Emmanuel macron

Eric Zemmour, a right-wing French essayist, has had a stellar rise in the media and public opinion. He has now reached 17 per cent in the latest Harris Interactive poll for the first round if he were to run as a candidate. After Macron’s ascent to power from nowhere only five years ago, will Zemmour become the Donald Trump of French politics? It looks unlikely. Zemmour certainly hit a raw nerve with his anti-immigrant theme, but whether he can dominate the campaign will depend on events outside of his control. If the voters' concern turns towards the energy crisis and purchasing power, Zemmour would be without an offer.

Today France is outraged. First, explicitly because Australia has broken a large contract to have a French company design their submarines and for that contract to be switched to a US-UK substitute. Secondly, sotto voce, because Emmanuel Macron’s Indo-Pacific strategy has been shaken by an Australian, American and British strategic agreement entitled Aukus, to which France has not been invited. What are the facts of the matter? In 2016 Australia signed a contract with France to buy 12 conventional French-designed diesel-electric submarines for the Australian navy. The contract worth €35 billion was badged by the French as ‘the contract of the century’. In reality, only €8 billion was to go to the 60 per cent state-owned French company Naval Group.

In a big speech yesterday, Macron presented himself in almost Nixonian terms as guardian of law and order. He said he would rewrite the penal code and double the number of police on the streets. But only if he’s re-elected. He further promised at least ten specific security measures and €500 million in additional spending. Ever the triangulator, he mixed hard with soft — promising also a parliamentary oversight body to clamp down on police brutality. Nobody can accuse Macron of lacking policies, though they’re mostly more show than go. His attempt to co-opt the security agenda is thus far merely rhetorical.

Anne Hidalgo, the socialist mayor of Paris, whose reign has submerged the city in debt and rubbish, is the latest no-hoper to declare her candidacy for the 2022 presidential election. She’s in fifth place in the polls, although these are rarely credible at this stage and currently ignore several candidates for reasons that seem obscure. Hidalgo, the daughter of Spanish immigrants, is to run on a platform of social justice. She says she is doing so with humility, although this is not a characteristic that has so far been evident in her personality. Ruthless ambition comes closer.  It is rather obvious that Hidalgo has zero chance of finishing in the top two of the first round of voting next April.

To nobody’s great surprise, France’s Minister of Health, Olivier Véran, announced last week that the Covid Passport may have to be extended beyond 15 November – the initial expiry date of the government’s controversial measure, first introduced in July. I’ll hazard a guess that come April 2022 the French will still have to show their passport to enter cafes, shopping centres, sports clubs and cinemas. April, of course, is the date of the presidential election and Emmanuel Macron is banking on his response to Covid helping him to secure a second term. His belief is that the electorate, particularly the over-50s, will be reluctant to change presidents in the midst of a pandemic. Better the devil, and all that.

The French President Emmanuel Macron has, it is revealed, forbidden all talk at the Elysée of the forthcoming presidential election and has refused to discuss even whether he will be a candidate. His entire attention is focused on France and the French, he claims. Of course this is entirely the opposite of the truth as his entire attention is focused on being re-elected. Nevertheless, he was likely to have been opening a bottle of something sparkling in which to dip his croissant this morning with the announcement that Michel Barnier, yet another no-hoper, has thrown his beret into the ring to oppose him. Divide and conquer seems to be Macron’s strategy.

How we all hollered with outrage in May when Emmanuel Macron closed France’s borders to people arriving from Britain on the dubious basis that Britons, and Britons alone, were in danger of infecting France with the Indian variant. I believed, and I still believe, that Macron and his government were in part motivated by Brexit — it was part of our ongoing punishment for daring to vote to leave the EU. It certainly wasn’t justified on scientific grounds: if Briton had more recorded Indian variant (or Delta) cases than other European countries at the time it was largely thanks to more samples of Covid being sequenced here. Some countries, France included, were not analysing more than a tiny fraction of cases.

The protest movement against Emmanuel Macron’s Covid passport, which comes into full effect today, continues to grow in France. On Saturday over 200,000 men, women and children took to the streets, more than twice the number that demonstrated when the protests began on July 17. As a veteran of the Paris protests, I’ve found one of the most interesting aspects to be the reactions of passers-by as the cortège files through the streets of the capital. Some clap, some look on in contempt, others shout words of encouragement and a few hurl terms of abuse.

A manager of an attraction park in France was reportedly assaulted on Sunday after he denied entry to a customer. It's alleged the man lost his rag when he was turned back because he didn't have a valid Covid passport. It is unlikely to be the last such incident. In the space of a fortnight, the atmosphere in France has turned toxic. A hospital in Saint-Étienne was invaded on Monday by 60 demonstrators, mainly medical professionals, opposed to the measure that will force them to vaccinate or be suspended without pay. That is also a strike at a Lyon hospital that will start tomorrow. Elsewhere cinemas, theme parks and fitness centres have been labelled 'collaborators' for their participation in the government's Covid Passport scheme.

From St Tropez to La Rochelle to Deauville, there is a familiar sight this summer in many of France’s most popular coastal resorts. A year after the wearing of masks outside was made mandatory they are back, and French and foreign sunseekers are forced to muzzle under a broiling sun. It was only a month ago that the government relaxed the rule on the wearing of masks outdoors, but that was before a rise in cases caused by the Delta variant. Most of the infected are the young and unvaccinated, hospitalisations are stable and deaths remain minimal: there were 11 in the last 24 hours, compared to ten last Saturday.

What a celebration of diversity I witnessed in Paris on Saturday as tens of thousands of demonstrators marched through the capital. Organisers put the figure at 50,000, the government at 18,000; I'd say the former is the more accurate estimation. It took two hours to walk the one and three-quarter miles between the start of the march, in the Place du Palais Royal, to its terminus at the Place Pierre Laroque outside the Ministry of Health. In total, and again depending on your source, between 114,000 and 150,000 people demonstrated across France on Saturday to protest against the planned introduction of the 'Pass Sanitaire', France’s vaccine passport. All ages, sexes, classes and colours were represented.

One Saturday in March, I attended an anti-lockdown rally in central Paris. I was there partly out of journalistic curiosity but also out of solidarity with those Frenchmen and women who believed it was high time life returned to normal. What struck me was the similarity between the protestors and those I had walked with in 2018 in the early weeks of the yellow vest movement in Paris — overwhelmingly middle-aged blue-collar workers. The yellow vests famously had no leader because it was a protest movement that arose not out of any strong political conviction but from what the French call ras-le-bol: despair at what was perceived as an arrogant and out-of-touch political class who seemed intent on punishing the poorest in society.

Nothing went as predicted in France's regional elections. Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National did not win a single region and Emmanuel Macron's La République en Marche failed to grow roots in local government, or even act as a kingmaker. All incumbent regional candidates were re-elected, sometimes with quite a comfortable margin. Does this mean we are back to the good old left-right divide in French politics? Regional elections are not national elections, of course. Abstention reached a record high in this election and voters from RN and LREM have shunned the regional vote more than left-wing and conservative voters.