Jonathan Miller

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.

Five years ago, Emmanuel Macron was ‘en marche’ to his improbable ascent to the presidency of France. Last night, having united France against him, the certitude that he will be re-elected in 270 days has evaporated. Results of the second round of regional elections can only be described as a disaster for the President. His bespoke political party, La République en Marche, has collapsed. And worse, his preferred presidential opponent, Marine Le Pen, lost any remaining credibility as a serious alternative. That could leave him facing a traditional conservative next year – one who might not be eliminated in advance, as François Fillon was last time, by a convenient criminal investigation. The message is loud and clear.

I popped down to the Salle du Peuple on Sunday to see how the voting was going in the departmental and regional elections. Although I’m no longer a municipal councillor – à cause de Brexit – and am no longer required to help invigilate the polling, I thought I’d take the temperature. Which was frosty. The French have a reputation for strong participation in elections, but not this time. By the time the votes were tallied, the winner was clear. Abstention won by a landslide. Two-thirds of my commune’s voters stayed at home, reflecting the national turnout. It was the lowest participation in at least 25 years and a vivid illustration of the rejection of voter confidence in every single candidate and party.

Boris Johnson is more popular in France than Emmanuel Macron, which might not be a high hurdle to overcome, since Macron is rather generally unloved. Except Johnson is not just marginally more popular, but massively so. Indeed, the French seem to like him even more than the British. And he’s popular right across the French political spectrum, from the extreme right to the extreme left. Chouette! According to a study in the news magazine Le Point, 51 per cent of French voters have a favourable opinion of the Prime Minister, at least 10 points clear of recent polls assessing the popularity of the President.

President Emmanuel Macron announced today the closure of the notorious École Nationale d’Administration, the elite finishing school for the senior civil servants and politicians who have wrecked France. Perhaps nothing could serve France better than burning down its Strasbourg campus and salting the earth, but there’s less to this than meets the eye. This is the third time he’s announced this. Statism is the religion of ENA, which explains why its brilliant graduates have conspicuously failed to create a single Google, Amazon, Facebook or Apple.

Nicolas Sarkozy, 66, President of France from 2007 to 2012, currently a valued member of Emmanuel Macron’s informal council of advisors, was today sentenced to a year in prison for bribery and corruption in a case with roots in his murky relationship with the late Muammar Gaddafi, the not much missed brotherly leader of Libya. This scandal is a tangled web, even by French standards. For those who have spent years attempting to get to the bottom of it, it offers the tantalising prospect that Sarkozy could become the first former French President ever to be thrown in the Paris prison called La Santé – although it doesn’t have a reputation for being good for the health.