Tired Macron looks like an ex-president-in-waiting
It was François Hollande who said that the best part of being President of France was the time after you stepped down, when you were recognised once again as a human being. During the campaign, it was all about expectations, most of them unrealistic. Three years on, you were already a has-been, drowning in failure. Only in retrospect did the voters realise that you had done your best and as head of state could only achieve so much.
Emmanuel Macron is still six months off his third year in the Élysée, but already he has reached stage two. As it happens, I consider this to be unfair. He already has several scalps on his belt. He out-waited, as well as out-witted, the powerful railway union CGT, obliging it to accept reforms that most thought were unobtainable and which, when combined with resistance to changes in the rights of students in the state system, could replay the événements of 1968.
As we now know, the railway workers ran out of steam, and the students, full of bluster, couldn’t manage more than a short-lived spate of sit-ins. It was as if they realised the game was up and the only realistic way forward was to smooth the rougher edges of the proposed legislation and back off with as much dignity as they could muster.
Similar responses have greeted announcements of planned cuts in the numbers of civil servants and other public employees and reforms of the labour laws aimed at making it easier for employers to hire and fire. The unions will oppose the changes. It’s what they do. But thus far, whatever anger is felt has been muted and there is no sign of an imminent populist revolt. In the case of the code du travail, there was no threat of wholesale change. The nuclear option was never invoked. Instead, the intended reforms are being couched in language more appropriate to the all-inclusive, MeToo generation now assuming leadership across France.
In close consultation with social partners, the Government is introducing a bill to strengthen social dialogue by Ordinance. The Enabling Bill seeks to give greater equality, freedom and security to employees as well as business owners by strengthening social dialogue. In a rapidly changing world of work, it aims to bring about the convergence of social and economic performance.
Why yes, indeed. Who could argue with that? Except, perhaps, for the used of the word “ordinance,” hinting, in the nicest possible way, at the obligation of those affected to respect whatever emerges from the “close consultation”.
Macron is not Superman, still less Jupiter. Nor is he Robespierre. As President, he is learning the limitations of his power and listening more to his parliamentary colleagues, who up until recently he seemed to regard as a collective rubber stamp. Last month’s reshuffle of his cabinet following the resignation of two of his most senior ministers indicated not only an increased awareness of the need to delegate, but an acknowledgment that La République En Marche, formerly the Macron glee club, is slowly developing a personality and agenda of its own, along with a realisation by its deputies that if they wish to be re-elected they had better live up to at least some of the promises they made in 2017.
On the opposite side of the political ledger, the sans-culottes are not what they were either. The army of the unemployed in 2018 lacks not silk breeches – or in modern parlance, designer jeans – but leadership and common cause. France’s jobless are well looked after. While they present an ongoing problem for the economy, they lack neither food nor lodgings. Insofar as a danger to Macron’s programme may be building from this quarter, it is only likely to become critical if the one in five of those without work aged between 16 and 24 are either left on the shelf, as a lost generation – which is what many fear – or else stripped of the benefits that currently make their discomfiture all too easy to bear.
If the Socialist Party was not in meltdown; if the Front National (now the Rassemblement National) was not rudderless; if the centre-right (Les Républicains) was not stuck in shock mode; and if the Far Left (La France Insoumise) was not so obviously the home of the permanently disaffected, Macron could well be in trouble. Lots of ordinary voters, no matter their political leaning, see him as the President of the Rich, who has never met a billionaire he didn’t like. They resent this. But they can’t make up their mind who else to cast their ballot for.
None of the alternative parties has either the numbers or (as yet) the organisation to present a credible threat to Macronisme. Not only that, but the French can’t help admiring the sheer chutzpah of a man who came out of nowhere and, regardless of his faults, including his well-attested arrogance, has put France back on the global map as Europe’s number one statesman and go-to guy.
In the meantime, Hollande, now living openly with his current inamorata, the actress Julie Gayet, is enjoying his new-found popularity – though his mood might darken slightly when he comes to read the just-published memoir written by one of Ms Gayet’s predecessors, Ségolène Royal, described by critics as a settling of accounts.
Nicolas Sarkoszy is another who is back in vogue, winning plaudits for his new foundation aimed at improving the survival rates of children with cancer. It took a long time for the one-time King of Bling to recover from his defeat in 2012. But he seems to be making progress. This week he gave a lengthy interview to the magazine Le Point in which, while calling, in unusually generous terms, on his fellow citizens to give the 40-year-old Macron time to deliver, he also managed to get in a dig about the dangers of a young, relatively inexperienced politician gaining the keys to the Élysée.
“Power is dangerous,” he warned. “It can become a drug. A bit of experience can help reduce the dangerous emanations power can generate. When I see that the Austrian Chancellor is only 32, I feel I must wish him luck. Jacques Chirac once told me that he had been appointed prime minister [not President] too early. He was 42. Experience is more than a detail.”
It could be that after 2022 – or 2027 if he wins a second term – Macron will come to be regarded as just another comfortable old jumper that kept France warm in hard times. The prospect might appal him today as he embarks on his ambitious winter campaign, but in the end, when he sits down to write his memoirs, he might find contentment in looking back and accepting that at least he kept the show on the road.