Emmanuel macron

Just two months from the presidential elections, Emmanuel Macron’s self-belief and risk-taking — not to mention setbacks — seem to know few bounds. And no more so than in foreign affairs. Following the French President’s telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine on 20 February, the Elysée triumphantly announced that a Biden-Putin summit was agreed in principle, only for the Kremlin to pour cold water on the idea the next morning. Washington then followed suit, before Putin announced the recognition of the two breakaway Ukrainian republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

While the world is focused on Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron has withdrawn all French forces from Mali. Last weekend, thousands of soldiers were flown out of the former French colony after nine years of fighting Islamist insurgents in the Sahel. Malian protesters bid the French soldiers farewell by shouting ‘Shit to France’ at the departing planes. Following a military coup in May, Mali’s ‘interim President’ Colonel Assimi Goïta began to tire of the French and their calls for free elections. There were also lingering doubts over France’s motivation, stoked by a Russian disinformation campaign. So Goïta began looking for allies who could provide him with muscle to fight the Islamist insurgency without any lectures about democracy.

President Emmanuel Macron may or may not have imagined that his mission to Moscow would head off armed conflict in Ukraine. He will nevertheless have calculated that while his mission was an abject diplomatic failure, it was a modest political success. The French pro-Macron media (most of it) bigged up the visit as a triumph of French diplomacy and an affirmation of Macron’s global stature. Plus, all the jetting back and forth gave the President an excuse to further delay announcing his candidacy for the presidential election, the first round of which is in just 47 days. He might have failed to stop Putin’s aggression, but at least he was seen trying. That the deal he claimed with Putin was imaginary wasn’t really important.

In February 1995, Jacques Chirac was at 12 per cent in the polls. Two months later he was president. Two months is precisely the time remaining before the first round of voting in the 2022 presidential election. At the moment, President Macron’s advantage looks unassailable: the Economist’s tracker puts his chances of being re-elected at over 80 per cent. But just how unpredictable might this election be? After a few weeks of relative inertia, there are signs that the traditionally volatile French electorate are beginning to rumble. Last weekend, the campaigns shifted into a higher gear, and not necessarily to the advantage of the incumbent.

Paris Perhaps the best thing that can be said about Valérie Pécresse’s presidential election campaign is that it’s better than the Socialist party’s. Which is to damn with faint praise. The French left are in such a dire state that if the opinion polls prove correct, their candidate, Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, won’t pass the 5 per cent mark in the first round required for candidates to recoup half their campaign costs. Pécresse has no worry on that score but she has failed to inspire the electorate since she was selected as the nominee for the centre-right Les Republicans (LR) in December. An opinion poll this week had her trailing Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen, with Éric Zemmour only one point behind her on 14.

Emmanuel Macron sees anti-Semitism everywhere except where it really lurks. Earlier this month his government accused protesters opposed to the Covid Passport of giving the Nazi salute, a charge that was disproved by video footage and this week dismissed by the public prosecutor’s office in Paris. Yesterday, in a speech to mark International Holocaust Day, Macron warned of the return of ‘an ill wind’ blowing through the continent in some ‘political discourse’. He vowed that France would never cease to honour the memory of the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust ‘particularly when some try to falsify it.

When French prime minister Jean Castex and health minister Olivier Véran held a press conference last week, they outlined the timetable for a gradual easing of the country's many Covid-19 restrictions. Véran talked of an 'encouraging evolution' in the fight against the virus, despite the fact that France had in the previous week recorded an average of over 300,000 daily cases.  As of 2 February, the wearing of masks outdoors will no longer be mandatory; a fortnight later, the French will be able to experience once more the pleasure of standing at a bar with a glass of whatever takes their fancy. Since the start of this month, this practice has been outlawed.

Is Marion Maréchal, granddaughter of Jean-Marie Le Pen and niece of Marine, about to emerge from political retirement to support the presidential election campaign of Éric Zemmour?  Normally the answer to any question posed by a journalist is ‘no’ but maybe not this time. Marion could give new momentum to Zemmour’s campaign, which seems recently to be stuck in a rut. Marion could be the right figure to lure National Front voters — who have been disgruntled with her aunt, Marine Le Pen — towards Zemmour.

Montpellier Emmanuel Macron, with eagle eyes, is staring at Europe like stout Cortez. Elected president of France almost five years ago aged just 39, he dreams beyond the renewal of his lease on the Élysée Palace in the April election. Now Angela Merkel has left the world stage, Macron’s ambition is to replace her as Europe’s de facto leader and to father a European federation, a United States of Europe, with France and himself at its centre. On New Year’s Day, France assumed the rotating six-month presidency of the European Council, the supreme institution of the European Union, an organisation some might think besieged by unresolved crises and policy conflicts and perhaps best advised to be modest.

Anglo-French relations continue to deteriorate. Not even this week’s tragedy in the Channel can stop the point scoring between the two governments. Last night, Boris Johnson issued a letter to Emmanuel Macron which proposed, among other things, a bilateral readmissions agreement between the UK and France which would see those crossing the Channel returned to France straight away. The French were not impressed either by this proposal or it being made public.  This morning, Priti Patel was uninvited from a meeting of northern European interior ministers. Macron then went on TV to accuse the British of not being ‘serious’ and to say that leaders shouldn’t communicate by tweets.

Who is winning the fish war? Will gentlemen in England still a-bed think themselves accursed they were not there? This morning, the war looked rather, forgive me, fishy. France has suspended until Thursday its threats to disrupt the Channel Tunnel. Boris declared he would make no concessions. His bellicose promise came immediately after the UK and Channel Islands handed the French 100 more fishing permits. Maybe it will hot up. Maybe not. French-bashing is flourishing at least. Jacob Rees-Mogg has pronounced the French to be always grumpy in October, the anniversary of Agincourt and Trafalgar. And he’s being predictably reflected in Brit-bashing from Paris, dragging out the Marquis de Ximenès’s complaint about perfidious Albion.