France Gets Ready to Pull On Gilet Jaune

Macron’s Second Term Will Be Turbulent as a France without Parties or?alternative leaders dons a?gilet jaune?and descends?dans la rue?

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Denis MacShane

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???????????Quite reasonably everyone is chewing over whether Marine Le Pen can displace Emmanuel Macron as next president of France.

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?This is not what latest opinion polls are saying. She has lost support since her failure to overtake Macron in the first round vote on 10 April. In contrast, to Macron who was relaxed as he took an hour of questions from journalists and voters on French radio, Mme Le Pen avoids being questioned. She sends out her aides but they sound shrill and cannot avoid the whiff of sulphur attached to her as they attack middle class French Muslim women who wear a head scarf for religious reasons much as in the day catholic women would cover their head when going to mass or a Jewish man sports a kippa on his head.

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Both the hard-right in the form of Eric Zemmour or the hard-left in the form of Jean-Luc Mélenchon want Macron to win.

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They would prefer Emmanuel Macron as their target for campaigning to win National Assembly seats in June and then over a longer time-frame to the presidential elections in 2027. French voters usually give a newly-elected president a majority in the National Assembly so he can appoint a prime minister and government of his or her choice as well pass laws.

Two presidents who served two terms, Fran?ois Mitterrand and Jacque Chirac, lost control of the National assembly as their presidencies ran into trouble. Macron will probably win next Sunday but more than 70 per cent of French voters did not support him on 10 April and many of them will vote in the National Assembly elections in June and deprive him of a government majority.

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For the anti-system politicians of the hard right and hard left this is a perfect scenario to advance their anti-Macron lines aimed at weakening and destabilising his second term presidency albeit from different political perspectives.

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The main-stream right – inheritors of the Chirac-Sarkozy and Gaullist tradition – would be divided by a Le Pen presidency whereas Emmanuel Macron in his second and final term will be beset by different problems, not just on the economic front (inflation, domestic energy costs, solving the problem of the huge rural poor population) that can allow a restructured right to emerge.?

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Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the hard-let candidate has said this is his last election. There has always been up to 40% of the French population ready to vote anti-right (Socialists, Communists, Greens, Trotskyists, Mélenchonites).??

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A president Le Pen who adopted social policies on pensions, minimum wage, national preference for French citizens on jobs and social housing?which are quite distinct from Macron’s classical Davos globalisation?Enrichissez-vous?right-wing liberalism would be tricky for Jean-Luc Mélenchon to handle as these social policies are ones he has long advocated.

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?Certainly if MLP were to win the Elysée everything would be thrown into the air.

???????????She has so far called for:

·??????France to pull out of the military structures of Nato where France makes 3rd?biggest contribution after US and Germany;

·??????France to stop sending military aid to Ukraine - €100 mn so far;

·??????France to create new partnership with Putin once the war is over

·??????Support for a new European security architecture based on a partnership between Putin and European leaders;

·??????France to bring in rules on reducing VAT to 5%, give special rights to French citizens over EU citizens to access jobs, social housing which is incompatible with EU membership, in other words Frexit (French exit from the EU) by other means. Last week she praised Britain’s Brexit exit from Europe which she said had led to the creation of “Global Britain” (which she pronounced in French as ‘Bryton’) in line with Boris Johnson’s claim the UK is back as a global influencer thanks to Brexit.

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If a President Le Pen emerged it would be the biggest?change in France’s foreign policy, relations with neighbours and the US since 1945 and would be a huge boost for Vladimir Putin.?

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Mme Le Pen’s election address sent to every French household had a much touched up smiling photo of her with the title “FEMME D’éTAT” – (Stateswoman). She gave a major news conference (12 April) on her foreign policy where she got the presidents of Tunisia and Algeria mixed up which may dismay the 6 million French citizens of Tunisian or Algerian descent but she obviously believes she is the global leader France and the world needs.

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Since she has come out with her anti-western lines there has been a very small but shift of support to Macron with polls of showing 56% support for the outgoing president to?44% support for Le Pen.

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Macron’s foreign policy contains no 2nd?round surprises but is a continuity of his existing global policy themes including:

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·??????Strong support for Ukraine, a close alliance with Biden, EU partners to support Zelensky and Ukrainians. Much more generous open door policy for refugees than for example the UK.

·??????At a rally in Marseilles on 16 April said the 2nd?round vote would be a “referendum on whether France stays in Europe”.

·?????He wants a?bigger role for EU raising money and spending it (once approved by national governments) on Pandemic recovery, new defence spending, common energy policy;

·??????He wants the EU’s energy policy to have a role for nuclear and on-shore wind farms despite opposition from Greens or right-wing calls for local referendums on both;

·??????He will be the main leader in Europe with Angela Merkel now not just in retirement but almost in disgrace as her pro-Russian policy, her exit from nuclear, her refusal to spend Nato 2% on defence, her protection of Hungary’s illiberal pro-Putin fan Viktor Orban are now seen as big errors as was her imposition of harsh austerity measures after the Crash on Greece, Italy, Spain and Ireland.

·??????German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in his odd traffic light coalition with parties his social democrats disagree with has as yet little stature in Europe.?

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Italy’s Mario Draghi is seen as a bankers’ technocrat who will accept Macron’s broader political leadership in Europe. The same is true for the Socialist Pedro Sanchez in Spain.

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?Macron had furious row with the Polish right-wing PM, Mateusz Morawiecki, during the first round campaign. In an extraordinary outburst the Polish PM said Macron talking to Putin “was like talking to Hitler.” Macron has only ever talked to Putin after first discussing what he will say with Zelensky.?

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Macron riposted by saying Morawiecki was heading a party in power that was anti-semitic and which hosted Marine Le Pen and other far-right parties and that the Pole was intervening in a French election to get Marine Le Pen elected. I have never heard such on the record language by a French president about another EU head of government especially given the long tradition of Polish-French friendship.

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?I think this means Macron may be quite tough in his second term in supporting EU efforts to require countries like Poland and Hungary which reject EU rule of law and common policies and value but expect to enjoy EU transfer payments and full access to EU markets as well as exporting some unemployment under Freedom of Movement provisions;

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·??????Macron has got some talented young ministers like his Europe Minister Clément Beaune, a trusted and key Macron aide or MEPs like Italy’s former Europe Minister, Sandro Gozi, a French LREM MEP. He has personally appointed the EU Commission president, the French speaking Ursula Von Der Leyen, the EU Foreign Policy chief, the French trained Catalan Spanish Socialist, Josep Borrell, and the President of the EU Council of Minister, the French speaking Belgian, Charles Michel.?

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By any measure a re-elected Macron will be the leading figure in EU politics over the next five years.

·??????He has established a Strategic Alliance with Greece and Israel to defend the common East Mediterranean interests of all 3 countries and make clear to Turkey’s authoritarian president Erdogan that any ambition he has to resurrect an Ottoman empire for the Eastern Med and North Africa will be resisted.

·??????A big question is how does Macron handle Brexit England? He and Boris Johnson have clashed with pro-Brexit Tory MPs and the Brexit press in major British papers like the Daily Telegraph, Mail, Sun and The Times regularly attacking Macron across the board on vaccines, economic performance, fishing quotas, or refugees on the Calais coast line trying to get to the UK where they have families or friends.?The left-liberal Guardian regularly carries reports attacking Macron from a left-wing perspective repeating every cliché of the Mélenchon camp often identical to Le Pen (President of the rich,?acolyte of Brussels, puppet of McKinsey, etc).

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The UK’s Tory weekly, the Spectator, has been especially venomous in hostile aggressive anti-Macron articles.?Macron has not responded in kind. Is there any chance that Boris Johnson rather than remain in semi-open war with Macron can draw a line and open a new era of win-win London-Paris relationships?

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This is not about rejoining the EU but at least ameliorating some of the worst trade problems and blockages for young people, musicians, artists, people who want to have a second home or retire in France. France and UK will remain major security defence players and ought to work together more.

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Macron will be under pressure to reverse his?block on bringing the West Balkan states closer to Europe. This is Europe’s forgotten back yard – poor with bad politics but not worse than other countries like Bulgaria or Romania or in their time Ireland, Portugal or even post Franco Spain which benefited greatly from more integration into Europe.?

·??????He will work with Biden but not to join in an anti-China alliance.?

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·??????His economic policy will continue the open modernised digi, AI, start-up economy that was launched when Macron was President Hollande’s Minister of the Economy.

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??France’s economy recovered by end 2021 to 1% above pre-pandemic levels. The UK is still 0.1% below and faces a 4% drop in GDP due to Brexit according to the UK’s Office or National Statistics.??

?Business investment is up in France but down in the UK. France has adopted a German-style apprenticeship scheme in contrast to the UK apprenticeship scheme which the Financial Times Labour correspondent, Sarah O’Connor, says has been colonised by better-off middle class youngsters working in white collar managerial jobs which leave the UK obliged to import trained artisan craftsmen from Europe.

·?According to Philippe Aghion of Insead business school in Fontainebleau Macron’s policies created 1.2m jobs between 2017 and 2021, “and not just any jobs – the proportion of long-term, long-tenure jobs has increased.”

·??????Macron has held increases in domestic gas/electricity energy giant EDF to 4%.

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Conclusion: Macron’s macro figures look and are good but they hide a great deal of rural poverty.?

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France is twice the size of the UK with the same population.?There are huge regions of France where people live in small towns or villages without a doctor, dentist, super-market and where a car is necessary to go to low-paid work, visit a clinic for medical care, or just go and see relatives. In the 2017 election there was a correlation between the distance a voter lived from a railway station and the likelihood of voting for Le Pen. Small town and village France is fed up with Macron. The small market town of Le Bugue ( pop 2600) in the Perigord based on summer tourism and new houses built for retirees voted first Le Pen, second Mélenchon in?the first round. 20 or even 10 years ago the vote would have been comfortably split between Gaullist heritage centre-right parties and the Socialists. Those voting loyalties have gone. Macron is a one-person political system. The personalisation of politics can been seen in other countries – the US with Trump, England with Johnson, Hungary with Orban, India with Modi. Macron is likely to win on Sunday but the democratic party political system in place in France since 1945 is now shattered.

France has Europe’s biggest Muslim population (6-7 mn) mainly from former French departments or colonies in North Africa or sub-Sahara Africa. A tiny number are seized by Islamist ideology as can be seen in the UK as well. But it is easy for racist demagogues like Le Pen and Zemmour to whip up anti-Muslim passions and blame Macron for crimes and the insecurity some older French citizens feel in areas now mainly populated by minority group citizens either born in France or new arrivals on the basis of family reunions.

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Macron’s biggest problem may arise from his political success assuming he defeats Le Pen.?He will utterly dominate the political landscape like?le roi soleil, the Sun King, Louis XIV, who famously said “L’état c’est moi” – I am the state.?

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The?parties that dominated France 1950-2015 – the Gaullists, the Socialists, the Communists, the Greens, the Liberals (Mo-Dem) didn’t get 20% of votes between them on 10th?May, 2022.?

The Corbynite sort of Trotskyist movement of left oppositionists who voted for Jean-Luc Mélenchon got 20% of the votes, 5,000 fewer than Marine Le Pen. But they are a catch-all anti-system left movement, not a political party, with no internally coherent programme and just held together by a charismatic leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a fluent orator, but who says this is his last campa

So Macron has no intermediary bodies – political parties, trade unions (the weakest in Europe), civil society outfits – between himself as the President Soleil or what he called in 2017 his Jupiter mode of governance and the angry, discontented citizen.?

The most powerful movement in French politics is?la rue?– the street. When the streets of Paris and other cities are full of angry frightened French citizens as in 1830, 1848, 1870, 1936, 1958, 1968 - the elites in power are shaken to the point of soon disappearing.

Stand by for more eruptions in the street as France dons a?gilet jaune?and feels obliged to protest as there is no normal outlet for anger and different views in the post party politics system Macron has created.

In Britain in 1989-90 we had a flavour of that as Mrs Thatcher was seen as all-powerful after her third election victory in 1987. But she then imposed her poll tax requiring everyone to pay a tax to local municipalities in place of the property based tax in place. Everyone irrespective of income or property wealth would pay the same tax. There was no-one able to tell her it was a stupid idea and the craven crawling courtiers around her were too nervous to challenge her authority. Millions refused to pay the poll tax or came off electoral registers to avoid paying it. There were demonstration that turned violent with the police charging into protests of women and older middle class people outside Westminster. Tory MPs could see their seats disappearing the replaced the irreplaceable Mrs Thatcher with a non-descript John Major.

Macron may face some poll tax moments before too long. He will win his second term but his disregard, almost contempt, for the idea of politics being a part of democracy may return to haunt him and make his second term much more tempestuous and difficult than the first five years of President Macron.

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