Jonathan Miller

Emmanuel Macron was not quite his cock-a-doodle-do self in his New Year’s Eve broadcast to the French people. This, the fourth presidential broadcast of the plague year, saw Macron, in black suit and black tie, resembling a small-town funeral director attempting to conjure optimism. Macron promised a France on the comeback by the spring, with new economy jobs and a European recovery fostered by an ever more ambitious European Union. The reality is that much of the country is under a 6pm curfew. Everywhere, bars, restaurants and ski resorts are shut. Pension reform has gone. Unemployment, deficit and debt are massively up. There’s been close to a 10 per cent decline in GDP in France in 2020, nearly twice that of Germany.

Politicians whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make ridiculous. On Tuesday evening, as the deaths attributed to Covid-19 reached 50,000, Emmanuel Macron, president of the Republic, again commandeered French television channels to announce his latest strategy to end the national lockdown. He claimed to be making himself perfectly clear as his timetable for ending lockdown was conditioned by the subjunctive. The big give was that from Saturday, we are to be allowed to spend three hours daily outside, and to venture 20km (no more) from our front doors. (This will be a relief to a friend in the Dordogne who was 'verbalisé' by the flics last week when she was discovered 1.2km from her house, 200m more than permitted.

President Macron’s first lockdown turns out to have been a failure. So, now there is to be a second lockdown. Macron's announcement last night of a new 'confinement' on 'the whole national territory' until 1 December 'at a minimum' is bitter medicine for the French, and for Macron himself. Three difficult weeks are forecast for the health system. The recent imposition of obligatory mask wearing and evening curfews have evidently not worked to curb the health crisis. The number of French people carrying the coronavirus is now estimated to be one million, health minister Olivier Véran said this morning. So, back to square one.

The decapitation of middle school teacher Samuel Paty, 47, by an Islamist in a suburb of Paris yesterday is not just another tragedy and blow to French morale — it is also a reminder of why Emmanuel Macron feels exposed on the issue of what he calls 'Muslim separatism'. Channelling the Spanish civil war slogan 'No pasarán', Macron himself tweeted last night that Islamism 'ne passeront pas' — they will not pass. Marine Le Pen, his main challenger in the coming presidential election, countered that it has done so already. The problem for Macron is that this atrocity fits a trend. It is eight years since the killing of Jewish children at their school in Toulouse.

I spent Saturday night with a dozen French blue bloods, hautes bourgeoises and banquiers at a hunting chateau on the banks of the Hérault river. It was an enchanting autumn evening. We finished pre-dinner apéros and as we were called to table by the ancient retainer (the last servant remaining, after decades of Republican depredations), the gilded Second Empire clock on the chimney piece chimed 9pm. We didn’t know it, but this was the last supper. At least for a while. A country celebrated for its cuisine, has just cancelled dinner. The rules are still evolving but it’s possible that our meal would have been an unlawful assembly, had it been this weekend, and not last. Too many of us, for a start. And after our official bedtime.

Will the presidency of Emmanuel Macron open the door to a political dynasty in France? He has no children, so that’s a problem. But wait. There’s Brigitte Macron, who has three. Albeit, all from the union she abandoned to marry Emmanuel, her pupil. Meet the youngest of Mme Macron’s three children, Tiphaine Auzière, 36, a lawyer, social entrepreneur, and République En Marche activist. Merely six years younger than Macron himself, Tiphaine is the striking cover girl (alongside her mum, the First Lady of France) of Paris Match magazine this week. And it doesn’t take profound insight to imagine that with important regional elections next year, she’s running for something.

It is just over three years since the election of Emmanuel Macron to the presidency of France. All of Gaul is united against him. All? No! From a village in the foothills of the Pyrenees, in a remote corner of Occitanie, Jean Castex, the irréductible mayor of the tiny commune of Prades (population 6,124), has emerged in a puff of smoke to become the President’s new prime minister. Castex is a previously almost unheard-of regional politician with a name that sounds as if he has leapt directly from an Asterix comic book. Being prime minister of France is probably the most thankless job in European politics. The president takes the credit for whatever goes right, while the premier takes the blame for whatever goes wrong. One wonders why Castex accepted.

France is to be locked down until 11 May, and possibly longer. Whether the credibility of Emmanuel Macron’s presidency can survive that long is now in question. Macron’s state broadcast on Monday evening was billed in advance as Churchillian but this president does not do inspiration. His message was defensive and grim, with elements of incoherence. Even normally complaisant French pundits are scathing. If he lifts the confinement, he risks a second, lethal wave of infection. If he doesn’t, the economy will collapse entirely Macron’s promise of support to France’s desperately overwhelmed hospitals was denounced as 'too late' by nurses interviewed immediately after the broadcast.

Montpellier, France Last week, the French were amused at Anglo-Saxon hoarding of toilet paper, known vulgarly here as ‘PQ’ — papier cul. Now France itself has tested positive for panic. Supermarkets across the country have been under siege, shelves stripped bare of loo roll and much else. The government has already requisitioned all supplies of face masks and slapped price controls on hand sanitiser — with foreseeable results. Sanitiser is now scarcer than PQ and not even hospitals have enough face masks. When President Emmanuel Macron first went on television to reassure the French, his typically prolix message served to fertilise general nervousness.

It was with a mounting sense of disbelief that I counted the votes this evening in my commune in southern France. I’d expected a repudiation of President Emmanuel Macron, but not on this scale. “Catastrophe,” said the centrist deputy mayor as he scanned the voting tallies. At the end of the count, Macron’s list managed an embarrassing 14 per cent, against Le Pen’s, on 36per cent; a result that was repeated in countless other communes from north to south. Macron has his strongholds too, but Le Pen ended uk finishing first across all France with 23.3pc of the vote to his 22.4pc. Did Macron have a ground game, that nobody had ever noticed? Or were the voters taking the chance to blow a loud raspberry?  It looks like the later. Macron voters stayed home.