UK might be going to the dogs with Brexit — but at least we’re not France
Emmanuel Macron has failed to temper his narcissism and bring people together after 21 consecutive weekends of riots, a wobbly economy and clashes with EU leaders
AN embattled, incompetent leader distrusted and disliked by a vast majority of voters. A wobbly economy. A re-energised opposition. Huge street protests. Squabbling with European partners.
The world looks on in horror wondering how a leader who was so popular two years ago could get things so wrong.
Not Theresa May, but Emmanuel Macron, the President of France and the politician who may be the greatest Brexiteer of them all — the loudest advocate for pushing Britain out the door, deal or no deal.
Just two years ago, Macron was the great centrist hope not just of France but Europe.
The country’s youngest ever president was elected aged 39¾. He promised to drag France out of political, economic and social sclerosis.
He quickly discovered that reform of a state is easy to talk about but difficult, if not impossible, to achieve and his domestic failure has been spectacular and comprehensive.
The suburbs are in turmoil and Macron’s vaunted reform project has ground to a halt.
The legions of civil servants remain in place. State spending accounts for a gargantuan 58 per cent of the economy — it is 38 per cent in the UK — with the highest taxes in Europe to pay for it.
The French have had enough. The opinion polls are striking. Macron is now the most unloved leader in Europe, by a distance.
YEARS OF STAGNATION
His putting up of fuel taxes last year while cutting the wealth tax was a manoeuvre so ill-judged as to beggar belief.
His diesel tax and carbon tax was the proximate cause for spawning the gilets jaunes movement, which is still bringing cities to a standstill every Saturday.
France has now had 21 consecutive weekends of demonstrations and riots in which thousands have been arrested, hundreds injured, many gravely, and ten killed.
The physical damage has cost hundreds of millions. The reputational hit has been much worse.
Macron’s response has been to denounce protesters as “enemies” of the state, and to impose new laws suppressing “fake news”.
His clumsy efforts to cover up a scandal in his inner circle, involving a handsome young bodyguard of North African origin, now fired, but apparently still in touch with Macron’s circle, have shaken even some of the normally complaisant Paris press corps.
And now there’s his latest project, to launch his ambitious “EU renaissance”.
Having failed to reform France from Paris, he seems to imagine that his reborn EU might do the job for him, delivering the country from 40 years of stagnation.
For several weeks he has toured the country, not debating, not listening, but talking, talking, talking, sometimes for three hours with not a pause.
Tellingly, one subject almost entirely excluded from the agenda of this so-called debate was Europe.
Macron has never had any intention of consulting the voters on this subject, and for good reason. The French are among the most eurosceptic voters in Europe. They rejected the European constitution in 2005 by 55 to 45 per cent. It is a curiosity that Macron remains deeply admired abroad.
But in France, even those who intend to vote for his list in the forthcoming European parliamentary election will hold their noses.
As his economic reforms have ground to a standstill, and his attempts to buy off the gilets jaunes have pushed the deficit to the very edge of 100 per cent of GDP, Macron now faces two further tests.
If Brexit is thwarted, only Nigel Farage is likely to be more disappointed than Macron.
FAILED TO LISTEN
The second is the May [European] election, in which he risks humiliation.
Macron’s obsession with European federalism has not just alienated him from voters, but has irritated his most important ally, German chancellor Angela Merkel. Germany wants nothing to do with Macron’s proposed fiscal union. Why should Germans pay France’s debts? And lately, she has been especially alarmed by his inflammatory, anti-British rhetoric.
He was always a swot. But he is utterly lacking in emotional intelligence.
He has failed to temper his narcissism and grandiosity, failed to listen, failed to bring people together.
Last summer he was filmed telling an unemployed gardener how to find work: “In hotels, cafés and construction, everywhere I go people say to me that they are looking for staff . . . I can find you a job just by crossing the road.” The video went viral. In his stubbornness and indifference to others, Macron has united France against him.
It will now be hard, perhaps impossible, for him to recover his popularity or his agenda, which may help explain his Brexit obsession.
MOST READ IN OPINION
He sees in it the concerns of provincial people who feel ignored by arrogant elites — the sort of people he’d hoped would go away.
Brexit reminds him that they are unlikely to do so.
As a result, his European renaissance is as undeliverable as the revolution he promised in France.
- Jonathan Miller is a writer and contributor to The Spectator based in France. @lefoudubaron.
- This is an edited version of a piece which first appeared in The Spectator.
