nor right” – whose constitution he wrote on the back of an envelope in the spring of 2016, but the Greens who are celebrating the turning of a new page in French history.
In Sunday’s municipal elections, various combinations of eco-warriors won key races in the cities of Lyon, Bordeaux and Strasbourg while coming a close second in scores of other contests across the country.
But other opposition parties also have cause to be pleased with their performance. In Paris the incumbent mayor, Anne Hidalgo, won a second term by a comfortable margin, giving the Socialist Party a glimmer of hope that its moderate agenda has not, after all, been rejected as an irrelevance. An hour by train to the north, Socialist veteran Martine Aubry held on to the mayor’s office against a determined challenge from the Greens. In the Deep South the far-right showed it is far from spent, with Louis Aliot, the one-time lover of Marine Le Pen, winning Perpignan for the Rassemblement National.
It is probably too early to dismiss En Marche as a one-hit wonder. It would certainly be foolish to call Macron a spent force. But there can be no doubt that the wheel of fortune has turned, leaving the President to reflect on an extraordinary cycle of personal misfortune.
Barely had he concluded his Hundred Days – the traditional period in which an incoming President is allowed to find his way around the Élysée – before everything started to unravel.
Three senior ministers resigned, two in the wake of scandal, the third because Macron, allegedly, was insufficiently serious about combating climate change. No sooner had new ministers been appointed than the gilets-jaunes emerged – a phenomenon, backed by anarchists and the far-left, that denounced Macron as the President of the Rich.
Every weekend, for months on end, the capital became a battleground, pitting workers against the state, historically not a good look for French governments. No sooner had the rural insurgency begun to fade than it was the turn of the preponderantly urban public sector, led by railway workers and health professionals, to express their disaffection. The former were demanding no change to their generous pension schemes, the latter were campaigning for improved pay and conditions, both taking to the streets in large numbers.
Next up came the Green Lobby and the Extinction Rebellion activists, condemning the country’s leadership in general and Macron in particular for their failure to save the planet. But even as the eco-warriors deployed their forces the coronavirus struck, forcing the Government to impose a three-month lockdown which – depending on who you listen to – was lifted either too early or late.
Finally, with the lingering threat of a second Covid-19 wave, Black Lives Matter landed in France, proclaiming its message that French history has been little more than a roll-call of villainy.
Is it any wonder, then, that the municipal elections, just concluded, have essentially redrawn the political map? The Greens, the Socialists, the Conservatives and the far-right are back. En Marche has imploded not under its own weight (for it has none), but in the manner of a gas giant venting plasma into empty space.
Macron sought to draw comfort from the fact that the elections, conducted over two rounds, took place against the backdrop of Covid-19, meaning the turnout was low, around 33%. And it would indeed be reasonable to assume that in normal conditions millions more of a moderate persuasion would cast their votes in favour of the President.
Yesterday, Macron took the first step in rebuilding trust with voters by addressing a Citizen’s Convention set up after the gilets-jaunes insurrection to make recommendations on improving everyday life in France. The questions he must address include reducing the speed limit on motorways from 130 kph to 110.
Meanwhile, he has to decide what to do about Edouard Philippe. The word was that he planned to replace his old friend as prime minister with someone who presented a more radical image. But with Philippe having just been re-elected as mayor in Le Havre (double mandates are not unusual in France), the decision is more finely balanced than ever.
It is almost certainly the case that any European government facing an election this year would fare badly at the hands of an unforgiving electorate. No matter how unfair it might be to blame any one politician or party for the effects of coronavirus, or for the global recession now racing down the track, the reality is that those in charge when a crisis hits are the ones who have to carry the can for what happens next.
Macron had faced down one challenge after another for two years straight, and was looking ahead to a Cabinet rebuild designed to take him through to the next presidential election in the summer of 2022. Instead, he finds that if he is to survive he must address three monumental tests at the same time: the health crisis, climate change and mass unemployment.
If he is lucky, the first of these might yet prove the easiest to resolve. It is generally accepted that Macron should have acted faster, and more decisively, when Covid-19 first struck. Since then however, he, and in particular his prime minister, have won plaudits for their handling of the crisis. The death toll in France currently stands at a little under 30,000, some 14,000 less than in the UK and less on a per capita basis than Italy and Spain. But a second outbreak, in the depth of winter, could harden public opinion against the regime and cost Macron vital votes in 2022.
Climate change is equally intractable. With green mayors in place in major population centres, it is obvious that some sort of concordat will have to be reached so central government and the regions appear to be in synch. Macron had already vowed to do more in the second half of his term than in the first. But now if he is to have any hope of winning back votes in the big cities, he will have to do a lot more than make the right noises at international summits; he will have to show himself to be a leader in the fight.
The coming recession, or depression, is the crisis most likely out of the three to make or break the President. He has at most 18 months in which to demonstrate that he knows what needs to be done if France is not to return to a digitalised, socially distanced version of the 1950s.
Unemployment, especially among the young, was already a chronic problem. The numbers out of work were falling, but only slowly. Throughout what remains of the summer, as the economy fitfully re-opens, the true situation will reveal itself. Lines at job-finders’ offices will stretch round the block and the volume of applications for benefits are sure to threaten to overwhelm the system.
There is no country in the world that doesn’t face the same problem. But the French electorate is focused on the situation in France, and unless Macron can convince voters that he and En Marche are up to the job, his chances of remaining in the Élysée beyond 2022 are likely to prove vanishingly slim. At which point it will be up to the next government, of whatever political hue, to pick up the pieces.