Why Macron is keeping his head above water in a crisis-ridden France

Only a fool or an all-in Macron loyalist (of whom there are few these days) could fail to see that France is going through the hardest of hard times. If this was 1789, it would be time to double the guard at the Bastille.

It’s not just Covid, though that is bad enough – at least as bad as in the UK, with all the attendant fallout, social, economic and political. There is also the Islamist crisis, which shows no sign of being brought under control. Murderous Jihadis appear to thrive in every corner of la grande patrie, and attempts to rein them in and to refashion Muslim observance within the civilised constraints of laïcité have so far only served to make the problem worse.

On top of all this, the police – charged with maintaining law and order at a time when alarm bells are ringing across the country – have begun to fray at the edges, exhibiting the characteristics more reminiscent of a government militia than a disciplined constabulary.

The President this week expressed his “shame” when a video emerged showing a group of uniformed officers in Paris beating up a black man for no obvious reason and then throwing a smoke bomb into his premises. They claimed that he had not been wearing a mask in the street outside his music studio and that he had resisted arrest. The magistrate to whom they later related their version of events was not impressed and charged them with aggravated assault.

To cap it all, the country’s youth, vaguely of the political left, vaguely anarchist, have taken sporadically to the streets in a show of recreational violence. They principal focus of their ire is the second national confinement, which is still ongoing.

French riots usually get out of hand quickly and the disturbances of recent days have proved to be no exception. But such was the ferocity of the response by the police and gendarmerie – releasing, one suspects, their own pent-up frustrations – that the French public expressed alarm, as did the press and politicians of both left and right.

As ill-luck would have it, the Government had just introduced a bill in the National Assembly that, among other things, would make it illegal to identify the faces of police officers in the press or on TV. The rationale was simple enough: officers in the course of their duties can easily become targets, and the recently-appointed interior minister, 38-year-old Gérald Darmanin – a genuine rags to riches politician – was keen to ensure that they were protected from acts of terrorism and revenge.

Within days, the Bill lay in tatters. The public, already suspicious of state machinations aimed at weaponising the police, were unwilling to accept that those prepared to split their heads open with batons could avoid exposure and possible prosecution by having their faces photo-shopped from history. Darmanin was obliged to announce that the relevant provisions would be … revised.

Held together by string and brown paper, Macron’s government is under incredible stress, with ministers, themselves divided, reliant on a rabble of competing parliamentary ideologues keen to show that their votes cannot be taken for granted, least of all by the President. Political centrism, it turns out, is a tricky thing to pull off.

If there is any good news, from Macron’s perspective, it is that the rival Conservatives (Les Républicains) seem to have no fight in them – so little in fact that that they are even turning to former President Nicolas Sarkozy – the King of Bling – to lead them out of the wilderness.

The fact that Sarkozy is currently on trial in Paris, charged with corruption and influence-peddling, does not seem to deter his supporters within the party. When all is said and done, it is a tradition for Conservative leaders to end up in clink. The late Jacques Chirac only avoided prison because he claimed to be a victim of dementia, unable to plead, while François Fillon, who lost to Macron in 2017, is a convicted felon, serving five years for embezzlement.

At least, so far as we know, the current occupant of the Élysée is squeaky-clean. Having made a fortune as an investment banker before taking up politics, he is well able to support himself and his wife in the style to which they have clearly become accustomed.

Macron can draw further comfort from the fact that the far-right National Front, known these days as Le Rassemblement National, is at least as divided as his own stapled-together party, La République En Marche. The Front’s leader, Marine Le Pen, having some years ago betrayed the party’s founder, her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, by seizing the throne is now herself threatened by her niece, Marion Maréchal, in the race to make the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim Right respectable and, more to the point, electable. Whoever comes out on top would need to show a dramatic improvement in form to defeat Macron in 2022.

This leaves the Socialists and the Greens. Throughout the life of the Fifth Republic, until Macron put a spoke in its wheel, the Socialist Party was the “other” party of government in France, led for decades by the magisterial François Mitterrand, only to end up in the incapable hands of François Hollande, the Inspector Clouseau of French politics.

But, having been blown away by Macron in 2017, the Socialists do have one decent weapon in their locker – the current mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, who more than the President and the interior minister is seen by residents of the capital to represent their interests at a time of unprecedented trial. Hidalgo could run in 2022 and if she does then she could prove to be a formidable candidate.

The Greens, meanwhile, are currently cocks of the walk. They won big in this summer’s Covid-affected municipal elections, taking control in Marseille Lyon, Bordeaux, Strasbourg, Perpignan and Nancy, while Hidalgo triumphed in Paris and her fellow Socialist, the veteran Martine Aubry, held on in Lille, both of them with Green support. It may well be that eco-politics do not translate easily from the local and provincial to the national level, but should the Greens be deemed to have performed well in the middle of a pandemic, there is no telling what mischief they might cause in round one of the presidential contest in 2022.

France is not alone in its distress. The hopes and dreams of every country in Europe have been upended by Covid. No Government has escaped censure and disaffection, but it helps to be haughty when you are trying to keep your head above water. Perhaps the strangest development of all is that Macron’s personal reputation has somehow survived the mauling.

The French may not believe that their President will always do the right thing when it comes to Covid, still less protect their jobs and livelihoods from the economic cataclysm to come. But they know he’s smart and, right now, they can’t think of anyone else who might do a better job.