Gavin Mortimer

Covid cases are on the increase in France, as they are in most European countries, and the scientists who have been silent for months have once more found their voice. At the weekend professor Jean-François Delfraissy called for everyone in France this autumn to have a fourth vaccination, while Alain Fischer, president of the Scientific Council, believes that masks should once more be obligatory in public transport, six weeks after the regulations requiring this were dropped. But times have changed. Emmanuel Macron is still president but he no longer has an absolute majority in parliament and the days when the National Assembly rubber-stamped every Covid diktat emanating from the Elysée with barely a murmur of dissent are over.

One of the more significant results from the first round of the French parliamentary elections on Sunday was in the Corrèze. There, in the rural south of the country, Sandrine Deveaud of the Nouvelle union populaire écologiste et sociale (Nupes) came top with 25.4 per cent of the vote. This is the left-wing alliance assembled by Jean-Luc Melenchon in the wake of April’s presidential election result, bringing together his far-left France insoumise, the Greens, the Communists and the Socialist party. The Socialists were the last to come on board. And even then many within the party refused to submit to Melenchon and declared they would stand against Nupes’ candidates in the parliamentary election.

The shambles at the Stade de France on Saturday night took a sinister turn on Wednesday as allegations emerged of incidents of sexual assault committed against supporters by gangs of local youths. What unfolded outside France’s national stadium on Saturday evening as Liverpool and Real Madrid met inside in the final of the Champions League has dominated the news in France ever since. Most of the criticism for what is seen as a national humiliation is directed at Gérald Darmanin, the Minister of the Interior, who since Saturday evening has insisted that Liverpool supporters were predominantly to blame for the trouble.

In his own inimitable way, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky has unleashed his dogs of war on Vladimir Putin and once again he’s pulled off a propaganda coup. The Russian President has in the past not been averse to using animals to his advantage; he posed topless on horseback, making the pulse race of every red-blooded Russian woman, and in 2007 he famously brought his pet labrador, Konni, to a meeting with Angela Merkel, fully aware that the then German chancellor had a fear of dogs. Zelensky is more a Jack Russell guy and earlier this month he decorated one of Ukraine’s bravest of the breed – Patron, which means ‘ammo’ in Ukrainian.

Emmanuel Macron recently changed the name of his party from En Marche to Renaissance but so far all that has been revived are sordid accusations concerning some of his party members. Last week, Jérôme Peyrat withdrew his candidature in the fourth district of the Dordogne from next month’s legislative elections after the media had made much of his conviction in 2020 for domestic violence against his wife. That Peyrat was nominated in the first place could be considered a stunning misjudgement, particularly from a president who famously declared in 2016 that he is ‘profoundly feminist’.

Élisabeth Borne was unveiled as the new prime minister of France last night and in her acceptance speech she paid tribute to her only female predecessor. She kept her compliment short, which was fitting, as Edith Cresson didn’t last long as PM. Appointed by Socialist president François Mitterrand in May 1991, Cresson was gone by the following April, but not before she had outraged much of the world. All of this has been conveniently forgotten by the French press, and indeed the global media, in saluting the achievement of Cresson the trailblazer. The Guardian quoted Cresson telling a French broadcaster that ‘it’s more than time’ that there was another woman leading the government.

First it was the Greens, then the Communists and on Wednesday Jean-Luc Mélenchon bagged the big one, the Socialist party. In announcing an ‘agreement in principle’ between his La France Insoumise (LFI) and the Socialists, Mélenchon became the most powerful figure on the French left and, according to the electorate, the principal adversary of Emmanuel Macron in next month’s legislative elections. The Socialist party’s National Committee will meet in Paris this evening to examine the fine print of the agreement, but they are expected to endorse what is officially called the New Social and Ecological People’s Union. Not that everyone within the party is happy with the alliance.

If Emmanuel Macron has any sense he will be back in the office this morning. Sunday night’s celebratory shindig was good while it lasted but the Fifth Republic has never faced such a parlous future, either socially or economically. One can only hope that the attack on a priest in a Nice church on Sunday morning, barely mentioned by the media, is not a harbinger of things to come for Macron’s second term. Of more general concern for France is the economic situation. Everything is rising, from the cost of petrol to the price of a baguette, and the war in Ukraine will only deepen the crisis in the months ahead.

Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen clash tomorrow evening in an eagerly anticipated live television debate. The president has been accused of dodging the presidential campaign but it doesn’t seem to have harmed his chances of re-election, with the latest poll giving him a handsome ten point lead over his rival. If Le Pen is to pull off a shock victory in Sunday’s second round she will need to debate with far more finesse than she did in 2017. On that occasion she was given the run-around by Macron as 16.5 million viewers looked on. The pressure on her is immense but her campaign team say she is upbeat and relishing the prospect of a rematch with her nemesis.