Macron tries on a new look: Monsieur Normal
What does normal politics look like? In Britain, the extraordinary, meaning Brexit, has been around for so long that it has become ordinary – normal. But in France, where the norm last winter was mobs of gilets-jaunes protesting about, well, pretty well everything, the mood has changed and politics has moved on.
The question is, for how long?
President Macron is back in the Élysée, refreshed after his holiday in the Deep South, reinvigorated after what was, for him, a successful G7 summit in Biarritz. No longer is he the Jupiter President, resolved to do such things, he knows not what, but that they shall be the terror of Right and Left. Instead, he is taking one thing at a time, hoping to re-establish himself as a reformer rather than a gung-ho radical.
France, as a result, seems to be more at ease with itself. True, there was a rowdy demonstration over the weekend in Nantes, marked by a spate of vandalism on the part of the gilet-jaune Ultras. But it came and went. Round our way, in rural Brittany, a small group of protesters, focusing on proposed changes to the state pension scheme, spent the day seated round a picnic table, eating and drinking and waving at passing motorists.
And in Paris, nothing.
Of course, the mood could change again. It only needs one out-of-the-blue cause-célébre and the 21st century equivalents of the Communards could be back on the streets. For now, though, Macron has the respite he needs to push through a scaled-down package of reforms.
Most obviously on his radar this week is pension reform, tied in as it is to strikes by Paris Metro workers that threaten to bring the capital periodically to a standstill over the next few months. During his election campaign, back in the distant spring of 2017, Macron assured France’s trade unions that he would not wreak havoc with their notoriously complex and self-serving raft of public sector pensions. Since then, he has changed his mind, convinced that France cannot go on providing generous, indexed pensions to workers who then retire in their 50s, in the case of Metro drivers as young as 52.
Last year, the President scored a rare victory when he stood up to the unions representing SNCF workers – the cheminots – opposed to a programme of reforms aimed at reducing costs and abolishing the concept of jobs for life. If he can repeat that success with the Metro workers, he may well feel that, at last, he is back on track. All I can say is, watch this space.
Elsewhere, the news is that ministers are getting on with their jobs. Foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian is being pressed by the families of French-born jihadis to repatriate their dozen or so errant sons and daughters being held by Kurdish forces in Syria. But while libertarians of the Left have added their voice to the clamour, there is no sense that the French as a whole have much sympathy for their erstwhile fellow-citizens who sought to establish an islamist caliphate across the Middle East while condoning mass-slaughter at home.
Le Drian and his cabinet colleague, interior minister Christophe Castanet, are at the same time coming under pressure to respond to a demand by the former diplomat and minister for Europe Nathalie Loiseau to offer asylum to the CIA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, who has been holed up unhappily in Moscow for the last six years.
Loiseau – whose star crashed to earth this year when she failed to provide French leadership in the European Parliament – points out that France, and Europe generally, has offered moral support to Snowden while doing nothing practical to ease his situation. The reality, of course, is that EU leaders are wary of further offending Donald Trump, for whom successfully extraditing Snowden from a European jurisdiction would be his bloodless equivalent of assassinating Osama Bin Laden. In the end, it will be up to Macron to make the decision one way or the other. He could choose to go the libertarian route, or he could opt to do do nothing. My money would be on the latter, but the President likes to be seen as fearless and independent, so it is not impossible that he will risk Trump’s wrath while, for the first time since his election, garnering acclaim from the French Left.
As for Brexit, nothing, as ever, is certain. Macron has made it abundantly clear over the last year that he is against endless extensions of Article 50. If Boris Johnson is determined to leave the EU while refusing to endorse the withdrawal deal negotiated by Theresa May, then so be it. Europe has other business to be getting on with, and, besides, Britain’s absence is France’s opportunity. But then again, the French leader has learned from experience that pragmatism is often the best way forward, so do not be surprised if he allows himself to give Perfidious Albion once last opportunity to either hang itself or come to its senses.
Meanwhile,down in La France Profonde – never Macron’s natural home – new grievances are being hatched and old ones lovingly restored. Though the conventional Right and Left of French politics continue to suffer from post-electoral stress disorder, unable to recover any kind of verve or evident sense of purpose, the would-be Communards are stirring.
Macron needs to get a move on. Winter is coming.
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